James Hutton, a Hidden Valley Middle School teacher and member of a local fly-fishing group, loves to fish, but he doesn't keep this love to himself. Instead, he devotes three or four Saturdays each year to kids in the Quest Program, an after-school and Saturday enrichment program for Roanoke County's gifted kindergarten through eighth-grade students, and teaches them the art of fly fishing and about the environment.

Hutton's "A River Runs Through It" clinic began early on Saturday, April 19, on Colorado Street in Salem at the Roanoke River with an effort to clean the environment by picking up garbage. Throughout the clinic the fifth- through eighth-graders also study the stream, plant and animal life, and then learn a new activity-- fly fishing.

This program began about two years ago when Roanoke County asked for suggestions for adventurous things that the gifted students might benefit from connected with citizenship and high aptitude learning. Hutton suggest fly fishing. "The enjoyment that I get out of it is being able to share something I like to do and see the kids outside of the classroom," Hutton said. "And getting them to understand that school is not just about notebooks, desks, and paper -- it gives them a different reality."

According to Hutton, about 10 kids usually show up and a few of his friends help supervise, as well as Trout Unlimited, a fishing conservation group. Trout Unlimited lends the rods to the students so each can have their own and then the students receive instructions on how to use the rods safely.

"I think they [the students] are learning that there is a lot of science involved, different stages of bug life, but they are learning a fun new activity. I think that is the best opportunity they are getting is being able to apply things they learn in class, and use it outside of the classroom," Hutton said. And not only is it educational -- it's fun and gets the students out of the house on the weekends.

Allee Cox, a seventh-grader at Hidden Valley Middle School, who has taken the class three times before, told Hutton, "Today I learned how to improve my cast so I won't catch the bank a lot. I can definitely see fly-fishing as one of my hobbies and something I can see myself doing a lot more."

Pierre Rouaud, a sixth-grader at Hidden Valley Middle School who has attended the class twice, is looking forward to buying a fly-fishing rod. "I learned about rod casting. That is a cool way to cast the line 10 to 30 feet," he told Hutton.

And after the "Stream School" clinic given by Linda Barker of the Clean Valley Council, Northside Middle School seventh-grader Jessica Michael told Hutton that she learned, "The more organisms living in the river the better, as long as that means the water is good. I hope I will still remember how to fly fish so it could be a hobby."