Richard Formato

Richard Formato is an avid catch-and-release fly-fisherman from Wytheville, Va. When not on the water, he operates a small business there. Formato loves to fly-fish in his native Southwest Virginia because of the great water and wonderful people. He also loves to fish the flats and shallows of the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic whenever work and weather permit. He is on the Department of Conservation and Recreation's board of directors and is a trustee of the Shenandoah National Forest and Skyline Drive.

Recent columns

• What about Bob?
• Notes from the Charlotte Fly Show
• A chance meeting
• A wish for Jack

• Column archive
• Talk fly-fishing

Joe Williams is a busy man.

He is the VDGIF fisheries biologist covering Bland, Carroll, Craig, Floyd, Giles, Montgomery, Pulaski and Wythe counties. His main responsibility is managing the area’s trout resources and the walleye and muskie populations in the New River.

Twenty-six years with the department speaks to his knowledge, and like most VDGIF employees, his dedication and love of the commonwealth.

Joe is not a big fan of a lot of regulations, but with increasing fishing pressure and environmental impact from logging, farming and industry, he believes as I do that we need regulations to maintain and improve our sport fish populations.

One regulation you cannot legislate, however, is more respect from landowners for the water on their property.

The best thing landowners can do to help their streams is to maintain a healthy strip of trees on both sides of their streams.

What not to do: On Route 621 in Craig County, a new landowner bulldozed and graded off every tree on his creek bank so he could have a great view.

He sure will have a great view. And erosion, mud -- and no fish whatsoever.

Do you realize that almost every spring creek farm in Southwest Virginia will support wild trout?

A ton of them don’t because they are not fenced off from cattle that ruin stream banks and water.

The Department of Conservation sponsors a program in which the state pays 90 percent of the cost to plant trees and fence off land from livestock to support stream ecology.

Adjoining landowners need to work with each other on these issues so that longer lengths of streams are protected.

If they do, here’s what can happen:

A year ago, I fenced off a small stream on my farm in Floyd County.

I rolled a bunch of rocks into it, built some small breaks, and left all the brush around it.

The creek is spring fed, and very small, with a width of about three feet.

Almost immediately after I completed the work, I caught a small brook trout on a bead head nymph. I thought it was a fluke.

Two days ago, Joe Williams and Joanne Davis, a Virginia Tech grad student from New Hampshire, came to the farm to do a stream study.

Joanne’s focus is on a population genetic survey of Southwest Virginia brook trout in collaboration with VDGIF.

Brook trout are the only salmonid native to the southern Appalachians.

Fishery managers (beginning in the mid-1800s) began stocking hatchery brookies, but because the Southern strain proved too difficult to maintain in a hatchery, all stocked fish come from New England.

Early anglers speculated that these stocked fish were somehow different from their native “speckles.”

Supposedly, the native fish were more brightly colored, smaller, hardier -- and tasted better than the hatchery fish.

During the past decade, many genetic studies suggest that a division at the subspecies level exists between “Northern/hatchery” and “Southern/native” brookies.

Joanne’s mission is to characterize each population of wild brook trout as either the Southern form, Northern form or intergrade so that VDGIF (and hopefully other state agencies) can devise a proper management plan.

My mission was to determine if any of my work was making my little creek into “a trout stream.”

All in waders, Joe hoisted his portable gas powered shock apparatus on his back and slid into the stream. Joanne and I were right behind with nets and collection buckets.

After zapping the water to stun the fish, we collected about 20 trout, 15 brook trout and four wild rainbows with one brookie almost 10 inches long.

Joanne and Joe used an 18-gauge biopsy instrument to extract a piece of tissue about the size of a grain of rice from the dorsal musculature.

The tissue was immediately placed on dry ice to prevent degradation of the enzymes and brought back to Virginia Tech for allozyme studies.

They also took a small fin clip from the caudal fin for DNA studies.

Joanne’s project involves designing a set of micro-satellite markers that can be used to estimate genetic variance.

They have sampled nearly 500 brook trout throughout our region thissummer and they have killed few fish with their methods of sampling.

All the fish we released swam off despite being shocked, stuck, and snipped.

Our brookie is a robust fish -- but not stout enough to withstand the stomping of cattle and man’s pollution.

Every creek around here has potential, and farmers need to realize that trout on their property will add as much value to their land in the long run as their livestock.

As a result of a just few weeks' work on my part, my little stream will now be officially designated by the VDGIF as “a wild trout stream.”

If you build it, they will come.