While I'm a fairly dedicated winter angler the past few weeks made it difficult to get excited about hitting the water. The thermometer has stuck close to the single digits lately and I don't recall the last time it was above freezing. Most rivers and streams are locked solid and even the tailwaters are struggling to run free. If I wanted this sort of weather I'd live up in some mountain valley in Colorado. Sitting in western Connecticut it shouldn't feel like the Rockies but it does. Except without the mountains and the legal pot.

While I consider my glass half empty situation I scan the news sites which, given my mood, only serves to destroy hope. From West Virginia to Montana industry seems hidebound to poison our waters. Another oil pipeline has burst, this one full of Canadian oil, fouling the Yellowstone River and drinking water in a season that foils clean-up efforts. Bakken oil filled tanker cars have finished exploding but not burning along the banks of the befouled Kanawha River. It seems there's no reliably safe way to transport the stuff.

It's small fly time on northeast tailwaters. On the Farmington River folks are fishing the trico hatch. A well tied imitation makes a #20 fly seem like a battleship and 6x look like an anchor chain. I like a brown thread body with a tuft of dun colored CDC and a #24 hook. It's one of the rare times I fish 7x. I'd fish 8x if I had any.

One of the nice things about tailwater hatches is that, despite all the variables that affect any natural process, they're pretty reliable. The hatches line up to fill the angling year. The fish seem as attuned as the anglers and I've spent many evenings fishing a single pattern. Once you're dialed in, you're set. Mostly.

Freestones, untethered to regular, temperate flows, can throw you more curves. Sure, they have the epic hatches that arrive like clockwork every year -- Hendricksons, March Browns, Alders, Cahills, White Flies, Isos -- but mixed in between and among are all manner of chaos. You can always count on some sort of caddis buzzing about, any number of small stones, midges, and BWOs. And, of course, the main events always overlap. It can make tying something on the tippet a total crapshoot.

There's a tired old joke about discerning lying politicians by observing the mobility of their lips and there is a close parallel to mines and their assertions about the hazards of their operations.

Before a mine can begin operation in the US, owners must submit Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) to the federal government. The percentage of mines that predict low impacts to water quality in their EISs is 100%, according to a 2008 report by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In actuality, the number that actually pollute ground and surface waters is summed up in the report by a simple phrase: "the majority".

While one could attribute evil intent to the assertions of safety made by mine owners, I think it more likely to be driven by hubris buoyed by a healthy dose of greed. Though, given more thought, that may be the definition of evil. Whatever the case, I'm sure there are a lot of folks who actually believe what they're doing is right despite startling evidence to the contrary.