News & Views
Tight Lines
Time Flies
Just a few hours from landing gear up to fishing gear on from a number of East Coast cities, Spring Ridge Club provides the perfect place to slow down.
As CEO of an $11-billion megacompany, Textron’s Lewis Campbell has the schedule from hell as he rides herd on such heavyweights as Cessna and Bell Helicopter. But let him see even a sliver of an opening amid his travels to board meetings, negotiations, and product demonstrations, and he’ll quickly have the Citation X – his airborne office – headed toward a slice of heaven in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. Give him the rarity of a few days from the grind, and he’ll quickly take any private or commercial aircraft he can find to the same place.
“I can be there within about two hours from anywhere on the East Coast,” Campbell notes, “and I’m talking from wheels up to putting my [wading] boots on. It’s so handy with my schedule.”
“There” is Spring Ridge, a rapidly growing club designed to provide unparalleled trout fishing in a family-friendly atmosphere for affluent sportsmen who deeply value both.
Spring Ridge members currently have exclusive access to about 30 miles of legendary trout waters, and the club is adding several miles of great trout fishing in the Poconos barely two hours from Manhattan, plus outstanding steelhead fishing near Lake Erie. All of the club’s waters began as some of the best in eastern America, and they’ve been sculpted to become and remain world-class.
Like the management of truly great companies and airplanes, the staff of Spring Ridge Club pays attention to the most finite of details and lets them all roll together to consistently provide high-quality experiences. Stream managers monitor the water quality and natural habitat to make sure each mile of water has the perfect mix of pools, cut banks, and overhanging vegetation so trout have the incredible amounts of insect hatches that make fat, actively feeding fish.
Carefully managed angling pressure and guides who check conditions daily ensure that Campbell and the other club members will have a high rate of success in a quality setting. “Time is precious,” emphasizes Campbell. “I travel to some other places, but if I could only fish one place it would be Spring Ridge. There’s no question about that.”
There’s also no question that Spring Ridge is a perfect place for Campbell to host others. The club offers myriad piscine opportunities from can’t-miss holes where the casting’s easy and there are hundreds of small fish to more difficult stretches where both the challenges of the casting and the fish are huge.
Spring Ridge has been perfect for Campbell’s family too. A life-long avid hunter and spin-fisherman, Campbell didn’t get into fly-fishing until he was an adult and a buddy took him first to an Orvis store and then to a Michigan trout stream. “I didn’t catch a thing,” Campbell remembers, “but I absolutely fell in love with the sport.”
He wasted little time sharing that love with his three children and their spouses, and five of the six now enjoy the sport almost as much as he does. “It’s really something to look down the middle of a trout stream and see them all out there fishing and having a good time,” he notes. “That’s really something to have that kind of quality time with the family. It’s such a nice gift for all of us.”
Campbell has received many fine other kinds of gifts from his Spring Ridge Club membership. He recalls a rainy afternoon on his favorite Spruce Creek beat when he hooked, fought, and landed his best-ever fly-caught trout despite the long odds of very light line, tiny fly, and a shallow stream full of tippet-snapping snags. “I was pretty excited, but we didn’t have a camera,” he remembers. “The guide said he had one in the truck but didn’t want to get it out because it might get wet and ruined. I told him to go get it – it would be a lot easier for me to buy him another camera than for me to catch another 10-pound trout.”
Like most people who’ve worked so hard for so long, Campbell says he’s looking forward to the time in his life when he’s able to fish and enjoy his family more than work. Watching Spring Ridge Club grow quickly and spread over so many areas in a relatively short period of time, he’s eager to see what waters will be available when that time comes.
But for now he’s still largely focused on keeping a corporation with about 37,000 employees strong and growing. With his blackberry in his waders in case he needs to be reached, Campbell squeezes as much time as he can in Spring Ridge waters where he can relax and be just another American fly-fisherman.
“Trout always seem to live in beautiful places, and it’s refreshing that fly-fishing is something you can do with others, but when you’re in the water you can still be alone,” explains Campbell. “And I’ve never had a fish ask me how the company was doing!”
©Private Air Magazine
