No Man's Land

What does your fly tying area look like? Is everything all neatly set up with labeled material drawers, all your tools and bobbins and what not resting in their form fitting slots on a foam or wooden caddy and all your spools of wire, thread and floss impaled on neat little posts on yet another caddy? Do you have one of those little Waste-trol bags underneath your vise to catch hair and feather clipping lest they should fall on your perfectly clean floor?

If so, I envy your self discipline and I probably already don’t like you….

My tying area is a no man’s land that occupies a corner of our basement. I have an old oak desk that I brought home when one of my previous employers was giving their old office furniture away so they could install newer, more trim and modern metal desks. My oak desk is roughly 60 inches wide by 36 inches deep and about 30 inches high. It has six huge drawers and weighs just slightly less than last year’s Honduran banana crop. Like Greenland, there are places on its surface that may have been mapped at one time, but probably have never been visited. During the majority of the year, the top of the desk is cluttered (more like piled, actually..) with materials in (but more often, out) of their original plastic bags. Plastic envelopes and boxes of hooks peek out from beneath ostrich plumes, clumps of hand-blended sulfur dubbing and from behind empty Diet Mountain Dew bottles. An ancient #2 Metz dun neck lies back towards the rear center of the table. It is half out of its plastic bag, which is clearly labeled “red/brown India necks” in black laundry marker. That must mean that when I need a size #12 brown dry fly hackle, I need to find the bag that is labeled “#2 Metz dun”. But I’m pretty sure I just saw it the other day and it has some stripped peacock sticks in it. Oh well, it’ll turn up eventually..

In addition to the oak desk, I also have two towers of those plastic stack drawers that normal people use to store extra pairs of shoes, their now unused cassette tapes of disco music or old framed photographs of family members or former significant others who have fallen out of favor and lost their place of honor on the shelves in the family room.

One tower sits to either side of my tying chair (it’s oak too and came with the table). Each tower is just slightly shorter than I am and has five big drawers, each of which would easily hold two shoeboxes and the entire recorded output of the Bee Gees and Donna Summer on cassette. They’re big drawers. I know this because when they are stacked one of top of each other, they make big towers. In these drawers are most of my furs, loose feathers and older, lower quality hackle necks. Some labeled and in bags. Some loose. And some in bags that are labeled incorrectly. My good hackle necks and saddles are in the top drawer of the tower to my right. They are the only part of my inventory of materials that has a label on the outside of the drawer. The label reads: “Good Necks”- Add Mothballs Every November”. But at present, I don’t know where the mothballs are. They might be under that piece of muskrat fur sitting behind the unopened 8 oz. commemorative Coca-Cola bottle that my wife picked up at the 1996 Republican Convention when she was there as a reporter. I swiped it from her extensive trove of curios and took it down to my tying area because I read somewhere that you can sharpen scissors by opening and closing the blades on the neck of a glass bottle. I tried it with the Coke bottle, but I couldn’t discern any difference in the sharpness of my scissors.
Maybe it would have worked if she’d have got a Democrat Coke bottle instead. I don’t know. At least, just for that brief snapshot in time, I knew where my scissors were.

Last year when I made an attempt to go through my loose feather drawer and re-bag and label everything, I found an old, rumpled bag of loose ginger hackle feathers I bought from Herter’s of Waseca, Minnesota in 1966 or so, just a year or two after I started tying. That was pretty exciting. I mean, do the math. The chicken(s) the feathers came from were present for the births of actor John Cusack and current British PM David Cameron as well as the passing from the scene of Admiral Nimitz and Walt Disney. They were alive for the release of the Bee Gee’s first album (not available on cassette) and for the dedication of the St. Louis Gateway Arch by Vice President Hubert Humphrey. There’s a lot of history in that bag of feathers. The feathers themselves, unfortunately, were useless for tying. That’s OK though. They were useless for tying when I bought them. This was characteristic of the general run of Herter’s product quality that last decade or so they were in business prior to going under in the early 70’s. So, I threw them out. I kept the plastic bag they came in though. Right now, it has a chuck of mole fur in it. Someday, when I find my laundry marker, I’ll put a proper label on the bag.

It goes on and on. I have spools of tinsel (real metal tinsel, not that Mylar stuff..) dating back to the 60’s. I’d use it, but you know how springy tinsel gets on the spool. I lost the rubber band retainers for the spools and the tinsel came all uncoiled and became tangled up with my collection of spools of Kevlar thread, copper wire and various tying flosses. I have it all together in a bag in one of the drawers in the left tower. I have the bag correctly labeled as well. In big black laundry marker. “Miscellaneous Spooled Materials” is what it says on the outside of the bag. Not too long ago though, I did find a set of old midge-size hackle pliers in that bag tangled up with some medium gold oval tinsel. I’d been looking for them for quite a while and was really surprised to find them there. I thought for sure they were in the 3rd drawer of the right tower next to the ringneck tails and the bag that is labeled “Rubber Hackle” but actually contains a fist full of dove feathers I plucked from a bird back in the mid-70’s with the intent of using them to make collars on soft hackle flies. I never got around to trying this, but I hope to some day. They’re supposed to make pretty good soft hackles.

Just because I’ve described this immense, confused tangle of stuff in my tying area, don’t get the idea that I am sloppy, messy or have no self-discipline. I know exactly where everything is. It’s all in the southwest corner of my basement, west of the treadmill and south of the staircase. So, there….:)

American Originals

Like short hop passenger rail service, free television and the daily newspaper, the independently owned and operated fly shop is slowly disappearing as an American institution. Oh, there are still quite a few of them around, but make no mistake, they are fading away and each year there are fewer and fewer whose doors are open for business. While many of the reasons for this slow passing from the scene are matters of simple business sense, the disappearance of the independent fly shops also mirror changes in our culture and our values. There was a time when most fly anglers would have agreed that the slightly higher prices at an independent shop were a fair exchange for the individual attention to customer service, sense of camaraderie and the good feeling of being greeted by name when you came through the door offered by the independent shops. Nowadays, these virtues seem to be poor competition for the ease, variety and lower prices that can be ours online with the click of a mouse. It isn’t just fly fishing. In general, there seems to have been a culture-wide devaluation of the interpersonal aspects of retail commerce.
Ask the small independent grocer or hardware owner who is watching the hinges on his front door rust from lack of traffic because he can’t match Wal-Mart’s price on a box of Cheerios or the variety of Home Depot’s mind-boggling selection of nuts and bolts. So, we’ve changed. I think for the worse, but then again, what do I know? I’m moving into the lead edge of the age group that tends to see most of these sorts of changes are erosion of the ways of the world as we always knew it. At our age, none of us want to go to all the work of adapting to a brand new world. So, we tend to resent the change.

While there can be honest debate as to whether these changes reflect badly on who we are becoming as a people, I know one thing for certain: When the last independent fly shop closes, it will also signal the passing from the scene of a great, long term source of entertainment for me as a fly angler, spending time in the presence of the eccentrics, huge-hearted folks and hopelessly fish-addicted people who owned and operated these shops. My experiences with them have been one of the high points of my angling life.

I used to visit a shop in the heart of northcentral Pennsylvania’s mountains. I’d stop to buy a spool or two of tippet or a new zinger. I was always losing zingers along the creek. My total obsession with fishing; the water and the promise of the next pool, combined with my hearing loss would often result in me snagging my pliers or nippers on a tree branch or clump of brush and not hearing the snap when the cord, stretched to its limits, would break. So, I was almost always in the market for another zinger.

I’d enter the shop through the front door and approach the counter. I could plainly see the owner in the back building a rod or just sipping a cup of coffee and staring off into space. Sometimes, he’d come right out and wait on me. Other times, he’d acknowledge my presence with a wave and yell that he’d be right out. Sometimes, he would. Other times, he’d be back there fadiddling around for five minutes before he finally came out front to see what I needed. Still other times, he wouldn’t acknowledge me at all and I’d stand there for 10 or even 15 minutes and finally turn and go out the door. Or sometimes, I’d wait him out. One thing I never was though, was miffed or upset at his erratic behavior. Actually, I got a chuckle out it. He had come from a large urban area and set up his business along one of Pennsylvania’s best trout streams so he could always be next to the water and far from the beeping, grinding chattering sounds of the city. The making a living part of the equation was secondary. He had what he wanted. The only way it could be better would be if these damned customers stopped coming around to interrupt his day and his reverie. I understood. I’d probably be the same way.

I used to frequent a small shop in my home town in Northwest Pennsylvania. The guy who owned and ran it may have been cut out to be an engineer or a tax accountant or any of a hundred other occupations. The one thing he wasn’t cut out to do was to retail sales. He had the disposition of a tomcat with a singed tail and the patience of a child seeing the stack of wrapped presents at his birthday party for the first time. I’d come through the door and before it even closed behind me, he’d look at me like I was a newly discovered flat tire and say: “What do YOU want?”. I’d tell him I was just looking. He’d mumble under his breath and go back to cleaning the top of the glass case with the reels in it. No more than a minute later, he’d try again. “You figure it out yet?”, he’d demand Sometimes, I’d say “not quite yet” and he’d go back to his sulk. Other times, I’d bring a few odds and end to the counter and check out. He’d ring the stuff up and say, “That’ll be all of $12.46” in a disgusted voice like I’d wasted nine minutes of his time for next to nothing. Far from becoming offended or upset with him, I actually got a kick out of the whole thing. Here he was being totally himself and absolutely defying the cookie-cutter, fawning and solicitous persona common to retail sales people everywhere. I admired this. I enjoyed him so much I eventually bought a three hundred dollar Orvis fly rod from the rack in his shop. This was shortly before he went out of business under the weight of his less than fully welcoming personality. I don’t know what the matter with some people is and why they didn’t like him. I considered him a regional treasure.

Another establishment, a destination shop on a large stocked stream not far from where I grew up was owned and operated by one of the most contrary and opinionated people I think I’ve ever met. You’d come through the door and say, “nice day”. He’d tell you it looked like rain. Then you’d offer, “Well, if it rains, maybe there will be an olive hatch”. And he’d tell you that the olive hatch ended for the year last Wednesday. So much for that ray of hope…

And on and on it would go. Eventually, I got to the point where I would go in expressly for the purpose of torturing him for 20 minutes or so at a time just by being in his shop and daring to speak. Usually, I’d buy something. A box of split shot or a bottle of floatant. I figured the four or five dollars I’d put down to be a bargain for the entertainment I got in return. Unless you go to the matinee, you can’t go to the movies for five bucks and it isn’t anywhere near as much fun.

Not all the independent fly shop folks I’ve dealt with were crotchety, eccentric malcontents. Some were men with hearts the size of continents, men who without ever being “famous” fully met the only definition of greatness that really means anything. I worked for such a man in a fly shop in the mountains of Northwest Pennsylvania. At the time, the beginning of the internet retail boom and a changing demography in his customer base were making it hard to keep the business afloat. Yet, this man, who had been a helicopter gunship pilot in Vietnam made a point of employing a guy who had done five tours in Vietnam and who bore all the emotional scars of his experience. The guy was like a walking skinned knee; hypersensitive to the touch and sore and easy irritable all the time. He came and went as he pleased and for whatever reason he pleased. Sometimes, he would deal with a modestly difficult customer and then simply just take off and leave for the day, the experience having worn the insulation off his already frazzled nerves. He refused to run the cash register or help take inventory. Too much pressure. Yet the owner always paid him for the hours he was present and kept him on the payroll. He may have been the only person in the entire town who, by giving him a job, took the time to thank the guy for his service to his country and recognized the toll it had taken on him. The time I spent with this man was a gift. It made me aspire to be a better person.

There are many more examples of this unique, but sadly disappearing species, the individual fly shop owner. The guy at a Pennsylvania shop who would let you take a new rod from his rack to try it for a few days before deciding to buy. The laconic, bearded Rebel in a North Carolina shop who invited me to sit and have a couple cups of coffee with him and just talk fishing on a slow day. We ended up talking for three hours. The central Pennsylvania fly shop partner who would visit with you for hours, now and then pausing to splatter a bit of tobacco juice in the wax-coated orange juice he always had handy. Guys that you knew from the first time you encountered them, held the same love and reverence for the water and the fish that you did.

If and when the last of the independent shops closes its doors in recognition of the inexorability of change, I’ll miss the service and I’ll miss the local touch and all the rest. But most of all, I’ll miss the people themselves. Their heart, their kindness and warmth and the delight of their eccentricity. All are American Originals and when they are gone, a piece of what I’ve grown to love about the sport will go with them.

Fishing With Jim

I’ve been thinking lately about Jim, one of my boyhood fishing buddies. He and his family lived in our neighborhood, in a brown, shingle-sided house a few hundred yards from our house, up one of the rutted dirt lanes that passed for roads in our neighborhood. As kids, we had an interesting relationship both off and on the water, to say the least.

Jim was a rail-thin and gangly kid with a buzz cut (I had one too in those days and I probably wouldn’t hesitate to get one now if it meant I could have hair again) that only emphasized the prominence of his sizeable ears. I used to tell him that from the neck up, he looked like a fuzzy cookie jar with a frown face and two huge handles (his ears). Usually when I told him this, he’d call me a runt and chase me until I climbed a tree to get away from him. We were ten year olds and this is what ten year olds do, or at least it is what they did back then.

Jim liked his dog, potted meat sandwiches and his 35 inch Louisville Slugger ball bat. It was the longest bat in the neighborhood by a couple inches and he could really swing it. To this day, I’ve never seen a kid in that age range hit a ball as far as Jim could when he connected. He named the bat “Thunder” and whenever he stepped to the plate, he would announce that he and Thunder had arrived and that the rest of us on the field should begin to weep and pray for mercy, for our doom was surely upon us. When we weren’t playing ball, he kept Thunder wrapped in an old sheet and lying on a pillow in his room. There it rested sort of like King Arthur’s sword, only waiting to be summoned forth at the hour of need once more.

Like me, Jim loved to fish. Back then, most of our fishing was done with spinning outfits and lures for largemouth bass. We were lucky to have great bass fishing less than a five minutes walk from either of our doors. A low-gradient warm water creek, the outlet of the local glacial pothole lake, ran along the back edge of our neighborhood and from there snaked its way another four miles south through hickory bottoms, swales and impenetrable stands of cattails to its junction with French Creek. The creek was for the most part our private kingdom, perhaps because the clouds of mosquitoes down there were so thick the stream often looked as if it were wreathed in pale smoke. Not many other people could put up with them. That was OK with Jim and I because we knew that mosquitoes weren’t the only thing the creek had in abundance. Its slow pools, weed beds and log jams were loaded with largemouth bass. It was worth a couple hundred mosquito bites to us to see one of the creek’s bass rush out from the shelter of a sunken log or patch of water lilies to stop our Flatfish or Rapala dead and then unzip the surface of the stream as it vaulted from the water in a head-shaking leap. At these magic moments, every mosquito within a mile could have been trying to hone in on our eardrums and we wouldn’t have known the difference. Neither of us ever got tired of seeing that first angry leap by the bass.

We plied the creek for it's bass, sometimes on our own and sometimes together. We would slog our way far downstream from our houses, just fishing and forgetting about time and the world. We’d compete. “I got three and lost two more”, I’d tell him in as I waved my arm in front of my face like a windshield wiper run amok to keep the insects momentarily at bay. “So what?", he’d fire back. “All yours were dinks. I got a 15 incher..” And so it would go. We were kids and we had a wonderland virtually right at our doorstep. We escaped to it every chance we could.

Jim was a somber boy, not given to a lot of exclamation or expression. Things that would cause me to bust out laughing until my sides hurt would often only bring the ghost of a smile to his face. In retrospect, I tend to think that things at home for him were often not all that good. Family problems, perhaps. So, there was a stoicism and even a bit of a sadness about him. But there was one set of circumstances that never failed to delight him and get him laughing so hard, he had to sit down to catch his breath. All it took was for me to fall on my can in the creek or slip and take a dunking or virtually just about anything that caused me pain, discomfort or distress. Truth be told, I faked falls and various personal mishaps a number of times just to get him to laugh. I’d pretend to trip over a log and go flat on my face and make an “ummmph” noise like it had knocked the wind out of me. He’d roar and laugh so hard his eyes would tear up.

From time to time, Jim would take a more active part in engineering minor disasters for me to experience and him to enjoy. He’d walk in front of me as we hiked our way through the woods along the creek and he’d hang on to the tree branches he was walking through, letting them go just in time for them to thwack me in the ear or throat. I didn’t like it, but I occasionally pulled the same stuff on him now and then. And, as I mentioned, these little episodes seemed to be one of the few things that made him laugh or seem happy. I never got hurt, so I didn’t really mind. And besides, we were young boys. It was uncool to whine or carry on, well, like a girl.

We used to take my Dad’s aluminum cartopper boat and row up the creek a half mile, almost to the lake and then drift and fish our way back down. Jim would always row; he insisted on it. And with good reason. I was small framed and while my legs were pretty powerful from all the wading I did through the muck and swamps along the creek, I didn’t have anywhere near the strength in my arms Jim did. He was skinny, but his arms were sinewy and powerful and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. He could cover the half mile in less than 20 minutes.

About half way up the stretch of creek towards the lake, there was a downed tree that fell across the full width of the stream. Eventually, somebody would come along in a boat with a chain saw and take it out. But until then, you had to duck low in the boat and grab the trunk of the tree to push the boat underneath and through to the other side. We didn’t mind doing this. The way we figured, like the clouds of mosquitoes, downed logs across the creek were another form of protection of our kingdom from discovery and exploration by outsiders. One thing would lead to another and eventually, they’d start catching our bass. Our paradise would be exposed and violated. We certainly didn’t want that.

One day, Jim rowed us up to the highway bridge that spanned the creek just downstream from the lake. This was our traditional starting place for these float fishing excursions. It was Jim’s turn to sit in the bow and get first crack at all the new water as we drifted along. I took the middle seat, using the oars to keep the nose of the boat pointed forward between casts. We drifted our way downstream, picking up a few bass here and there until we reached the downed log. Jim ducked and he and the bow passed under. I set my rod down and hunkered low in the boat in preparation of doing likewise. In the meantime, Jim made a cast over to the far bank. Just as I was about to pass through beneath the log, Jim yelled out; “Hey! I’m snagged over there. Grab the log and hold us steady so I can get my lure back, willya?” Make perfect sense to me. Bass lures cost around $1.50 each back then and I made about $6.00 a week on my paper route and most of that money went right in the bank to help pay for college someday. It was serious business when you were in jeopardy of losing a lure. So, I grabbed the log and hung on so Jim could free his snagged plug. But I no sooner grabbed the log than Jim lunged ahead, grabbed the oars and rowed the boat right out from under me. There I hung over the creek with both arms wrapped around the log and my good sneakers completely soaked. Jim held the boat in place for about 30 seconds, roaring in delight while I writhed and screamed at him to bring it back. The water beneath me was only about 30 inches deep and I was in no danger of drowning, but it was the principle of the thing. Finally, he took a couple pulls on the oars and put the boat back underneath me so I could let go of the tree trunk. I resolved right then and there that were would be no more faked pratfalls for his benefit, not if he was going to pull that kind of stuff on me. Additionally, I started making fun of his ears more than I had been lately. But I had to be careful not to take it too far. He was a lot bigger and stronger than I was. But I got him back, even if it was on the installment plan.

As I sit here now thinking and writing about these things that happened 40 or more years ago, it isn’t the tricks that Jim pulled on me that come to mind first. Oh, I remember each and every one, believe me. But what I remember most is Jim’s lean frame silhouetted against the backdrop of the hemlocks that anchored the mud banks of our creek. He’d be bringing his rod ahead in an overhead casting motion, trying to put his Rapala just a couple inches closer to the edge of the bassy-looking weed bed 50 feet down the near bank from where he stood. The lure would land right where he was aiming it (for once..) and he’d turn the handle once to flip the bail over. The Rapala would twitch in the water and a silver green bullet would engulf it. The bass would make one hard run and then try to kiss the sky, his head shaking and gills flaring. “Got him!”, Jim would exclaim. He would fight the bass as its runs and lunges slowly became weaker until it finally allowed itself to be landed. Jim would reach down and grab the bass by the head and hoist it from the water for me to see. “This one’s gotta go at least 16 inches”, he’d crow. Usually, he was about 3 inches long in his estimates, but that’s OK. I did the same thing when I caught one. It was all part of being a boy, blessed as we were with this wonderland and angling classroom all but at our doorstep. That’s what I remember, the wonder and magic of the thing. Our creek, our bass, our kingdom.

The years went by. We graduated from high school together. We drifted apart. I paid for the first semester of college with my paper route money and was off on my academic adventure. Jim went to work in a factory and soon after, his greetings from Uncle Sam arrived and he was drafted. It was early in the first term of the Nixon administration and the war in Vietnam, while slowly winding down, was still hot. Jim was lucky, he managed to stay stateside and spent a good deal of his Army hitch exploring the excellent bass fishing opportunities around Fort Hood in Texas.

Years later, when we were both well into our 30’s, one evening when I had just arrived home from work, the phone in my apartment rang. I picked it up and there was Jim. He told me he had heard of a secluded steamer pond along the rail line that ran between our boyhood hometown and Cambridge Springs, a town about 10 miles down the line. These ponds were fairly common when I was a boy. They were leftover remnants of the days when the trains would stop and fill up their boilers with water to run the steam-powered engines. He said he heard the pond was full of big bass that hardly anybody ever bothered fishing for. Did I want to go with him and check it out?

That decision took all of two seconds for me to make. Tell me about an under fished, new place to explore and I lose all ability to make rational choices. All I want to do is go there right now. I told him I’d meet him at his place in the morning. He said great, we’ll park by the big trestle pool on French Creek and carry his canoe down the tracks to the pond, which couldn’t be more than a half mile from where we parked. Piece of cake..

Well, it was more like a mile and a half on one of the hottest days of the summer. With my hands occupied carrying my end of the canoe, I was at the mercy of the mosquitoes and they were drilling me pretty much everywhere there was exposed flesh. So, I was snorting, swearing, waving my free arm and was generally miserable. Which Jim seemed to enjoy. At least that hadn’t changed.

Finally, we arrived. It was indeed a nice looking pond. Deep with downed timber on one end and a nice weed bed on the, opposite, more shallow end. Lots of good looking bass cover. I was pretty whipped from the long carry. I set the canoe down and stepped onto the big white gravel bed that is a ubiquitous feature of just about every rail line. I took one more step and the gravel went out from under me and I went bouncing 25 feet down the steep grade on my butt all the way to the edge of the pond where I came to rest with my nose in the mud and my feet flapping in the air. Back up on top with the canoe, Jim was howling with glee and holding his sides. Same old Jim… We launched the canoe, caught a few small bass and decided it was a dud. Sometimes, that’s the way it goes. But like every time I go fishing, it was magic. It always is.

I hope Jim’s doing well..

If I Could Only Carry A Dozen Fly Patterns

Well, I suppose it is time to produce a “If I Could Only Carry One Dozen Fly Patterns For Trout, What would They Be?” list. To be truthful, just the thought of being limited to a dozen fly patterns gives me the willies and makes me feel under gunned. I seldom carry less than three dozen of any given pattern that I have confidence in and I have confidence in several hundred patterns. Which is why if you see me on the stream in my vest, you would assume I was on my way upstream to a picnic for 20 people and carrying all the food and beverages for the event. The small chest packs that are the current rage among fly anglers are not for me. They don’t hold enough flies. I had one once that was of a size that I figured was a good compromise between my need to carry all my flies and the practical upside of not having to lug all that excess weight around. It was big. When I was wearing it, I looked like Myron Floren with his accordion strapped on. And I had it so crammed with fly boxes that I was forced to sit down on the stream bank and really yank on the zippers to get any of the compartments open. So, other than for vacations where I would be doing a limited amount of fishing, I have set the pack aside and returned to wearing my vest which has more pockets than the average Super 8 motel has rooms. My shoulders sag, but at least I don’t feel naked and unprepared.

But now its time to get over it. After all, what is fear of the unknown but something to be squarely confronted and overcome? That’s not a rhetorical question, by the way.. I really don’t know. If something really scares me, I tend to go fishing so I don’t have to think about it.

But I think I can do this, even without drinking or taking a tranquilizer. I know I can. All I have to do is see it as an exercise in “what if”. I mean, I’m never really going to be limited to only carrying a dozen fly patterns, right? Right? Don’t answer that if you’re not going to tell me what I want to hear. Anyway, let’s take a step out in faith and explore this really, really scary idea…

If I could only carry one dozen different fly patterns for trout anywhere at any time, here is what they would be (in no real order of preference or importance):

1) Hare’s Ear Parachute in sizes #12-#18 - This simple combination of the Adams hackle mix with a hare’s ear body and poly or calf tail post has become my most reliable searching dry fly when the fish are mostly attuned to various caddis and smaller mayflies in the brown to gray color range. I’m never with less than 100 or so of them in my boxes

2) Whitlock Fox Squirrel Nymph in sizes #8-#16 – The Whitlock nymph, with or without a bead (I like copper best) is perhaps the most versatile nymph of them all. In larger sizes, it can pass for a stonefly nymph and the smaller ones are a pretty good generic imitation of a caddis larvae or even, once the fly gets ragged enough, a pupa. Its amber abdomen shows up well in moderately off-color water, making it a fine high water fly.

3) #18 Blue Quill with a body of brownish/gray poly or fur - While not precisely imitating either, this fly is close enough to be effective when fishing hatches of the early Baetis or Blue Wing Olive mayflies as well as for what is perhaps the most under appreciated hatch on Eastern waters, the Blue Quill or Paraleptophlebia mayflies of April and early May. There are better individual imitations of both insects, but remember I’m only allowed to carry a dozen patterns in total. This one does a good job of bridging the gap between these two very important hatches.

4) Pheasant Tail Nymph in sizes #12-#22 - My pheasant tail has the traditional abdomen of ringneck tail fibers ribbed with copper wire, but has a thorax of medium hare’s ear fur rather than the peacock herl called for in the original pattern. I tie these in a variety of ways. Some with beads (again, mostly copper), some with Krystal Flash wingcases and some (especially the smaller ones) on curved scud hooks like the Tiemco 2487. Like the Whitlock nymph above, the pheasant tail is a generic, buggy looking fly that is vary reliable for prospecting any piece of water that looks like a good place to try a nymph.

5) Grizzly Wulff in sizes #10-#18 - This yellow-bodied, high-riding dry fly with the upright deer hair wing and the brown/grizzly hackle combination has been a very effective fly for me both on small freestones back home in Pennsylvania and on the Driftless spring creeks of Wisconsin and Iowa. In a pinch, it can serve as a reasonably good sulfur imitation in size #16. And there is something about the yellow body that seems to pull trout to it that might let another fly float on by. But there’s a catch… I don’t think you can use just any yellow for the body, especially not that bright school bus yellow that is so ubiquitous in so many dubbing assortments. You want a yellow that looks a little beat up and dull and is one door down towards tan from bright yellow. The right stuff isn’t always easy to find. I’m lucky to have a several lifetime supply that I obtained when I bought a package of poorly dyed yellow zonker strips. Will I send you some? Maybe.. I might be willing to swap some of it for a new rod or an all expenses paid trip to one of the destinations on my Bucket List.

6) Copper John Nymph With Dark Green Wire Body on 1XL hooks in sizes #14-#18 - Not olive or chartreuse, dark green. No fancy epoxy wingcase either. Just pearl Krystal Flash gooped into place with a drop of acrylic nail polish. And no, I don’t know why it works so well. If I did, I’d be a trout and I just don’t think its worth that happening to me just to find out..

7) OK. You knew it was coming… All Black Wooly Bugger in sizes #6-#12 (3XL hook). While a lot of the old sayings used to convey fly fishing wisdom are just so much nonsense; in this case, the old saw that “there is no wrong way to fish a wooly bugger” is right on the money. Strip retrieve it, dead drift it, walk it past cover on a tight line while holding the rod tip high, swing it through the pocket water and let it rise as the line tightens. They all work reliably and catch fish. The combination of black saddle hackle and pulsing black marabou tail makes the Bugger look truly alive and irresistible to trout.

8) Deer Hair Delta Caddis in sizes #14-#18 – This fly is a hybrid of the simple downwing deerhair caddis and the hackle tip-winged Delta Wing Caddis that first became popular when it appeared in Eric Leiser and Larry Solomon’s groundbreaking 1970’s book, “The Caddis And The Angler”. My Delta Wing Caddis is simply a deerhair caddis with the wing material split into two equal portions and then anchored at a 45 degree angle on either side of the shank with figure 8 wraps. I then tie in a hackle feather just ahead of the base of the wings and proceed to dub the body the rest of the way to the eye. Then I wrap the hackle forward, tie it off, and finish the head and then clip the hackle flush on the bottom so the fly floats low in the water. This is an extremely versatile and effective fly that floats like a cork in broken water, but lays flat and flush on the slower moving surface of the pools. The best colors are a hare’s ear body with brown or cree hackle and a tan body with a dark ginger hackle. A very dark brown to almost black bodied version with a dark dun hackle is also good, especially during the annual Grannom hatches. I’m never without at least 100 of these either…

9) Generic Glop Of Fur Muskrat Nymph in sizes #10-#20 - This fly is exactly what it sounds like, simply a bunch of muskrat fur with the guard hairs left intact dubbed onto a standard length, 1XL or scud hook and sort of tapered from front to rear. Within reason, the sloppier the tie, the better the results. This is one of those flies that becomes more effective as it descends into ratty lookingness (a new word I just invented) from use. Weight them or not. Add a head of black fur or a collar of grizzly hen hackle. Or not.. Doesn’t matter. This is one of the most effective and consistent nymphs around.

10) Lead Wing Coachman Wet Fly in sizes #10-#18 - This is another of the generic fishy-looking flies that tend to make up the majority of what is in my fly boxes. In the larger sizes, this fly is an excellent attractor pattern just about anywhere and in the smaller sizes (#14 and below), it is as good a caddis pupa imitation as any fly specifically designed for that purpose. Deadly in #14-#16 when fished with a swing and lift during the Grannom hatch, but worth trying any time.

11) Partridge and Orange Soft Hackle in sizes #12-#18 – Tied with a thin body of orange thread or floss and a sparse collar of brown partridge on a standard wet fly hook, this is another fly that looks like both nothing and everything a fish might see in the water and be compelled to take. Maybe it imitates a drowned crane fly or maybe a caddis pupa or even a sunken mayfly dun or emerger. Or maybe the fish think it’s a Partridge and Orange Soft Hackle. That could be too.. I don’t know. I do know that it works. Like the Wooly Bugger, there really is no wrong way to fish this fly. Cast it up in the heads of the pools and let it drift back just under the surface and watch for the boil of the fish. Do a swing and lift drift through the places in the pool where the water finally begins to slow down. Or feed it in under a brush pile or along a grass hummock-lined bank and then bring it back with short twists of the wrist. It’s equally deadly whichever method you choose.

12) You thought I forgot, didn’t you…:) Big, Ugly, Deerhair Ant in Size #10 or at smallest, #12. This is the nuclear bomb of dry flies for trout from about mid-May until first autumn frost, and sometimes beyond in both chronological directions. So simple of a fly to tie that even a ten-thumbed tier like me can churn out 15 or 20 an hour, the two big humps of deerhair separated by a slim waist with a few hairs pulled off to each side to represent the legs has probably accounted for more nice wild trout for me than any other three flies combined. They don’t last long, maybe seven or eight fish before they are so ripped up they look like a tiny black pincushion. But until their compressed bulk fails to the point that they start casting like a maple spinner, they’ll still catch lots of fish. And it is so easy to make bunches more. Additionally, this is an extremely enjoyable and exciting fly to fish. It’s like throwing a bass bug. You watch it splat down and see the V-wake of the trout hurrying to intercept and engulf it. I never get tired of fishing the big ant. And so far, the fish don’t seem to have become tired of eating them. I’m never without at least 200 of these.

So, there you have it. My “Can’t Do Without Dozen”. That wasn’t nearly as hard on me emotionally as I feared it might be. I’ll close though by letting you in on a little secret. I originally intended to make this a 10 fly list, but I just couldn’t do it. Oh well, its progress, not perfection…:)

Dark Waters

I like researching and then fishing new wild trout streams. I enjoy the novelty of fishing a place for the first time with all the possibilities that come with the experience. I love to work my way up the stream’s course and see each new pool or trouty-looking stretch of holding water as it comes into view around the next bend. Usually, the first time I try someplace new, the experience is more consumptive than contemplative. More gulping than sipping and savoring. I work quickly, scurrying up the creek like I have an appointment in ten minutes at the next bridge and driven by a hunger to see and know what is coming next as I fish up through. I want to see it all or as much as I can in the time I have Next time I come, I will slow down and work the better water more thoroughly, slower and with more discipline. But this first time is for finding out everything I can and swallowing the place whole in one sitting. Its how I’ve always been and I don’t see it changing much if at all. I’m almost 60 and when I fish a place for the first time, I still move through it as if I were 30.

But there is one kind of stream that is an exception to my usual frenetic approach. I call these places “dark waters”. Virtually every trout region where I have hung my fishing hat for any length of time has these sorts of streams, from the North Carolina Blue Ridge to my native Pennsylvania to my adopted current home waters in Wisconsin and Iowa. Some areas have more of them and some have fewer, but there are a scattering of them almost everywhere you find wild trout.

When you pull up to the bridge at a dark water stream and see it for the first time, you whistle to yourself and murmur “oh, my my…”. Because you know that dark water means (or can mean) big fish. And the possibility of big fish is enough to slow down even a scampering stream rabbit like me. You can just tell by the look of the water. Even in normal flows that have not been tinted by recent rains, there is a cloaking murk to the water and more often than not, when you are knee deep in a dark water stream, you can’t see the laces of your wading shoes. (Well, unless you have red laces on your wading shoes, but that’s another essay.) The pools in dark water streams are slow, deep and often criss-crossed by sunken logs. Their bottoms are places of mystery and you just know that they hold trout as long as your arm. Or at the least, since you cannot see the bottom, you can convince yourself that it is so. That’s almost as good. So, I take my time on dark water streams. They hold too many mysteries and surrender too few clues for me to not take my time.

Dark water streams do not flow so much as they glide and slink along past the high clay banks and submerged root balls of fallen trees that frame the deep pools. There is no glitter of sunlight off the dancing water in the chutes and riffles. The sun neither penetrates nor reveals the mystery of dark water. Dark water streams are often brooding and sullen and I sometimes feel as if the stream itself does not want me around. On occasion, they can even seem downright unfriendly. If they are big enough, I may be unsure as to whether I can cross them, even in the places where it seems safe. I may find firm footing on rocks or gravel all the way across or I may sink to my waist in silt and sand. When I am on dark water, there is a feeling that I may meet up with something that is more than I can handle. That in the next pool upstream, my nymph will be stopped in mid-drift by a fish that will wreck my tackle and leave me sitting on the bank weak-kneed and mumbling to myself. The potential of what may lie beneath dark water waiting produces a strange but highly addictive mix of anticipation and apprehension in me.

Dark water is made for the nymph angler. Sure, from time to time, there will be enough insects flitting along the clearer edges of the flow to produce some surface feeding, but the real show is down there in the heart of the mystery on the bottoms of the deep, opaque pools and runs, in the places we cannot see. You throw your nymph out into the current tongue at the head of the pool and it is swept down into the depths. Then, suddenly it stops dead and so does your heart. You bring the rod tip up to set the hook. Sometimes you find yourself fast to a chunk of sodden hardwood or debris. Scratch one nymph.. But other times, the line will begin to move and through the murky flow, you’ll see the amber flash of a good brown. The rod will begin to buck in your hand and line will zip off the reel with the first run of the fish. You’re on your own now. You’ve violated the mystery and it is not pleased with you. Your fish may wrap you around a log and break off and be gone. Or you may luck out and eventually land him. If you do, there is a good chance that he will be one of the best fish of your season. That’s the reward that’s always out there on the edge of the possible for the angler with the courage and willingness to challenge dark water.

In my fly fishing travels, I’ve been fortunate to always have a good variety of wild trout streams to choose from when it comes time to load up the wagon and have at them. I love them all, but there is a special place in my angling pantheon for my dark water favorites. The Willow, Billings and Knapp Creeks in southwest Wisconsin and the lower Mecan in Wisconsin’s Central Sands Region. The Oswayo, Allegheny Portage and Pine (Warren) Creeks back home in Pennsylvania. The Middle Branch of the Escanaba and the Carp River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Iowa’s Bloody Run and French Creek. These are just a few of many. For fish numbers, sparkling water dancing over beds of multi colored gravel, carefree dry fly fishing with a searching pattern and a chance to work on my tan or take in the first warm afternoon of the new Spring, give me any of the hundreds of my regular favorite clear water creeks. But for a chance at big fish, an opportunity to solve the mystery and just a bit of a feeling of living dangerously, give me dark water every time.

The Mud Hook

“Stick out your mud hook!”. This was my Dad’s standard invitation to shake hands. It was just one of the hundreds of unique and colorful sayings I heard him use time and again. He had a way of speaking that was both humorous and disarming, a style that spoke equally of his easy way with people and the keen wit and intelligence that lay behind his hazel eyes.

People who spend much time with me soon learn how deeply my own personality, style, values and sense of humor were shaped by this gentle and steadfast man who overcame a childhood filled with deprivation and heartbreak to live a life where he brought humor and a soft, warm light to virtually every place he went and everyone he met. I’ve never met anyone quite like him. I don’t think I ever will. His model and example has been the sustaining gift that has seen me through the roughest patches of my own life. I idolized him and know in the same way that I know that the sky is above me and ground below, that he was best Father a guy could ever have. He is never far from my mind and I talk about him a lot. The hilarious stories he told. The simple, durable truths he taught me about decency, kindness and honesty.

So, when my fishing buddy Dan and I lit out a couple of weeks back for our annual seven day blitz of the spring creeks of Southwest Wisconsin, as we traveled from stream to stream, I was, as usual, talking about my Dad. Retelling his stories from the factory job he spent his life at and all the colorful characters he met there and the things they would say. Stories of boyhood times with his own volatile and unpredictable Dad spent chasing coon hounds barking tree along the high blue banks of Erie County’s Elk Creek. About “sticking out your mud hook” to shake hands. And on and on. My Dad had a thousand stories and several hundred sayings. Dan has excellent taste and discernment in humor. This means he enjoys the stories. Which is good, because for a lot of them, I’m pretty sure I’m on the fourth or fifth repetition with him.

Dan is an innovative and gifted fly tier. He may modestly demur when you tell him so, but it’s true nonetheless. Like my Dad, he has a level and balanced view of his personal talents and gifts that makes them all the more impressive to see in action. This too is good. I’d have a hard time fishing all week with a horn blowing rooster with an ego the size of Spain. That isn’t me and it certainly isn’t Dan.

Dan designed a new fly and brought a few with him for the trip. Part dragonfly nymph, part Girdle Bug, part whimsy and part bedrock-solid empirical observation of what appeals to a trout. With his new fly, he proceeded to hammer the wild browns virtually one after the other on several of the streams we fished. This piqued my curiosity and after Dan had made a few design and color changes in the new fly, he tied a few by the light of our motel room lamp and dropped them into my hand to try. So it was that I too began to hammer the Wisconsin wild browns on his new creation. We fished it every way we could think of. We cast it to risers, crawled it along the rocky edges of the deep slow pools and spot fished it in the fast water in the heads of the runs. It worked everywhere.
Boom! Boom! Boom! We had a real winner on our hands.

But the fly needed a name. I mean, some flies don’t really deserve to have a name, but they do anyway. Take the Montreal wet fly or Muddler Minnow for example. They’re both fundamentally useless flies (I understand there may be some dissension regarding the Muddler, but surely we can agree on the worthlessness of the Montreal), but somebody took the time to give them a name. Surely a fly of the amazing fish catching potency of Dan’s new creation deserved a name of its own. And so he gave it a name. He called it the Mud Hook after my Dad’s handshake saying. I was delighted. My Dad was not a fly fisher with all the Holy Writ and ostentation that tends to surround the sport. He was a regular old crappie-jigging, bucket-filling, fillet-‘em-and-put-them-in-Ziplocs kind of guy. Even so, now we can add “Linguistic Inspiration of the Deadly, Trout-Magnet Mud Hook” to his list of titles. I think it would have tickled him to learn that an item from a sport that he never took part in is named after one of his witticisms. And I'll wager that right now that he is smiling as he drops yet another crappie into the bucket.

Stick out your mud hook Dad. I miss you..

About Bucket Lists

A while back, I was talking with some angling friends about places we’d like to visit and fish before the day came when failing eyesight, frozen joints, gum disease and the general decrepitude of getting old overtook us and closed the window of angling opportunity forever. Our own personal fishing bucket lists, so to speak.

Over the course of all the fantasizing, the names of a lot of places ended up on the table of the discussion. The pile was high enough to be worth at least $100,000 in air fares or a similar amount in gasoline, tires, coffee and Visine in the event the place in question was reachable by automobile. Most of the destinations were famous, exotic and far away. The trout rivers of the west slope of the Andes in Argentina and Chile. Pitching 12 inch streamers to monster brackish-water Northerns in the estuaries along the coast of Norway. Enveloped in clouds of black flies while swimming big deerhair mice over seven pound wild brook trout on the Little Minipi or Big Rivers in the wilds of Labrador. Flying into Great Bear Lake right at ice out for a shallow water fly fishing shot at lake trout old enough to have been born during the 2nd term of the Reagan administration. And so forth and so on. Lifelong dreams deferred by the realities of our lives, budgetary constraints and our responsibilities at home. Brought momentarily to life and piled on the table of wishes before us.

While I contributed a few of my own dreams of exotic or far away angling destinations to the pile, I’d be less then fully truthful if I didn’t admit that my real angling “bucket list” is a lot more modest than the general run of what was on the table. I’m not sure why this is the case, but it is. It may be that the more I think about these once-in-a-lifetime trips, the more anxious I become about the way the years are rushing by, while at the same time knowing I’ll never get to most of the places I want to go, let alone all of them. That’s possible. I’ve had a lifelong habit of avoiding anxiety when I could find a way to do so.

But I also think that a part of the reason that my bucket list is fairly modest is that destinations have never been what fishing was about for me. I can have a near out of body experience in angling ecstasy simply by figuring out which submerged brush pile in the 70 acre glacial pothole lake I grew up on in northwest Pennsylvania holds the biggest or most crappie. Or by arriving in the aftermath of a brief, hard shower on a Pennsylvania trout stream I’ve fished 500 times and finding that the rain has the fish up, moving and feeding aggressively. I’ve probably caught most of them at least once over the previous 499 trips, but it is all new and exciting to me anyway. I get short of breath. My pupils dilate. My knees quiver. I’m here at a magic time and the fact that I know the stream so well that I can count virtually every rock in it in my sleep doesn’t detract from the experience at all. I’m flying way too high on the heady brew of anticipation and discovery, that is, if anything, amplified by the fact that I already “know” this water. Well guess what.. I didn’t know everything. There is always more. This is fishing to me. The learning of the water and the solution of the riddle of the fish. The magic times when everything is right that more than make up for the hundreds of times I have stood in the same spot when virtually nothing was right and I had to work hard for every fish. The times when old friends (I consider all my streams to be my friends) briefly show me new faces, extending the definition of the possible and as a result, heightens the magic.

Maybe I’m just easily amused or I choose not to dare to dream dreams that I know will never come true. Or maybe my inherent frugality causes me to limit the scope of my dreams as a matter of practicality. I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. We all have our reasons why we see fishing as we do and we all differ in how much various things about the sport matter to us.

So, I’m a cheap date, I guess. I can be just as happy and feel just as fulfilled by a week of bouncing around on my favorite Wisconsin Spring Creeks as I would probably be by spending a week on the Bighorn or Deschutes. Does this mean I would turn down an opportunity for a week of fishing Chile or Kamchatka? Well, you could ask me to go and I’d think about it. I’m also flexible and firmly believe that philosophies are meant to be discarded when they no longer make sense…:)

In any event, I do have an angling “bucket list”. It just isn’t a very big, ambitious or fancy bucket. More two gallon molded plastic than five gallon triple galvanized steel.

Here it is:

Before I abandon this mortal coil, I’d like to:

1) Do some trout fishing in Southeast Minnesota. It is the third area (along with southwest Wisconsin and northeast Iowa) that combine to comprise the trout-rich Driftless Region and the only one I have not fished.

2) Spend a week (or a month) canoe camping and fishing for smallmouth bass in Whiteshell Provincial Park in southern Manitoba.

3) Fish the small streams of New Hampshire’s White Mountains for three species of wild trout.

4) Spend a week exploring Idaho’s Lochsa River for wild cutthroats.

5) Fish the trout streams of the Black Hills in South Dakota.

6) Fly fish the shallows of Lake Champlain for post-spawn Northern Pike.

7) Return to the fish over the small wild rainbows in the rushing streams of the Pisgah National Forest in Western North Carolina. This is where I first experienced southern Appalachian trout fishing and one of the first places I courted my wife. It holds a lot of memories and magic for me.

8) Float the New River in Virginia and West Virginia for smallmouth on the fly.

9) Go over to Lake LeBoeuf with my brother. We’d launch his little boat and fill a bucket with crappie while we talk about music, rabbit dogs and the greatest man either of us has ever known, our Dad. There are better crappie lakes with bigger fish, I’m sure. But none of them are home. Being on Lake LeBoeuf is like going back to the very roots of why I fish and a tip of the hat to the man who gave me my first fishing rod and with it, the lifelong gift of my love for the water and the fish.

There… That’s not so unreasonable, is it? Let’s leave it this way: If the timing for our trip to Kamchatka conflicts with my schedule to achieve any of the items on my bucket list, I’d probably be willing to re-schedule…

Because I'm Me And You're Not

Here are a few thoughts on fishing as socialization, the “best” pace for covering a given stretch of water and why, if you’re fishing with me, you need to be at the pick-up point at the mutually agreed time.

First of all, I think everybody fishes in the way that suits them best. There is a social as well as a practical component to the reasoning involved. We’re all different in the things about fishing that make the experience most valuable or satisfying to us as individuals. Generally, when I and a partner or fishing buddy fish the same section of a small to medium size stream together at the same time, trading off pools or runs, it is because of one of four reasons: 1) I'm "hosting" them on a fishery that I know and they do not. 2) They're "hosting" me for the same reason. 3) It's my brother or one of a very small number of close or long time fishing friends and the family connection or duration and quality of the friendship shifts my priority for the outing from exploring water and catching fish to socialization. 4) I'm working with a newcomer to the sport.

Otherwise, I get all the socialization I need in the car between destinations or going to or from the stream.

This doesn't mean I don't like to fish with other folks. I do. It simply means that with the above exceptions, I fish alone while spending the day fishing with you. You fish from bridge A to bridge B and I fish from bridge B to Bridge C, and I'll meet you back at the car parked at bridge B in two, three or four hours (whatever). And you're not allowed to be late (give or take 10 minutes), because we're due at the next creek and the day is only so long. I suppose this rigidity could be annoying to some people, but trust me, it’s better than messing up my schedule if I have other places I’m burning to get to. I’ll “accidentally” leave your cold drink outside the cooler if you start messing with my schedule.

I'm a friendly guy, but I fish frenetically and have a pretty powerful need to see what's around the next bend, a place I've never been before, or not lately anyway. If I'm waiting on somebody who is fadiddling along, I'm in danger of spontaneously combusting. I'm like a dog straining at the terminus of a chain.

There are no value judgments here or any suggestions of a superior or inferior way of doing something. I'm simply explaining who "I" am. And you're you. And so long as you're back at the car when you're supposed to be, it works out fine.

Despite my idiosyncrasies, I like to think I'm a pretty good fishing buddy. I've fished with quite a few good friends and so far as I know, my fishing MO hasn't annoyed any of them to the point they never want to fish with me again.

In regards to the pace at which we fish small streams, there are so many variables that it is impossible to stipulate a pace and declare it to be "the" correct one. To give an example in two similarly-sized streams in very disparate locations, it would make sense to me to cover long sections of the lower half of South Kinzua Creek in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest where it is broad, shallow and lacks good holding lies at a pretty rapid pace. But if I were on the Tremont Branch of the Little River in Great Smoky Mountain National Park with its endless maze of nice pockets between the boulders, I'm going to take a lot longer to cover the same linear amount of stream.

So, there's that..

There is also the matter of the trout population's hierarchy within a stream that is directly related to how "good" or "strong" the fishery is. When you have a limited amount of time to fish, not every trout in the stream is worth the time it takes to try to catch them. Depending on the stream, the long sections of so-called "infertile" water between sections of quality habitat may have no fish or they may be full of 5" fish or they may have a surprising number of 10-12" inch fish. The first time you fish a place, you can (usually) find these things out, so that the next time you're there, you can optimize your time. In one of his excellent guides to trout fishing, Tom Rosenbauer of the Orvis Company recommends that anglers “skip” obviously infertile water and move on to the next pool. But when he speaks of skipping "infertile" water, an angler of Rosenbauer's experience and obvious thoughtful approach almost certainly isn't saying to only fish the big, slow pools or other obvious locations with a high likelihood of holding fish and skip the rest. The nature and location of "infertile" water, while sometimes obvious, more often than not has to be learned, stream to stream. I think Rosenbauer assumes we will take the time to learn it on the particular stream or stream type we are on rather than take what he has written as a one size fits all axiom.

I once heard a pretty experienced small stream angler say that he tends to cover 66’ feet (why 66’ and not 65’ or 67’”, I don’t know) of stream per minute. On a lot of the smaller streams I frequent, I think this is a very reasonable pace that allows us to cover the maximum distance of a given stream while not skipping any of the better water. Back before the years began to cause some slippage in my higher gears, a one mile/hour pace on small water was pretty close to my usual MO. I've slowed down a bit, but not that much. Chances are pretty good I'll still be at the car tapping my foot when you finally make it to Bridge B

But the general and overarching point is that it really is a matter of preference more than it is fishing efficiency, in my view at least. There are streams where it pays to go fast and others where it pays to go slow. What pays even more is learning to identify one from the other.

See you back at the car. Please be on time..

Snakes

Virtually every experienced Pennsylvania small stream trout angler you talk with has a rattlesnake story or two. Some say they’ve almost stepped on one a number of different times. Others report seeing a rattler lying out in the warm May sun on a logging road or a streamside boulder as they were hiking or fishing along. A few even claim to have been struck in the boot leg by a Pennsylvania rattler.

Almost everybody has a rattlesnake story. Except me. I cannot honestly say I’ve ever seen one while fishing in Pennsylvania. And that strikes me as a little strange because over the years, I’ve probably spent as much time fishing small streams in Pennsylvania rattlesnake country as anyone.

I’m not sure whether to feel left out or lucky. When the talk turns to rattlers, the best I can do is to offer that I “may” have seen the southern end of a northbound rattler disappearing into the high grass once on Young Woman’s Creek and maybe another time on the West Branch of Hick’s Run. And possibly one other time on Lost Creek in Juniata County. I can’t say for sure, the snake was gone so quickly. But maybe..

In the meantime, guys have told me that that they often find pairs of them hanging off the porch rails of their camp on Cross Fork. Or they saw three rattlers walking the first mile of the trail into Fish Dam Run. They were four, five or six feet long with bodies as thick as the business end of a softball bat and huge triangular heads with darting forked tongues and evil, red-slitted eyes. Or they were fumbling their way along over the bowling ball-sized rocks along the banks of the Loyalsock and looked up just in time to see a rattlesnake, coiled and menacing, just a couple more steps ahead.

Other guys see them everywhere, even in places where I’m pretty sure there haven’t been any for over 50 years. But not me. I see an occasional water snake, quite a few muskrats, thousands of herons, a bear now and then and once, an otter. No rattlesnakes though.

That’s OK. Beyond the obvious benefit of having so far avoided the trauma of seeing a rattler up close, this rattlesnake encounter immunity I evidently have also allows me to not pay any attention to other anglers who tell me that while such and such a creek is loaded with trout, I’d have to be nuts to go there and try to fish it. Its just lousy with rattlesnakes, you know. Doesn’t mean a thing to me. Even if the placed is paved with vipers, I know I’m not going to see them. I never do. So, I can relax, forget about the snakes and concentrate on fishing. So, fair warning.. Don’t try your “beware the snakes” voodoo on me to try and keep me off your creek. I’m immune.

Or maybe I’m only immune to seeing Pennsylvania rattlesnakes because I actually have seen a rattler once in my life. It was about five years ago on a lonesome blacktop 20 miles from the nearest gas station, way back in the dairy country of southwest Wisconsin while driving from stream to stream. As I understand it, rattlesnakes are far less abundant in Wisconsin than they are in Pennsylvania. So seeing one there was sort of like the equivalent of seeing a Yeti or a highway maintenance crew where everybody was working at the same time in Pennsylvania. Pretty rare. Anyway, I came bouncing around the corner in my Focus wagon and there it was, bigger than life, stretched out in the middle of the road soaking up the heat. I steered around the snake and stopped beside it and watched as it slowly slithered its way off the road and into the weedy ditch. It was a rattlesnake, alright. Body as big around as the business end of a softball bat and a huge triangular head with a darting tongue and evil red-slitted eyes. Unmistakable. I can’t wait to get back to Pennsylvania to tell the guys..

Cheating At Math

For better or worse, I’ve inherited from my Mother a tendency to try to control, assess and regulate a lot of the decisions and choices I make through the use of lists and mathematical analysis. My Mom used to keep a running list of the school clothes my three siblings and I wore each day along with the current number of days we had worn each item since it was new. On the list would be entries like: “blue button down shirt - 27 ½” (I must have been sick a half day somewhere along the line) or “tan skirt 19”.

I never paid much attention to what happened when a certain article of clothing exceeded a certain point in the number of days it had been worn. Maybe a buzzer went off and it suddenly went up in a puff of smoke or maybe it became a gun cleaning rag for my Dad. Like I say, I don’t know. I was too busy peddling newspapers around the neighborhood so I could take off and go fishing down the creek to pay much attention. It was just a way that my Mom kept track of things in her world. Maybe a little obsessive/compulsive, but no big deal.

After I left college and went my own way in the world, I found that I too felt a compulsion to make lists, assign mathematical values to various things on the lists and then do computations to help me decide what to do about this or that decision I was facing. And for me, a lot of these decisions had to do with fishing. Because fishing was mostly what I did when I wasn’t eating, working or sleeping.

A goodly number of years ago, I worked as a scheduling supervisor in a manufacturing plant. It was boring work for the most part, but it paid OK and allowed me to buy toys so I could fish. As well as other non-fishing related items I had to grudgingly admit I needed; like toothpaste, bourbon, hearing aid batteries, Wendy-burgers, etc. When the Spring came and with it the opportunity to fish at least one full day almost every weekend, I would sneak off at lunchtime by myself and find a quiet corner and make my list to decide where I was going to go fishing. I would usually list nine or ten rating factors. Things like “proximity” (how far away was it?), “likely fishing pressure” (would there be anybody else there to puncture my sense of solitude?), “fish quantity” (were there a lot of fish there?), “fish quality” (were the fish mostly dinky or would I have an opportunity to get into some bigger ones?), and “novelty” (had I been there lately?). Then, I had a final category I called “general feeling” which represented how the notion of going to a specific stream or destination resonated with me if I were to interview myself and ask me what I thought.

I would list these factors across the top of a sheet of paper and then list the candidate streams down the side of the sheet. Then I would draw crooked lines between each to separate each category and stream from the others. Then I would follow the line for each stream and assign a point value from 1-100 for each factor. Then, at the end of the stream line, I would add up all the points for that choice and enter this number in the final column. Then, it was a simple process of observing which stream had the most points and deciding that was where. Except for when the answer I got wasn’t the one that I really wanted. That was the unmentioned elephant in the living room about the entire process. Usually, I pretty much knew where I wanted to go before I ever headed for the quiet corner. There was just something I enjoyed about the process of crunching the numbers and I wasn’t above cheating to make them come out the way I wanted. Usually, if I did not get the result I wanted, I simply adjusted the “general feeling” scores of a few of the streams to make it come out right. Then, I would look at my work and tell myself that I had made my decision based on sound, empirical, logical analysis and that the results were unimpeachably correct.

I suppose it’s a little odd, but on the other hand, I once knew a guy who always wore a small piece of yellow ribbon on the back of his vest and would not fish without it. He said it made all the difference in how many fish he caught. Clearly, he was disturbed and by comparison, I’m as normal as they come..

Anyway, the good news is that I stopped making these faux analytical lists about the time we pulled stakes and moved out to the Midwest from Pennsylvania. But not all the news is good. I found another mathematical game I could cheat at to take its place.

There are days on the water when, for whatever reason, be it a falling barometer or not having a good casting day (and make no mistake, fly anglers have good and bad casting days, just like the cagey southpaw baseball pitcher’s good curveball comes and goes), lack of a yellow ribbon or whatever, you’re not catching any fish. Although not blessed with a lot of patience, I do have some and I’ll soldier on for a while, even when I’m not doing any good. I’ll change flies, lighten up my tippet, hold my mouth half open or any of a dozen other tricks I’ve learned to increase my chances. But eventually, if my hook-up drought continues, there comes a point where the notion of being somewhere else begins to seduce me. No doubt the fish there are cooperating. At first I fight it, but eventually I give in. It is at this point that my patience flees and I begin the game.

I tell myself that I will only make 100 more casts and if I do not catch a fish, I will leave. And then I begin to cast and count. 14, 31, 64. Oops, there’s a fish. Six inches long. Well, OK. I revise the rules. I allow another 100 casts, but must catch either a minimum of three more six inch fish or any combination of fish whose total length exceeds 18 inches. OK. 21, 49, 92. Bang! 14 inch brown from the undercut along the left bank. I revise the rules again. I allow an additional 75 casts, but must catch 25total inches of trout during the 75 casts. OK. 11, 44, 57 casts. Big fish swirls fly, but does not take. I revise the rules again. 50 more casts in which I must catch 20 total inches of trout. Or I’ll leave. I mean it. OK. 16, 29, 33. Ouch. Left knee (smashed in a fall against a beer keg in college in 1971) gives out. I sag to the bank and sit with my left leg fully extended to dampen the pain. Well, I’ve been pretty patient and followed a methodical but sensible regimen in order to decide how long to stay and when it is time to give up and leave. Good for me. I exhibited admirable discipline. But clearly, it is now time to go. I grab a sturdy piece of driftwood to use for a crutch and head back to the car.

Why do I play these games with myself on the water and why have I always been playing them in one way or the other? I don’t know and I guess, I also don’t care. I enjoy it. And I’ll bet that over the years, I’ve saved at least ten bucks in yellow ribbon and safety pins.

Now, I have to go check the mailbox. If there are four pieces of new mail or less, I’ll sort them on the stairs just inside the door. But if there are more than four, I’ll take them in the office and sort them. Unless there are one or more magazines, in which case… Oh never mind.

In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean famously said: “I am haunted by waters”. Lucky him. He could have had it a lot worse and also been haunted by elastic mathematical reasoning and a bad knee.

The Big Black Ugly

Although I’ve been tying all my own flies for well over 40 years, I’m not a particularly good or precise flytier. Most of my flies are serviceable and will catch fish. None of them would ever win best of show in a tying contest. Even a tying contest between a bunch of guys with duct tape over one eye..

Which is why I like relatively simple fly designs or flies that actually become more effective if they look a little rough coming out of the vise. No loop-wing emergers for me. Or jointed body Hexagenia nymphs or knotted leg grasshopper patterns for that matter. While, with great effort, I’ve tied a few classic salmon fly brooch pins for my wife from time to time, my tying overall is far more utilitarian than artistic. I mostly tie to fish and seldom undertake a fly with more than four or five steps from bare hook to finished product or a fly that would take me more than about 10 minutes to tie. I have fish to catch; I can’t be sitting at the vise all day.

Happily, some of the simplest flies are also among the most versatile and effective. Clunky deer hair terrestrials and simple gob of muskrat or hare’s ear fur on a hook nymphs among many others, come to mind as examples of uncomplicated, easy-to-tie but very effective flies.

Another good example is my favorite fly for smallmouth bass, a simple black fur leech I call the Big Black Ugly. Dead drifted or actively worked in the flow, this is one of the deadliest bass flies I know of and I can tie a dozen of them in an hour, which makes me like it even more. And it is effective on virtually any fish that swims in fresh water and has been known to take a fly.

I’ve caught northerns up to five or six pounds out of Wisconsin’s Milwaukee River on the Big Black Ugly fished on a slow retrieve in the weedy backwaters off the main current flow. My best pike taken this way probably would have sheared me off and escaped had he not hooked himself dead center of the bony plate between his eyes. Somehow, this struck me as something I should not be surprised to see a pike do. They tend to be long on savagery and short on smarts, even by fish standards. In any event, hooked this way with the leader well away from that buzz saw of a mouth, I was able to land him.

When I travel home to Pennsylvania to visit my Mom and siblings, my brother-in-law often arranges for me to have access to a small farm pond owned by friends. I’ll escape up there for an hour or so when my schedule permits. I walk around the high banks of the pond throwing a brightly colored Clouser minnow out into the middle and stripping it back at a rapid rate. About every third cast or so, a small but chunky largemouth bass in the 10-12 inch range grabs the fly. It’s a lot of fun and allows me to get my fishing fix in while I’m supposed to be acting like a responsible adult and doing family stuff.

On one of these outings at the pond, after bringing about 20 of these pint-sized bass to hand, I sat down on the bank, clipped the Clouser from the leader and changed to a size #4 Big Black Ugly. I wanted to try crawling it across the bottom in hopes I might happen into a larger bass. I put a couple of split shot a few inches in front of the fly to help it get down and proceeded to fling it as far out into the center of the pond as I could cast. Kersploosh, went the fly and I waited for it to sink and then began to slowly bring it back towards me a couple inches at a time. Nothing, so I tried again and again and again. After about another half hour of this, I was ready to pack it in, but I figured I’d give it one more try. This time, instead of casting out into the middle of the pond, I threw the fly parallel to the shoreline about 10 feet off the bank. I let it sink and began my retrieve, not anticipating anything was going to change, but determined to give it this last try. I had moved the fly no more than a foot or so when it stopped dead. I lifted the rod tip. Hung up, I thought. That’s OK. I can tie a dozen of these things an hour. Then the snag began to move. For the next 10 minutes, I followed the fish around the boundary of the pond, gaining a little line here and then losing it again as the fish made a series of short but powerful runs. I figured I had the bass of a lifetime and was anxious to see him. But when he finally gave up the fight and rolled up to the surface, I saw this was no bass. Rather, it was a channel cat that (once landed and measured against my rod before being released) taped out at 26” or, I’d estimate, about seven pounds. What he was doing in that farm pond, I haven’t the slightest idea. Never mid that, though. Big Black Ugly comes through again.

I’ve also put Big Black Ugly to good use on the browns of the Spring Creeks of Southwest Wisconsin, where it has produced a number of fish in the 16-18” class when dead drifted in under an overhanging bank or man-made lunker structure. I’ve fished it off the edges of the weed beds in the lagoons of Presque Isle Bay and taken some nice largemouth up to three pounds or so. Largemouth seem to take it on the drop and before the retrieve even begins, much as they would a plastic worm. I even caught a couple of small muskies (around 22” or so) out of the inlet of Lake LeBoeuf on the Big Black Ugly.

Like I say, if it swims in fresh water and will take a fly, it’ll eat the Big Black Ugly.

It’s a simple fly to tie, even for a dexterity-challenged tier like me. Here’s the pattern.
Give it a try.

Hook: 3XL nymph/streamer hook in sizes #2-10. The best sizes for smallmouth are #4 and #6. I use #2’s and #4’s for Pike and #8’s and 10’s for trout.

Thread: black 6/0 or 3/0, depending upon fly size.

Body: Black chenille sized to match hook size. I put 10 or so wraps of .020 wire under the body on my bass Uglies and about that many wraps of .015 under the body of the smaller versions I use for trout.

Overbody/tail: Black dyed rabbit Zonker strip.

Mount the hook in the vise and wrap lead-free wire directly on shank. Then start thread at hook bend and wrap forward to point where body will end and then back to bend to anchor the wire in place. Cut a piece of black Zonker strip about 2 ½ times the length of the shank and tie this in just in front of the hook bend at the midpoint of the strip with half of the strip forming the tail and the other half ready to be tied down to form the overbody. Tie in chenille at hook bend and wrap it forward over the wire to a point about ¼ inch behind the eye. Make a few wraps to hold the chenille in place and add a drop of cement. Then pull the remaining strip over top of the body, making sure to center it on top of the chenille. Tie off and clip excess. At this point, you should have a little puff of rabbit fur sticking up in the air ahead of the body. You can get fancy and divide this with the thread to make a collar or gills along both sides of the fly. Or not. In any event, finish the head of the fly, cement and go fish.

The Big Black Ugly is my kind of fly. It’s a quick, easy tie and it catches fish regardless of how you work it; dead drift, slow retrieve with pauses or a rapid stripping retrieve.

I’m never without at least 50 of them in various sizes….

Wild Freestone Rainbows

I have a thing about small stream wild rainbow trout. I don’t know if it’s due to having spent most of my fishing time in places where they are scarce, as in my native Pennsylvania or whether it’s more about how beautiful the places are where I have been fortunate to fish over wild rainbows. Places like the high gradient streams of the Southern Appalachians or a select few of the freestone spring creeks of Central Wisconsin with their golden sand and gravel bottoms and glassy, unbroken flows.

Or maybe it is the fish themselves. Muscular and compact little trout with a slash of scarlet war paint down their flanks that grab my elk hair caddis from the surface and turn and vault from the water and clear a three foot wide mid-stream boulder with ease. I enjoy catching all three species of wild trout that I have access to that doesn’t involve buying an air ticket, but I like the little bows best of all. They seem somehow, well, wilder to me

On the western edge of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest along US Route 62 south of Irvine but north of Tidioute, a number of short, very small streams fall off the steep mountainside, cross the highway and join the broad Allegheny River. While I’m not sure they are there any more (they may have been driven out by increasing stream acidity and competition from brook trout), at one time several of these dinky rills held reproducing populations of rainbow trout. I used to plan an entire day’s fishing around these little creeks with their equally little fish. They seldom exceeded seven or eight inches and most were closer to five or six, but there was just something about catching these miniature, red-slashed rockets out of the steep plunge pools of the tiny flows. I couldn’t get enough of it and would often stay on these streams to the exclusion of waters where there were more or bigger wild browns or brook trout.

In the mid-80’s, the company I was working for sent me down to their satellite plant in Charlotte to train the folks there in how to use the new-fangled (at the time) computerized manufacturing control system that was being put in place company-wide. If I wasn’t already hooked on the little rainbows, being proximate to the tumbling streams of the North Carolina Blue Ridge where as a rule, wild rainbows dominate the fisheries, cinched the deal. I soon found that from Charlotte, I was only a three to four hour drive from some of the best of these waters. Streams with wonderful, enchanting names like the South Toe River, Lost Cove Creek, Sassafras Creek and many others. I was over there every free weekend, gladly getting up at 4:00AM so I could make the drive and hike in the requisite mile or so on the well maintained trail system of the Pisgah National Forest.

Once I was on the water, I went nuts. It was wild rainbow heaven. I’d hike in and fish two and sometimes three streams a day, covering a couple miles of each (I was younger then, but then again, so were you..) and flinging elk hair caddis, the old cork McMurray ants or a simple Humpy into every likely pocket and run. I would lose track of time and wait too long to hike back out and often barely make it back to the car before dark. I scaled cliffs; I fell off of one and broke a finger. I got lost more than once. And I caught hundreds of the little bows. I even got a handful that made it past the 10 inch mark on the tape. I had a ball. Every time I went back home to Pennsylvania, I told my bosses that while it was going fairly well at the plant, it was obvious that I would need to go back for several extended visits. Extended as in months and months and months. The folks at the Charlotte facility were eager to learn, but it was going to take a while. And it did. It took an additional 15-20 new streams, several hundred dollars worth of gasoline, two new fly lines, a hundred or so lost flies and two new pairs of hip boots before I was confident they had learned the new system well enough to go it alone. Then I came home. I told the guys at work that it was a hardship to be away from home for so long, but that my Dad had always told me that any job worth doing is worth doing well. The bruises on my backside from falling off slippery mid-stream boulders and the ache in my thighs from climbing near vertical trails coming off the creek told me I had done a good job..

The years flew by. I stayed in Pennsylvania and fished mostly for wild browns and brookies. I hadn’t forgotten the little wild rainbows, but the available fishing for them around home was deteriorating and where it was still pretty good, there were a lot of other guys on the creek. So, I contented myself with what was around, which wasn’t bad. Pennsylvania had and still has some of the best small stream fishing in the East for wild browns and brookies. A few more years went by and the next thing I knew, I was getting married and moving out to the Midwest. Whoa, let me slow up a second here. It wasn’t instantaneous and one day I was fishing out of Charlotte and the next, I was married and living out in the flat lands. There was a lot of stuff that happened in between, but very little of it had to do with wild rainbow trout.

So here we are in our new home within a three hour or so drive of some of Wisconsin’s better freestone spring creek trout fisheries. I started to research and explore a bit and found, to my delight, the wild rainbows and I were about to meet again. It was time for more bruises and maybe, if I tried hard enough, another broken finger. And little silvery, finned rockets with a red slash down their flanks.

The West Branch of the White River clips briskly over a bed of glowing tan sand and multi-hued fine gravel as it travels in its corridor of birch, pine and high grass bog on the western edge of Wautoma, Wisconsin. I don’t think I’ve seen a more beautiful trout stream. In fact, I know I haven’t. All through the five mile length of the stream, wild browns and a scattering of brook trout hold under the grass hummocks and fallen logs that anchor the stream bank. But the dominant fish of the West Branch is the wild rainbow trout, an anomaly of sorts in this region of brook and brown trout waters. Hurray! I was back in business. The first decent April day of our first year in the Midwest, I made a beeline for the West Branch.

In coloration and shape and certainly in the berserk way they fight, the wild bows of the White River system are fairly close cousins to their Blue Ridge and Pennsylvania counterparts. But they on average run just a little bit larger, perhaps due to the fertile nature of the stream. Fish of eight to nine inches are pretty common and there are enough fish up to 12 and occasionally 13 inches to keep the anticipation level high.

When I arrived for the first time at the West Branch, I stood on the bridge and just looked at the stream for what must have been close to five minutes. That isn’t like me, not at all. But it really is that beautiful and, well, fishy looking.

Soon enough, I snapped out of it and started to work my way upstream with a Parachute Adams. Within the first dozen or so casts, seven or eight young of the year rainbows, two or three inches long blew the fly out of the water like a kernel of popcorn exploding.
I didn’t mind. This is a sign of a healthy wild trout population.

Up around the second bend from the bridge, a log about the diameter of a telephone pole had fallen in the stream. Over time, the water flowing by and under this obstacle had dug a pocket about 18 inches deep in the gravel. Good place for a bigger fish. I flipped the Adams upstream and let it drift along the edge of the log. It went bobbing along, its little white calf tail post nodding in the flow. Then it disappeared in a swirl and I set the hook. Nine inches of feisty and angry rainbow trout vaulted from the water and landed clear up against the far bank of the stream, a leap of what had to be six or seven feet as the crow, umm, trout flies. Then, he zipped back across and tried to get back under the log. I raised the rod tip and slowly guided him to hand, and turned the fly from his jaw and sent him on his way.

I broke out in a big grin. I was back with my favorite small stream wild trout. I really love the little bows..

Around The Island

In the dead center of the southern Erie County glacial pothole called Lake LeBoeuf just a half mile from my boyhood home, there is an island of sorts. It's sparse crown of willows and dying snags are often inundated to ankle level by the freshets from LeBoeuf's three strong inlets, and dry ground is a sparse commodity there in any season. Still, we called it "the island".

Off the edges of the island were the places that held the fish.. A major sand bar extended off the island's west side, and it hosted a weed bed rich in minnows and other aquatic life. From the southern most point of the island, a single finger of a weed line extended out to touch and intertwine with a like protrusion extending from the lake’s southwest shore line. The dense weeds drew the minnows which drew the panfish which drew the bass and muskies. The chain of life.

It was here, in these places around the island, that we most often saw him. He was a fixture on the little lake. Well past retirement age, a solitary figure in a weathered cap and light windbreaker. Two rods extended from the rear of the boat, taut strands of monofilament line running from the rod tips to the water’s surface and the outboard coughed the staccato rhythm of trolling speed. Round and round the weed beds and the island he would go; winding through the channels of open water, searching for big fish.

Every once in a while, he would pause in his travels and stop and talk for a moment. We would show him the good stringer of crappies the morning had brought, and he would smile and nod. But the crappies weren't his thing. When asked how he was doing, as often as not he would shrug and say that he had "something" on at first light this morning. It had seized his Creek Chub lure or oversized Rapala, been there for a second, and then was gone. Big fish. Likely a muskie. That was what brought him out on the lake every day just as the new light was beginning to touch the water, and what made him troll the endless loops around the island and along the adjoining shoreline.


More often than not though, he would just wave as he passed. A single hand flashing in greeting while the other grasped the handle of the outboard to steer the boat along the weed line. And then he would be gone.

His name was Fred Koehler and we thought of him as the wisest of the wise in the ways of Lake LeBoeuf. He had retired, and moved from Pittsburgh up to our home town of Waterford to be with the lake always. We venerated him, and always watched for him when we were anchored off the island filling the bucket with crappies. We wanted to know what he knew. Because we knew he knew it all.

One bright Saturday morning in June, Fred paused from his trolling to talk for a moment. I was maybe twelve or thirteen years old at the time. With the brashness of youth, I spoke right up and asked him about the best way to catch the walleyes that lived in the little lake. He smiled and explained a technique involving a big bobber with a five or six inch chub hooked lightly through the lips suspended below. He told us where to fish it. Just off the island on the south side along the edge of the weeds. He told us this was where the walleyes were early in the morning, but not to be surprised if we came up with a big bass or even a muskie in the bargain. They were there at that time too. We nodded and thanked him. He moved on.

I spent most of the next week peddling papers, chasing lawn mowers and yanking weeds out of the garden, all the while thinking about big bobbers, first light and the weed bed.

Saturday morning finally arrived, and while there was a growing glow around the tree tops to the east, it was still dark when we approached the weed bed. The chubs had been collected the evening before. I clipped the big bobber to the line just about at the depth that Fred had suggested. Then I reached into the bucket and grabbed one of the wriggling chubs and baited up. In the half-light, I cast the whole thing as close to the edge of the weeds as I could, just as Fred had said to do. My Dad and brother followed suit. The daylight grew stronger. The morning mist rode low on the water. We sat back and waited.

I had the only take of the morning. The bobber jiggled, and then darted to and fro frantically. Then it began to move, cutting an inexorable "V" across the flat surface of the lake. "Let him run with it, then set the hook", my Dad said. I did the best I could. I was only twelve, after all.

Just as I thought I was going to pop from anticipation, my Dad said: "Hit him". I hauled back on the rod with both hands and dug my feet into the bottom of the boat. The rod arced, and the line began to melt from my reel. The bobber disappeared. We couldn't see it, but we could see the mighty wake it was leaving as it was towed towards the weeds by whatever was on the other end.

In a few seconds, it was over. The line went limp, and the bobber popped through the surface and just sat there. Gone... We spent the rest of the morning filling the bucket with crappies.

Later, we saw Fred. But he didn't stop. Just a wave and the passing rumble of the motor. I wish he would have hauled up and talked just for a moment. I would have liked to have had the chance to thank him for the advice and tell him that crappies were OK, but that I was after big fish now. Just like him.

(This essay originally appeared in modified form in Pennsylvania Angler And Boater Magazine)

My One Rod

I own a lot of fly rods. Certainly not as many as a lot of fellows, but a lot. I have eight fly rods that are specifically for trout fishing, or trout-sized fish like bluegill and other panfish. I have four other rods that are for larger fish like bass and pike and steelhead and that would be suitable for light salt water duty as well, I suppose, if I ever get motivated, organized and close enough to the ocean to use them in that way. And like a lot of guys, I have a few more rods with broken tips that I never bothered to have repaired. One of these now has a four foot length of 1X tippet knotted to the highest remaining eyelet of the broken tip section. I tied a piece of red Christmas ribbon to the terminal end of the 1X and made a cat toy. Our cats love it.

I have rods made of fiberglass, the industry standard up until the advent of graphite in the 1970’s. And I have rods made of several different generations of graphite, from the earlier, slower rods to the stiffer, higher modulus “faster” rods that became popular in the early 90’s. I even at one time, had a boron rod, when they were supposed to be the next big thing. I fished it a few times. It had all the flex of a reinforced steel bar. It was an altogether ugly and unwieldy piece of equipment that always seemed to glare at me from its place in the rod rack over in the corner of the basement because it knew that when I came to pick a rod to go fishing, it wasn’t going to be the one. I finally got tired of all the glaring and donated it to a TU raffle. Maybe whoever has it now is happy with it or maybe they glued a red reflecting disk to the end of it and stuck it in the ground to mark the edge of their driveway. I think, all things considered, it was a better functional fit for that purpose than it ever was for fishing.

So, I have had a lot of rods over the years.

But I only have one favorite rod. One rod that has been with me almost from the beginning of my fly fishing life and has traveled with me from the tumbling mountain freestones of Pennsylvania to the stair-step gradient streams of the North Carolina Blue Ridge to the headwaters of Oregon’s Deschutes to the whispering Spring Creeks of the Driftless Region of Southwest Wisconsin and Northeast Iowa. Only one rod that, of all of them, brings a smile to my face each and every time I unscrew the top from its aluminum case and take it out to fish.

My one rod is a 1978 or 1979 vintage Orvis Far & Fine graphite, a 7’ 9” rod for a five weight line. Its like a feather in my hand, weighing 2 1/8 oz with its simple down locking reel seat that secures the flanges of the reel against the cork and without the superfluous rosewood insert that made later models of the Far & Fine a half ounce heavier and (in my opinion) more clunky. The action is the old style full flex of first generation graphite. On a long cast, you can feel the rod loading all the way down into the butt section. I like that. It makes me feel like part of the cast, like I’m sailing out over the water right along with the fly. I like that too.

The original case for my Far & Fine has an ugly V-shaped dent in it from being accidentally closed in the rear hatch of one of the Subaru wagons I’ve owned over the years. I’m lucky that a dent to the case is all the damage I did. When I first arrive at the stream, I’m usually out of control with anticipation and in a mind-blanking hurry to get on the water. I’m lucky I haven’t slammed my hand in there instead.

My Far & Fine is on its fourth tip. Twice I whacked it against the under sides of bridges setting the hook on a five or six inch trout. I have a violent hook set, especially when it has been a while since I’ve had a take. Another time, the tip section simply splintered when I was shaking the rod to try and dislodge a stuck fly on a small tree branch. The vigor of my shaking to free a loose fly is second only to the violence of my hook set. So, the rod makes regular trips back to the Orvis rod repair shop in Manchester, Vermont and since its date of manufacture preceded the institution of Orvis’ 25-year guarantee on rod breakage for any reason, I pay through the, umm, zinger for each new tip.

Every couple of years, I get conscientious and scrub the cork grip of my Far & Fine with an old toothbrush and a baking soda/water paste. Clean it up. Peel away the years of grime and darkening from the hundreds of thousands of casts I’ve made over the life of the rod. And every time I do this, I look at the product of my work and decide I won’t do it any more. It makes the rod seem a bit like a stranger to me for some reason. Too clean and too new looking. I like it better when its dirty and wearing all the battle scars of the time on the water. And besides, I don’t think it casts as well with a clean grip…

I don’t know how many trout I’ve caught on my Far & Fine. 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 or more perhaps. I just don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. There have been a lot of days on tough water when all the rod did all day was dislocate air as it moved back and forth in the casting stroke. No fish, or very few anyway. And there have been a lot of days where was a fish willing to take virtually everywhere I put the fly and my palms looked like prunes from releasing trout. Every day on the water is the same in a way before the first cast is made. Anything is possible, the best day ever or one of the worst. This is one of my favorite things about fishing, the limitless nature of the possible at the beginning. We don’t know until the day is done and we look back on it. And in that sense, every day is different.
Only one thing is constant. Me and my One Rod, battle tested and scarred, but always eager for the case to be opened, the cloth sack removed, the reel mounted and the next round to begin. We’re the oldest and best of friends.