What exactly does one really need, equipment-wise, to fly fish?
Will we really be more successful with a $500 Tibor reel or a $600 Orvis rod?
We've been stunned by the dumb ray of consumerism.
If we spent more time on the river and less window shopping, we'd not only catch more fish, but we could sock that money away toward a charter out to an Alaskan fishing camp or at least a new tie rod for the F-150.
When I think of the legends of fly fishing in the golden age of bamboo Grangers and bullet-proof Hardys, I can't help imagine what they'd say about us dandies with our featherlite waders, titanium gadget yokes and $200 eco-friendly nets.
A man needs but a decent rod and reel and a willingness to listen to the river.
It's no wonder people scoff at fly fishermen as if we were golfers sporting plaid knickers. What's next, fish finders?
Monday, August 23, 2010
Completing the circle
Like the realization of following a sticky compass toward an errant direction, I changed my plans from planning an early-autumn fishing trip to the Catskills to head up to the Adirondacks to fish the Au Sable River with my buddy, Jerry.
It's been years since I've fished either branch. And since moving back to the Northeast from South Carolina two years ago, I figured why not take the opportunity to get back to the waters in which I had learned to fly fish more than 20 years ago?
Then it hit me: It will have been a year, nearly to the day, since legendary fly tier and fisherman Fran Betters passed.
And when Jerry and I slip quietly into the river amid the pall of toolie fog and scent of fresh balsam and stream-wet rocks, I will fasten the same Au Sable Wulff that Fran tied for me not quite two months before his death.
It's amazing to me all the people I've told this story to, about how Fran tied some of his famous Wulffs for me more than 20 years ago and pointed me in the right direction. You can read that story at http://tippetandleader.blogspot.com/2009/07/for-better-or-for-worse.html, along with some other thoughts.
It's also amazing to me that what I have along with a handful of Wulffs, a hand that still remembers Fran's gentle handshake, and the joy that my oldest boy, Kostyn, got to meet the legend, that this story will nearly complete its full circle in a couple of weeks.
Like the gentle ripple from softly cast fly, so is Fran's legacy.
It's been years since I've fished either branch. And since moving back to the Northeast from South Carolina two years ago, I figured why not take the opportunity to get back to the waters in which I had learned to fly fish more than 20 years ago?
Then it hit me: It will have been a year, nearly to the day, since legendary fly tier and fisherman Fran Betters passed.
And when Jerry and I slip quietly into the river amid the pall of toolie fog and scent of fresh balsam and stream-wet rocks, I will fasten the same Au Sable Wulff that Fran tied for me not quite two months before his death.
It's amazing to me all the people I've told this story to, about how Fran tied some of his famous Wulffs for me more than 20 years ago and pointed me in the right direction. You can read that story at http://tippetandleader.blogspot.com/2009/07/for-better-or-for-worse.html, along with some other thoughts.
It's also amazing to me that what I have along with a handful of Wulffs, a hand that still remembers Fran's gentle handshake, and the joy that my oldest boy, Kostyn, got to meet the legend, that this story will nearly complete its full circle in a couple of weeks.
Like the gentle ripple from softly cast fly, so is Fran's legacy.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Ghosts of anglers past
Many men have trodden upon these creekside paths long before I. They've kicked the very same sand on the beaches I've surf-cast from. They've waded the very same waters, ate from the same blackberry bushes and looked up over the very same mountains to see where the wet balsam-soaked breeze was coming from.
Did they use a blue winged olive or a was it the light Cahill? Did they cast right off that eddy, or did they let their line float gently through it? I wonder if they sat on this bank, watching the beauty and grace of a 12-inch brown between the flecks of light shining through breeze-blown maple leaves.
Sometimes I'm there with them. They are casting perfectly above me, and I'm OK with that. The water doesn't move around them. They are unnoticed by everyone. Sometimes it's an old man with a split-cane rod propped upon a rock. Or a young boy with a creel full of rainbows for his mama to make for supper. Sometimes it's my father, who's looking deep into the riffle to see what's stone and what's flesh, and who's face he sees in the reflection.
I talk with them, I do. I write notes to them with my cast. "It's amazing, isn't it?" They never answer, but they smile back, proud like the father of a boy who's learned and is carrying on tradition, if not his legacy.
Did they use a blue winged olive or a was it the light Cahill? Did they cast right off that eddy, or did they let their line float gently through it? I wonder if they sat on this bank, watching the beauty and grace of a 12-inch brown between the flecks of light shining through breeze-blown maple leaves.
Sometimes I'm there with them. They are casting perfectly above me, and I'm OK with that. The water doesn't move around them. They are unnoticed by everyone. Sometimes it's an old man with a split-cane rod propped upon a rock. Or a young boy with a creel full of rainbows for his mama to make for supper. Sometimes it's my father, who's looking deep into the riffle to see what's stone and what's flesh, and who's face he sees in the reflection.
I talk with them, I do. I write notes to them with my cast. "It's amazing, isn't it?" They never answer, but they smile back, proud like the father of a boy who's learned and is carrying on tradition, if not his legacy.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
A shout out to a new friend with a lot in common
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Passing down gifts from one father to another
Note: This blog was published Sun, Jun 15, 2008, in The Beaufort (S.C.) Gazette
I don't know how old I was or whether I opened a suspiciously long package tied up in gift wrap one Saturday morning. I don't know if the rod and reel inside that wrap was new or used, if it was old and had been polished by my dad or whether he bought it one night while he moonlighted selling lawnmowers at the Montgomery Ward just up the road from our house.
I don't remember the first time I cast it or the last time. I wish I knew where it was today.
But I do know the reel was a Johnson Skipper 125 with closed bail and the little thumb trigger on it, and it was green and sort of an off-white with a white handle.
The rod it was attached to might have been 3 or 4 feet. It was a two-piece, though; I remember this because Dad had shown me how to rub the tip of the ferrule behind my ear to get it good and greasy so that it would slide into the female end. It, too, was sort of an off-white with a tint of green to it, like an Easter egg that was taken from the green food-coloring dye way too early. It had red threaded wraps around the shiny steel guides.
As I sit in my office writing this, I can occasionally glance at an old photograph of that rod and reel in the small and clumsy hands of maybe a 5- or 6-year old boy. But the rod is holding steady because my father's right hand is gently guiding it as we fish off a small bridge over the Erie Canal near a place called Poverty Flats in central New York State.
Although I can remember my first open bale reel — a brand called Match, which my dad must have thought was "Mitchell" when we bought it from an old fly-tier who worked out of his garage a mile or so from our house. It was green, just like a Mitchell, and the style of lettering was very similar. Of course the price was far cheaper, and Dad thought we got a great deal on it.
I couldn't tell you how happy I was to have a better reel than the Montgomery Ward Speed-King my dad used. He often reminded me.
It's been years since I had replaced the Mitchell — or Match — but I never noticed that it wasn't the real deal until a year or so ago when I pulled it from an old fishing box that my dad gave me and looked at the label. I was half expecting to find a vintage Mitchell from 1972 or so. I found a Match.
I never bothered to search for the brand on the Internet; 35 years later, it hardly matters. I still have that reel, and it means the world to me, even though it doesn't work anymore.
The box in which it sits is of old wood, a bit bigger than a shoe box, with a picture of a tall ship shellacked onto it. Inside are several old reels; Shakespeares, Speed-Kings, Pfluegers and the old Match. Each reel has a story, and none ever worked for me except the Match, which, of course, no longer works, either.
The Shakespeare is the one my dad used for years and years as we plunked from stream to river to pond to lake all over the wilderness of my childhood. The Speed-Kings are baitcasters, and I never recall my dad fishing with those. They make great paperweights, though. The Pflueger "was retired," my dad used to say. It was a present from his bride. That one's very special to me.
The one reel that's not in the box, however, is the Johnson. Why did I memorize that model? Why can I close my eyes and feel it in my hand? Why do I feel very close to my dad when I think about it? He's been gone from this good earth for more than a decade, and I hadn't fished with it since I maybe I was 6 or 7.
I do remember the day that picture was taken, although, for the life of me, I can't remember who took the picture. Girls weren't allowed, so it wasn't one of my four sisters and definitely not my mom. It could have been my Uncle Fritz. Or it could have been my dad's best friend, Lenny.
Man, that photo — my dad's grin is ear to ear. It's the way I most remember him: A smile as though it started somewhere far down deep in his soul, gained steam in his heart, and, like a full-body exhale of pride and satisfaction, lit up his face. Even the bushy 1970s mustache couldn't hide it.
The love for the outdoors and fishing had been instilled in me one Saturday morning at a time. And even walking into the garage to look at my fishing tackle hanging from the wall on any given day sparks feelings of pride — a strong connection to my father.
A social psychologist may link it to the ritual of hunting and gathering, a skill and art passed down from father to son, instilled young as we watch and learn to survive. Maybe that's bunk. Maybe it's just the enormous and swollen pride that my father felt as we hopped in the car on a Saturday morning to adventure off to uncharted territory, free to eat cheeseburgers at greasy diners, listen to the radio loud and bang on the dashboard, trespass on property and fish in rivers that only the Mohawk Indians every fished in, so he'd tell me as he kicked the shale underfoot to uncover a genuine Mohawk arrowhead, as if on cue.
I can honestly say that I couldn't have written this memoir a year ago. While the reel has been on my mind since the day it was presented to me, I didn't know the feeling of pride that it was packaged with — that is until I had a boy of my own one year ago.
Kostyn Orrie shares the middle name of my dad's first name by no mistake. I have plans for us. And they involve retelling the tales my own father told me when I was just a boy. They involve us ramrodding the unpaved roads of this world until they end at a trout stream or a bass hole where we will fish, eat wild berries and catch fish.
So one day recently, out of these fond memories and the promises of days fishing together, I searched and searched and found what I was looking for.
A Johnson Skipper 125.
There it was, sitting behind the glass of an Internet shopping store. It was listed under the vintage items, and I would have paid $300 for it in a second.
It was, however, not quite 5 bucks. The postage was another $4. Funny thing is that it was only barely used, still with the box. And it's the same exact model that I had back in 1970.
Despite that my son is too young to use the reel — and even when he is old enough, he might not understand the significance of an old green reel when all his friends have bright gold Penns — my heart will glow.
He may not cry when it breaks, and someday he'll probably forget he even held it in his hands.
But maybe he will remember.
Either way, I'll make it a point to keep it running, just like my dad did, and when he retires it, I'll put it in that old box, and maybe someday he'll pick it up, spin it in his hands a few times and smile.
As I celebrate my second Father's Day, it's impossible not to tie the intangible gifts that were handed down, those that stay within us, and those that we pass down to the next generation.
I don't know how old I was or whether I opened a suspiciously long package tied up in gift wrap one Saturday morning. I don't know if the rod and reel inside that wrap was new or used, if it was old and had been polished by my dad or whether he bought it one night while he moonlighted selling lawnmowers at the Montgomery Ward just up the road from our house.
I don't remember the first time I cast it or the last time. I wish I knew where it was today.
But I do know the reel was a Johnson Skipper 125 with closed bail and the little thumb trigger on it, and it was green and sort of an off-white with a white handle.
The rod it was attached to might have been 3 or 4 feet. It was a two-piece, though; I remember this because Dad had shown me how to rub the tip of the ferrule behind my ear to get it good and greasy so that it would slide into the female end. It, too, was sort of an off-white with a tint of green to it, like an Easter egg that was taken from the green food-coloring dye way too early. It had red threaded wraps around the shiny steel guides.
As I sit in my office writing this, I can occasionally glance at an old photograph of that rod and reel in the small and clumsy hands of maybe a 5- or 6-year old boy. But the rod is holding steady because my father's right hand is gently guiding it as we fish off a small bridge over the Erie Canal near a place called Poverty Flats in central New York State.
Although I can remember my first open bale reel — a brand called Match, which my dad must have thought was "Mitchell" when we bought it from an old fly-tier who worked out of his garage a mile or so from our house. It was green, just like a Mitchell, and the style of lettering was very similar. Of course the price was far cheaper, and Dad thought we got a great deal on it.
I couldn't tell you how happy I was to have a better reel than the Montgomery Ward Speed-King my dad used. He often reminded me.
It's been years since I had replaced the Mitchell — or Match — but I never noticed that it wasn't the real deal until a year or so ago when I pulled it from an old fishing box that my dad gave me and looked at the label. I was half expecting to find a vintage Mitchell from 1972 or so. I found a Match.
I never bothered to search for the brand on the Internet; 35 years later, it hardly matters. I still have that reel, and it means the world to me, even though it doesn't work anymore.
The box in which it sits is of old wood, a bit bigger than a shoe box, with a picture of a tall ship shellacked onto it. Inside are several old reels; Shakespeares, Speed-Kings, Pfluegers and the old Match. Each reel has a story, and none ever worked for me except the Match, which, of course, no longer works, either.
The Shakespeare is the one my dad used for years and years as we plunked from stream to river to pond to lake all over the wilderness of my childhood. The Speed-Kings are baitcasters, and I never recall my dad fishing with those. They make great paperweights, though. The Pflueger "was retired," my dad used to say. It was a present from his bride. That one's very special to me.
The one reel that's not in the box, however, is the Johnson. Why did I memorize that model? Why can I close my eyes and feel it in my hand? Why do I feel very close to my dad when I think about it? He's been gone from this good earth for more than a decade, and I hadn't fished with it since I maybe I was 6 or 7.
I do remember the day that picture was taken, although, for the life of me, I can't remember who took the picture. Girls weren't allowed, so it wasn't one of my four sisters and definitely not my mom. It could have been my Uncle Fritz. Or it could have been my dad's best friend, Lenny.
Man, that photo — my dad's grin is ear to ear. It's the way I most remember him: A smile as though it started somewhere far down deep in his soul, gained steam in his heart, and, like a full-body exhale of pride and satisfaction, lit up his face. Even the bushy 1970s mustache couldn't hide it.
The love for the outdoors and fishing had been instilled in me one Saturday morning at a time. And even walking into the garage to look at my fishing tackle hanging from the wall on any given day sparks feelings of pride — a strong connection to my father.
A social psychologist may link it to the ritual of hunting and gathering, a skill and art passed down from father to son, instilled young as we watch and learn to survive. Maybe that's bunk. Maybe it's just the enormous and swollen pride that my father felt as we hopped in the car on a Saturday morning to adventure off to uncharted territory, free to eat cheeseburgers at greasy diners, listen to the radio loud and bang on the dashboard, trespass on property and fish in rivers that only the Mohawk Indians every fished in, so he'd tell me as he kicked the shale underfoot to uncover a genuine Mohawk arrowhead, as if on cue.
I can honestly say that I couldn't have written this memoir a year ago. While the reel has been on my mind since the day it was presented to me, I didn't know the feeling of pride that it was packaged with — that is until I had a boy of my own one year ago.
Kostyn Orrie shares the middle name of my dad's first name by no mistake. I have plans for us. And they involve retelling the tales my own father told me when I was just a boy. They involve us ramrodding the unpaved roads of this world until they end at a trout stream or a bass hole where we will fish, eat wild berries and catch fish.
So one day recently, out of these fond memories and the promises of days fishing together, I searched and searched and found what I was looking for.
A Johnson Skipper 125.
There it was, sitting behind the glass of an Internet shopping store. It was listed under the vintage items, and I would have paid $300 for it in a second.
It was, however, not quite 5 bucks. The postage was another $4. Funny thing is that it was only barely used, still with the box. And it's the same exact model that I had back in 1970.
Despite that my son is too young to use the reel — and even when he is old enough, he might not understand the significance of an old green reel when all his friends have bright gold Penns — my heart will glow.
He may not cry when it breaks, and someday he'll probably forget he even held it in his hands.
But maybe he will remember.
Either way, I'll make it a point to keep it running, just like my dad did, and when he retires it, I'll put it in that old box, and maybe someday he'll pick it up, spin it in his hands a few times and smile.
As I celebrate my second Father's Day, it's impossible not to tie the intangible gifts that were handed down, those that stay within us, and those that we pass down to the next generation.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Saturday stream
Tomorrow is Saturday, and I’m planning on waking before dawn, schlepping on the rain gear and heading out to the stream just across from my house. The fish here are spooky. In fact, their spookiness is legendary. The Letort Spring Run is a limestone spring-fed creek with all sorts of natives and stockies that tend to hug the underbrush of the banks and flat-out refuse to take a fly if you, your reflection or your shadow are anywhere in sight.
A buddy of mine who’s fished this stream all his life tells me that while he’ll show up in his hip waders, he doesn’t usually enter the water at all. He fishes from the bank. He’d know. Like I said, all his life, and judging from the looks of him, I’d say that’s probably around 30 years. He actually gave me three spots on the creek that he’s had some degree of success on. One right near his grandparents’ farm, one down the road from a supermarket, and the last, near and adult video store.
I’ve not been on Letort. See, I just moved to this town from about 20 miles up the road, and there was plenty of good fishing in that neck of the woods. But who can pass up a renown stream such as this, often called “the birthplace of American flyfishing?” Not me. Five-hundred yards away, the stream runs from my front door, right near an abandoned railbed, so public access shouldn’t be a problem.
It’s one of the three places Mark told me about; but I could wade up stream to the one near the grocery store.
I’ll let you know how I do, but I’m not expecting much.
Hoping, sure, but not expecting.
A buddy of mine who’s fished this stream all his life tells me that while he’ll show up in his hip waders, he doesn’t usually enter the water at all. He fishes from the bank. He’d know. Like I said, all his life, and judging from the looks of him, I’d say that’s probably around 30 years. He actually gave me three spots on the creek that he’s had some degree of success on. One right near his grandparents’ farm, one down the road from a supermarket, and the last, near and adult video store.
I’ve not been on Letort. See, I just moved to this town from about 20 miles up the road, and there was plenty of good fishing in that neck of the woods. But who can pass up a renown stream such as this, often called “the birthplace of American flyfishing?” Not me. Five-hundred yards away, the stream runs from my front door, right near an abandoned railbed, so public access shouldn’t be a problem.
It’s one of the three places Mark told me about; but I could wade up stream to the one near the grocery store.
I’ll let you know how I do, but I’m not expecting much.
Hoping, sure, but not expecting.
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