Troutnut.com User Stimmy (Larry Medina)

Larry Medina

SF Bay Area

I've been fly fishing and fly tying since I was 9 years old... my Dad was a big influence in my entry into the sport of fly fishing. He had started me on fishing at the age of 3, mostly bait dunking for trout and catfish and also trolling flies in an "arm powered" boat around a small lake in the Sierra Nevadas every spring and fall.

My habit was fed by the world famous Herter's and Netcraft Catalogs, along with a small store in Downtown Oakland, CA where I grew up owned by a wonderful man named Paul McClintic.... a little hole in the wall up a long, narrow flight of stairs that smelled strongly of moth balls and rod finishing varnish, as Paul was a cane rod builder also... something that didn't mean much to me until after he passed away. A few years later, I got to know a fella named Andy Puyans who ran a shop in Walnut Creek and under his direction, learned a thing or two about tying that changed the way I felt about it for the rest of my life.

While my Dad was my favorite fishing partner, my finest hour was the summer when I was 12 and we took a 7 week trip to Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. I was waist deep in the Firehole River trying to get out enough line to reach the rising cutthroats and browns but meeting with limited success, when I heard the older fella sitting on the bank chuckling at me while smoking a pipe and he asked "Would you like to learn how to handle that thing?" Well, an hour or so later, I was able to get the line out to where I wanted it... and land some pretty hefty fish too! I thanked the man who simply walked away and waved... the following day, while in a store in Jackson Hole, I saw a magazine on the shelf and said to my Dad "Hey- that's the guy that showed me how to cast yesterday!"... some feller named Joe Brooks.

Stimmy
...no wisecracks, It's a FLY!
Tying since the Thompson A and Champion Silk thread