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3. Moving to Oregon, Page 2

I'm sorry to hear The Crip passed away! He was one of the first people I made friends with in the online fly fishing world, and we chatted quite a bit back before I even started Troutnut.com. I never got to meet him in person, and fell out of touch with him years ago as I got busy with some other things, but he was a memorable character with an inspiring enthusiasm for the sport. R.I.P.

Thanks for sharing John, really! Good stuff there. I'm sorry for your loss. "Characters" make it interesting don't they...We don't seem to remember the one's without much personality.

Your group of angling buddies sound like they would fit right in the old pick-up hockey locker room...A good friend has a mishap, could of drown, and you guys name an award after it...;)

No doubt buddy, no doubt...He'll have some sweet spots picked out for you and a secret box with a dozen or two "no fails" in there.

I do have a question about these secret streams in the here-after...Part of what attracts me to the type of fishing we do is the challenge...I love it when I have to go toe-to-toe with an old bruiser and he snubs his nose at just about everything I throw at him...Don't let it get out, but I've even lost these epic battles a time or two...Is that stream in paradise going to satisfy me? If everytime I cast I catch a hog, without much effort, I just may have to move on...

You know how they claim there is a path all us anglers follow and as we grow we attain a higher rung on the ladder...We go through a stage where we are obsessed with big fish, out fishing our friends, keeping track of the number of fish caught etc until we reach some sort of angling nirvana...Well if I'm always catching fish without any effort in paradise what's the next step in my enlightenment, Obi-Wan? Maybe it's Gonzoism? ;) Maybe he's our "bodhisattva" and we are as yet "unaware"...Maybe the 5th Rung is giving up angling altogether and studying bugs? :)

Oooooommmm!

Thanks again mister!

Spence the neophyte...

Hmmmm...Where does that Gonzo go in the winter time? To a mountaintop or something like that...Delphi?

There's an old story, Spence, that goes something like this (I'm paraphrasing):

An angler goes to his reward and is shown to a stream by his host. On his first cast, he catches a two-pound trout. He's thrilled. His second and third casts produce identical fish. Now, he's thinking that this is the most incredible fishing he's ever experienced. But as he continues to catch one identical fish after another on subsequent casts, the novelty eventually wears thin. Finally, after catching the umpteenth two-pound trout, he exclaims, "Oh, Hell!!!" "Exactly," his host replies. :)

BTW, the name of the author of that little story (I believe it was a Brit) escapes me at the moment. If anyone recalls the name, please rescue me from my failing memory and give the author his due.

(As for all the mystical references, as I've said before, sometimes far too much is made of my modest ability to read.)

Keeping everything in its proper place of course G., I think you and I might say that when the light went on and we found ourselves hooked that it may have been the closest thing we will ever experience to being blessed. Reading set me free.

Mrs Cook was a librarian...My school was converted to the high school when I was in junior high so I was in the same building for 6 years. When they would herd us up and march us to a Pep-Rally I would just fall-out when the crowd turned toward the gym and in to her sanctuary I would go...She never said one word to me...Just let me find something to read and I'd sit down at a table alone...I remember teachers stopping in for something and looking at me with a puzzled look like, "What's he doing here?!" They would turn and leave me be. For a while I thought that Mrs. Cook might be my guardian angel.

This one is for Entoman since he believes I'm a little trouble maker...From time-to-time I found myself in detention during my "lost years" in junior high...I didn't mind it so much other than we had to show up at school an hour or so before it started and had to sit in the library as our punishment...

I remember finding there, during one of these sessions, a book by John Stuart Mill and copied from it these wonderful quotes of his that basically said something like the purpose of American education was to make us all drones of the state and was actually anti-democratic...Something like we were being programmed not to think independently but to become little cogs in a bigger machine...Not to cherish liberty or our own individuality...

Something like that???

I just loved reading these to the penal masters there before they had their first cup of coffee and were pissed that they had spent so much of their time getting an education and now they were standing guard over this smart-assed hippie kid who they felt they could straighten out if only they could get me alone behind the wood shed...Ouch!

Anyway...I stray...

Spence

I like to think that old hippie fly-fishing antiquaries don't die, Spence, they just gradually recede into the dusty library of their own thoughts. ;)

BTW, the only thing that connects what I do on that "mountaintop" in the winter with my fly-fishing and bug-geeky pursuits is that I love water in all of its various forms. However, the current heatwave reminds me that I'm not too fond of humidity.

I know this should probably be directed to a PM, but...

In my more "radical" days G this would of been a problem, no?! I'm supposed to be affecting change not losing myself in some sort of opiate haze...:)

Spence,
As for the streams of the here after I would like to think they are all loaded with fish and some days you just kill 'em and other days you get skunked, but most importantly they are clean, clear, and healthy without urban sprawl anywhere in sight. Actually my ideal stream/river is the South Fork of the Flathead well above Hungry Horse Resevoir ( the only addition I might make is to have brown trout and Cuththroat live together well).
JW

John,

How's this? I'm sitting a few feet back from the stream with Vincent Marinaro and Datus Proper. We are watching a two-and-a-half foot brute of a Brown trout daintily sipping some tiny BWO's, say a size 24 or so...We are hastily drawing straws to see who gets a pop at this prince...We are in somewhat of a rush because we see Ernie & Chauncey wading upstream towards us and we want one of us to be in to this fish just about the time they come wading up...

what you didn't mention was that all six years were the 7th grade.
and by graduation you were in the face-off circle as a 24 year old hippie vs. a 16 year old punk jock

:)

Only problem is Chauncey would have been upstream chumming them up with crickets.

I was only ever fortunate enough to meet Ernie and that was only once. My friend wanted to kill me after that as Ernie offered to buy the rod I was fishing on the spot. This rod just happened to be a beatiful bamboo that the homicidal friend had built.
Currently I work with Vince's daughter-in-law and have an open invite to go and see the items the family still have in their posession. This collection revolves more around his photo gear but they still have a few key items of fishing related stuff. A vast majority of his gear is now part of the PA fly fishing museum located in Boiling Springs PA.
JW

Right, John, and he may not have been alone. I'm told by some of the "Letort Regulars" (who had first-hand knowledge) that even Ernie, though at first professing to be appalled by the practice, participated in it, even to the point of complaining when an adequate supply of insect chum was not being provided by his companions. The myth of "purism" that has grown up around some of our fly-fishing cult heroes doesn't always stand up to close inspection. :)

>>BTW, the name of the author of that little story (I believe it was a Brit) escapes me at the moment. If anyone recalls the name, please rescue me from my failing memory and give the author his due.>>

Now you got me wondering too, because I remember seeing it either in one of Ed Zern's Exit Laughing back page essays in F&S or in the Editor's column in Fly Fisherman in the pre-Randolph days.

Long time ago, anyway. Long ago enough that the events/times/places sequence has been forever lost in the fog of atrophied synapses and I simply cannot recall which.

But, now its going to bug me all day and I'll get preoccupied and end up taking the Tabasco sauce back to the library and putting the library book in the refrigerator. Again...

Sorry about that, Lee. :)

Keystoner...I'll appologize for my part for driving yet another post off course...We old-farts just can't stay on track...We wish you all the best and keep us posted.

Tony, Tony, Tony...You think your funny mister...:) I have a friend who used to be a fire captain in a community on the edge of Detroit...He retired and now lives and guides on the Manistee...He played ice hockey for years as did all his boys...He also is the head of a TU chapter up that way and on the board of the Angler's of the Au Sable...When I first met his wife she asked the both of us if we had ever played against each other...I held up my elbow close to his face and asked him if it looked familiar...;) So, I'll tell you what I would always tell the other guy just before a face off..."Better keep your head up, eh?"


John...Do you still fish with that rod?

John & Gonzo...I remember reading somewhere that for a while the "PA Boys" had an old coffee can nailed to a post near the stream. It had something in it that attracted Japanese beetles and they would grab a handful and toss it out on the stream...I think I would win this bet, but, who hasn't, after looking both up and down the stream, dropped an ant or mayfly on the river and watched it float away?

I've already confessed to finding Brown Drakes stuck in the shuck washed up in the calm water under a dock and "helping" them back in to the bubble stream...I was putting them out of their misery...;)

A few years back I was floating down the South Branch of the Au Sable and there was a downed tree over the river...A large limb was just an arms length above our heads and on a bend there were a couple hundred deer flies mauling, no doubt, a hapless female. My guide knocked them off in to the river basically chumming the water. He explained it was an old indian fishing trick...Maybe...Maybe not...;)

Spence

Spence,
I most certainly do fish it but only on special occaisions and brookie streams. It is an extremely lovely little bamboo that is flamed with a slightly swelled butt and a lovely burled maple reel seat.
Louis can attest to it's craftmanship and class.

Gonzo,
TO hear tale told chumming played a key role for all of the "Letort Regulars". It also figured fairly prominently in a good bit of Vinces pattern design.
JW

Lee,

Just to ease our shared frustration about the story that I retold in (extremely, as it turns out) condensed form, I've been able to track it down.

The story comes from Sidelines, Sidelights, and Reflections by G. E. M. Skues. It was reproduced in Fisherman's Bounty by Nick Lyons, and I have done some slight damage in the retelling: The trout were not 2 pounds, but 2 1/2 pounds. The fly fisher did not exclaim "Oh, Hell!!!" but only said "Hell!" The reply was simply "Yes."

For those who would like to read it, the full story can be found here:
http://www.flyanglersonline.com/lighterside/part364.php

Spence and John,

As someone who spent good parts of his misspent youth torturing the mercilessly pressured stockers of the Little Run in Boiling Springs, I will (somewhat sheepishly) admit to engaging in "bread fly" experiments. The purpose of those experiments was strictly "research," and the lessons I learned about the responses of trout to extreme angling pressure have served me well ever since. (That's my story,....) ;)

I too have been known to experiment on the response of trout to “extreme angling pressure”. If by “extreme angling pressure” you mean the time spent casting to a single fish, that is. I have discovered that the extremity of the angling pressure, in terms of time, is directly proportional to the size of the fish, and in no way equates with the fish being caught. However, there is a redeeming factor. The time is never wasted.

Research, eh?! ;)

Actually I think those old boys would of called it research as well. Though I think curiousity is the guilty party.

Speaking of bread...There is a "bread-hole" just down a bit from the dock at Gates' Lodge...Unfortunately, the folks who aren't regulars don't know it's considered bad form to hassle the rather large trout that lives there. I've seen him pulled from there a couple times. One time it was caught by some regulars that may of had just a little too much to drink and couldn't stop themselves from attaching a piece of bread to a small hook.

That side of the river is incredible. I don't know how to explain the distance from the bridge to the dock...Let's call it a half-of-a-city-block at most...The DNR electro-shocked there and pulled a half-a-dozen fish 18" & up with one hog that was 2 feet+...I have also watched untold numbers try and catch these PhD trout only to slink back to the dock under cover of darkness.

John...I'd love to see the rod. It sounds wonderful. A handful of my rods were wrapped by a good friend of mine...Though they aren't cane the fact my friend built them for me means everything.

Spence