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3. First time fishing the Delaware! (first post was a mistake), Page 3

Hi Matt,

Nice photo of you sitting next to my Uncle Joe. No, not literally. My best friend would call up the front office of my high school to pull me out for a doctors appointment or family emergency. He'd leave his name as "Uncle Joe Brooks so that I'd know to be ready for fishing". Worked good, never got caught. Try that stuff today! I had the great fortune of meeting him years later - quite a gentleman. Heard he was quite a magician with the rod. Never got to see him cast except on the old ABC American Sportsman show on TV. He and Lee wulff did several episodes with Curt Gowdy and Bing Crosby that were classics. Whatever happened to them? It would be nice for the young people coming up to see the way...

I didn't know Roger Daltry lived in Missouri. Did he retire there after quitting the Who? :)

Regards,

Kurt

Matt, What year was that last photo taken? Great stuff here Matt!

Kurt...I think his pal kind of looks like older photos of Randall Kaufmann...

Spence

Here's an odd thought for you "old-timer". My mom was a big Skeeter Davis fan, maybe because Skeeter was her nickname from childhood, maybe because the tune meant so much to her after my father left her in 1965, but do you remember the Davis Sister's hit "I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know"? I'm making a bet here that over your fishing life you may have forgotten more than the rest of us think we know about chasing trout...If we could gather up all those "lost" things we could manufacture one hell of an angler no doubt! :)

He was mustachio guy with glasses in those years I think. It's gotta be Daltry, but who knows. Whooo are you... Who, who - who, who. I really wanta know.:)

Now settle down there old-timer...Don't want you pulling anything like Alex Trebek did the other day!

Ha! Ok, ok.

BTW - What'd he do?

Screwed up his achilles tendon chasing some woman he found stealing stuff from his hotel room.

Well Jonathon still no takers except for Gonzo...For those of you who may not know the profile picture is of John Voelker/Robert Traver...Probably flyfishingdoms favorite character from the UP..."Trout Madness" is maybe the funnist flyfishing book ever...Author of "Anatomy of a Murder" etc...He was actually a state Supreme Court Justice here in Michigan and his, taken from true life stories about "Yoopers fishing with quarter sticks of dynamite",are pretty damn funny...IMHO

Some of you may remember my relating the loss of Rusty Gates' a few years back...At some point, before he passed, someone set it up and he spent a day up on Voelker's famous "Frenchmen's Pond" hassling JV's favorite brookies...Does anyone remember "On the Road" with Charles Kuralt? Have you ever seen the episode when Kuralt visited Frenchmen's Pond?

Somewhere Voelker discribes his consummate UP "Fishing Wagon"? Up there you need a few things that one doesn't always relate to fishing...More about survival and getting the truck out of some bog and of course something good-and-aged to drink.

I'm not sure if I ever told the story here about my fishing the Yellow Dog river near Big Bay (the actual site of the real shooting that was the basis of "Anatomy...") up in the UP. JV brings up the Yellow Dog like Hemingway did with "The Two-Hearted River", it sounds great from a literary standpoint & to drive folks away from the real river you liked to fish.

I had an 89 Jeep Grand Cheokee that I had purchased in 88...My uncle and I decided to take the road less travelled and ended up out in the bush! We came to a fairly good sized feeder stream that flowed in to the Yellow Dog...I stopped...My uncle got out and crossed the stream and disappeared around a bend in the road. As he was crossing back over the stream he stopped to move a couple boulders which made me think we were going to have a go at crossing it...He got back in the car, stared straight ahead and said, "Put it in low. Stay to the left. And when we round that corner up there do not stop!"

Off I went across the stream and when I rounded the corner I saw the largest sand pit I have ever seen! I kept the vehicle along the lip on the left and he kept shouting and laughing, "Don't stop Spence...Don't you stop!" He still asks about that day and claims my Jeep was never the same after..."It's how we break them in up here kid! They can't handle it get one that will."

Well since you guys don't know how to play along I guess the next profile picture will be my own...Too bad lads! ;) You were warned.

Spence

Hey Spence -

I must cry foul! Why not just throw up a picture of Jimmy Stewart and make us really guess!? He's way to young in this photo. What are we gonna get with the next stumper, baby pictures?

Even though it's often claimed the best defense is a good offence, I'm not doing a very good job at covering for my chagrin. Having previously considered myself up on all things Traver, I really blew this one.:) Oh well...

Good stuff on the Cherokee. People that have never owned one have no idea how precarious your situation was. Those rigs are so light they can sit and spin on sand. Even in four weel drive! I got pulled out a few times from "sand traps" (that shouldn't have been) fishing Pyramid Lake. Once by a young Native American chap in an old beat up two wheel drive Ford pick-up. Good thing I had my receipt from the reservation to fish or I'd have been in deep doodoo instead of sand. A little later in the season a guy in a mini-van helped me out... I sold the car after that.

BTW - Judge Voelker's rig was the old Willys 4WD sedan, aka the original SUV. Always wanted one, but being collectors items and very expensive to maintain, the concept is impractical to say the least. Remember the story of needing the little dog running behind? Still laugh every time I read it.

Kurt

Kurt,

It was a bit more so than I explained...I thought we were going to tip! I kept the pedal down out of fear! That poor truck was grinding it out. The fortunate part was that we went when we did. If we would of waited a few more moments there was someone in a pickup, jacked up on those big off road tires, coming down the trail in the opposite direction...I think we would of just had to let the Jeep sink away in to the sand.

In Big Bay there is a place called the Big Bay Lodge and that was were the movie was filmed. Down the road a ways is the bar where it happened with some bullet holes still in the wall...It was too small for the movie to be made there. Henry Ford used to rent one of the upper floors of the Big Bay Lodge. There is a tall smoke stack off in the distance and he paid to have it moved so as not to mess with his view of Lake Superior from his suite!

There is an exclusive old hunt club at the end of the road called the Huron Mountain Hunt Club...Big dough from Chicago and its been there a very long time. The story goes that Henry Ford wasn't invited to be a member so he bought up all the land around the club...So the story goes, he then went to ask some of the members why they never had asked him to join and someone said, "Well Henry. It appears you are already a member!"

Do you remember "The Intruder" from "Trout Madness"? It is one of my favorites. Considering some of the things I've written here about my territorialness (Is this a word?) when I was younger, this would make sense. He stumbles on this guy with a nice fish in a spot he had to canoe to...He did everything he could to figure out how to get back there...Some years went by and he basically had the spot to himself until one evening the original guy returned, from the war, with a bum leg...Ouch!

The funny part was that he didn't realize who this was at first and the guy was going to camp there...He didn't want anyone to know he had figured out a way to get his vehicle back there and he was thinking about leaving the vehicle and hiking out so as not to betray his secret..."Then I began wondering how I would ever spirit my noisy fish car out of the woods without the whole greedy world of fishermen learning about my new secret road to this old secret spot. Maybe I'd even have to abandon it for the night and hike out..." I hate to admit it...Been there. Done that.

Spence

A test Spence... Do you travel with a broom in the back of your rig when out on expeditions?:)

Kurt

No. But just about everything else...Actually I've cut back over the last several years due to the back problems that started in 2000. I used to take nearly everything up to Gates' with me...Nearly all my tying material etc. You wouldn't believe what went west with me in 1995...I made more room by shipping my rods out to the folks at Madison River Fishing Co...Did the same thing in 2004 but to Dan Bailey's...A couple youngsters from Grayling were working there then including one of George Mason's grandsons.

I finally realized that after fishing all damn day there was no way to stay awake to tie anything and I was already over loaded with flies anyway...:)
I nearly fell asleep behind the wheel driving back to Ennis from Paradise Valley and if it wouldn't of been for Bozman and some place to stop, get out, walk around, and buy a very large cola...I would of been sunk!

Spence