A Sucker for Fly Fishing
Like most my first memory and introduction to fishing was with worms, corn, marshmallows and either a bobber or a sinker to catch trout; but not this sucker, it was caught on the fly! This was a pivotal moment and building block to the brand some 20 years later named WETFLY.
Being mentored on Brown’s pond (the one by the airport) in Mccall, ID by my father who would take my 2 older sisters Patsy and Margie and I fishing was the primary class room on the weekends. Back then it was all about filling the stringer and having fish for dinner, but for me it quickly became all about the catch and outperforming my sisters. Using different techniques, placement or getting to just the right spot and then landing the most fish became obsessive. It was so much fun to hook a fish I could never get enough and would go fishing any chance I could. My sisters weren’t into fishing quite like me so I would often go alone or my Parents would drop me off and come back to get me later. My Mom was always proud of the bounty and would happily cook the catch for our family, which was a lot of fish. That’s when I started to learn conservation and began releasing more than I kept to avoid having to eat them. I never really liked eating planters, they were too mushy and even the native brook trout had too many tiny bones.
With a fishing addiction and a proud contributor to feeding the family often, I always needed bait. Usually my mom had corn or marshmallows in the cupboard to share but worms worked best and cost a $1 at Medley Sports and we’re $1.25 at May Hardware. Our Dad was very frugal (like timing us kids to a 2-min shower to keep the hot water bill low) so he taught us how to find free night crawlers just after dusk with a flash light or by shocking them with electricity with a freshly water sprinkled lawn (2 metal spikes in the ground with an old power cord split down the middle about 10ft apart) in the daytime. Catching them at night with my older sisters was way more fun and competitive so that’s what we usually did. Between the three of us we were really good, so good that we decided to start a business selling them at our Father’s suggestion.
Because we knew fisherman would pay up to a $1.25 for night crawlers in town and we could catch them for free we decided this business might just work. Our father was an entrepreneur, even though he was the Fire Chief of McCall, he also had a side business called Precision Sharpening. After being a Fire Chief by day he would go out to the shop to sharpen saw blades with my Mom for the local construction companies. Our Dad being a business man knew that we had to compete with the local stores so we decided 75 cents was a bargain compared to the stores in town and made a sign “night crawlers - 75 cents per Dozen”. We also knew we had an edge because our house was on Davis Street and on the way to most fishing spots including the “other Browns Pond” 5 miles or so past Little Payette Lake.
We had immediate business success selling night crawlers, so much that Medley Sports and May Hardware started buying them at .75 cents to resale them for $1.25! (Strangely May Hardware today is where Medley’s used to be physically, it’s really weird to walk into May Hardware and not see Don Medley and a bunch of cool motorcycles, quads and fishing gear) In order to expand the business we needed more night crawlers and worm beds to fill with dirt and shredded newspaper and keep our inventory alive. Our Dad helped us build the beds and catching night crawlers became a real job.
The job was simple, answer the door to customers, walk the customer out to the shed, pull 12 fresh night crawlers from the beds and place them into a container with a lid we obtained from the Red Steer a local burger drive inn. My sisters were really good at counting the money and I had a perfect sized body for the trade, it was low to the ground and I had cat like reflexes to refill the worm beds night after night all summer long. With so much demand our yard didn’t seem to have many night crawlers left after a few weeks, even shocking for them didn’t work. (Later we would find the shocked night crawlers didn’t seem to have as much life in the worm beds, so we focused on catching them at night) so we got to know a lot of neighbors to use their lawns at night, our product was in high demand.
One neighbor in particular, Brent Smith gave us permission to use his yard ( that had a lot of night crawlers, and I mean a lot ) Brent was a hippie so I am a sure even back in the 70s his lawn was 100% organic and the soil was rich and full of compost. Brent was super cool, he had a blue Ford van and a dark room for developing film. He was an artist and took amazing photos, smoked a pipe and tied hair and fur to hooks to trick fish with a fly rod and married to Carma Green. I had met his step son Cliff Green a few years earlier on a job site across the street making dirt hills and building roads with our Tonka bull dozers when we became best friends . Cliff would join me hunting night crawlers (since it was his yard) and we had a lot fun catching them. It wasn’t about business, it was just being outside in the dark with flashlights.
Time flew by that summer and living in the Rocky Mountains over a mile high in elevation fall comes early and so do the freezing overnight temperatures. Once the cooler temperatures set in the worms stop coming out at night and go deeper into the soil so the worm business would only survive a few more weeks that season before we eventually ran out of inventory. I think back often to those summer nights and catching night crawlers. Mostly because it reminds me of my Dad and encouraging us kids start a business that was fun and easy.
One thing my Dad did not teach me is how to use was a fly rod. He had a black fiberglass one with an electric forest green reel system that was way different than a bobber and pole at Brown’s pond with a night crawler. It was much longer and had thick floating line with a fly to lure the fish. He was a magician with the back and fourth casting technique and often would sneak off into the woods remerging with a stringer full of native brook trout every time we stopped while traveling Lick Creek Rd coming back from Yellow Pine. He loved the backcountry (I think it reminded him of his youth being back there with Uncle Jack and his cousins Jackie and Danny) searching for gold, Uncle Jack was miner and road builder. I was very interested in this new approach but unfortunately he never was able to teach me, that rod was always off limits until later after my father’s death January 14, 1986 when I was 13. As painful as it is to think about his death at only 39 I will never forget how impactful my father was on teaching me about business and to love and respect the outdoors, especially fishing. I still have his rod and a small tin with his original flies ( I think they were tied in China, remember my Dad was frugal and was always looking for value) that reminds me of him 35 years later. I don’t think there has been one day I don’t think of him, his death was impactful and later I would understand how much it formed who I am today. The last time I fished with his rod was on Brown’s Pond around the age of 15.
Brent Smith, Cliff’s stepdad the neighbor (with all the night crawlers) was my mentor of the fly rod and even fly tying that summer we started the night crawler business. While Brent puffed his pipe preparing for back packing trips to high country lakes that I would get Invited on is when I started to experiment with the fly. Brent had a float tube and would disappear into mountain lakes like Pearl Lake just past North Beach returning with a limit of beautiful large cut throat trout at least 2 or 3 times the sizes of the one or two fish Cliff and I might have landed from the bank casting worms or spinners. Witnessing Brent’s continued success trip after trip, I knew the fly must be special so I started paying a lot more attention to what he was doing on that bench with that pipe and observing his casting techniques with the fly rod.
One memorable trip in particular I was invited to was camping at C. Ben Ross Reservoir to fish for crappie just outside of Council, ID with Cliff and Brent. On this trip, Cliff had a fly rod too. Both Cliff and Brent had floating line setups similar to what was on my Dad’s rod, a leader and then to a jig which basically looked like a fly with a weighted head that Brent tied the night before. The two of them had float tubes which was unusual because normally Brent only had one and Cliff and I would fish from the bank. Once we had the tent set up all of us began to fish. Brent and Cliff quickly positioned their tubes near an overhanging willow tree and would cast just beneath it and retrieve their lines with small twitches catching fish after fish. It was obvious this techniques was outperforming my night crawlers from the bank at least 50 to 1.
At some point Brent felt guilty and offered up his float tube to have a better chance at catching crappie. I promptly asked to use a fly rod as well. Certainly the float tube was an advantage but it was clear the fly rod was the game changer. At first Brent hesitated but then you could see the wheels spinning and he went to the back of his blue Ford van and returned with an old fly rod with army green floating line that was very weathered looking. He rigged it with a leader and a jig just like his rod and off I went into the float tube in my shorts, (no waders, thankfully the water was warm and had no leaches); within minutes I was catching fish after fish and it’s one my favorite memories. I was definitely hooked on the fly rod technique now, it was easy to trick these fish with line twitching and stripping like what I observed Brent doing all those summer trips .
Towards the end of that summer my 2 sisters and I were invited to an Island on Payette Lake (the lake in the background of the picture in this blog) for a week with Cliff, Brent and Carma where they had a family cabin, I think it was Carma’s Dad’s place. There was no electricity, it was serene and quiet. Entertainment options were to read, swim or fish. Reading was definitely not a top priority so swimming and fishing were it.
While snorkeling under the dock I noticed a giant fish swimming deep at the bottom , had no idea what species it was so the only way to find out was to catch it! Because I was a fly fisherman now and had observed Brent on the Bench many nights I knew that I had to “Match the Hatch”. I didn’t really know what that meant but a wooly bugger sure looked worm like but even better with fuzzy hair so that’s what I rigged up. Brent being and expert fly fishermen could see what I was up to and offered sinking line to get my wooly bugger down to the bottom of the lake. After what seemed forever my line finally reached the bottom which was at least 15 feet deep. The water is pristine in Payette Lake and actually the primary drinking source for Valley County. Typically fish are jumpy with any fast movement in crystal clear water ( I learned this fishing in the high mountain lakes that summer hiking with Brent and Cliff) so I began stripping ever so slightly one finger over the next like the bugger was crawling across the bottom. It was just enough to get the fish’s attention and it slowly made its way over to my bugger fly and began to track it. I paused for just a second and my wooly bugger disappeared, but I didn’t feel a strike at all. So naturally I lifted my rod to see if anything was there and all hell broke loose, this fish was hooked!
Brent ran down to the dock to see what all the commotion was about with his camera ready (Photo Credit: Brent Smith) in hand. After a long battle the fish was netted with a shiner net by Cliff who was trying to catch minnows on the beach just before I tricked this fish into eating my wooly bugger. My 2 sisters were slightly annoyed that we interrupted their sun bathing on the dock with Carma, but quietly thrilled at the same time of this magnificent fish. Brent had us all pose at the front of the dock and instead of saying cheese he had us all say “sucker” instead. As I became older in life I learned catching a sucker isn’t something to brag about but to me it’s never been about the catch, especially after learning that sucker fish are critical to an ecosystem and are good sign for healthy water. I’ll catch a sucker any day and be proud of it.
Going fishing with any technique wether it’s worm and a bobber or an indicator with a chironomid nymph, it’s all the same to me. Fishing represents family, friends, neighbors, life, and reminds me of my childhood and my father who introduced me to the sport. Fishing has become a connection to my sole (yes that right the fish) but also my human soul and a class room for sustainability and learning to respect the outdoors.
Once you learn that a fly rod and artificial flies catch more fish, the sport of catching them becomes easy. Save the night crawlers for your yard, they’re good for the soil unless you want to go perch fishing for an occasional dinner, perch love them, especially under the ice or early spring just after breakup.