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| Gas Station flies on hand made leather fly box cover and Wolf-River rod circa 1975. |
A number of years ago I drove to the Brule’ river in far
northern Wisconsin, passing through towns on the way that held memories of
youthful vacations. I had not seen this landscape in almost forty years. Back
in the day, the mid-1970s to be exact, our little family of three and our
defective Volvo would take an annual vacation by driving to see relatives ‘Up
North.’
‘Up North’ was a catch-all phrase for going somewhere rural
where men went when they wanted to re-visit what it meant to be a man: away
from the city… a place of muskies and trout, deer and cabins. To a ten-year old
boy it was something exotic fed and conjured by elders in tales punctuated by
beer and smoke with the spreading of hands and arms in measurement. My
‘reality’ of Up North was absorbed and simmered gently during the timeless
hours of childhood summers reading Outdoor Life and listening to Dad. When I
closed my eyes I saw rivers, smelled pipe smoke, heard winds through pine
trees, and imagined groups of men wearing red and black checked wool hunting
jackets.
For my mother, Up North meant time to spend painting
landscapes and visiting local art and craft shops. For my father, it was a time
to re-visit his dreams. He was an armchair fisherman and outdoorsman, so most of
his dreams would be unfulfilled. Much later in life, I came to learn that
perhaps a man with dreams is already fulfilled…
In those summers sitting and listening to him talk of the
north woods, names began to be whispered: Brule’, Namekagon, Wolf, and Peshtigo.
These were rivers of legend, and I can still hear Dad’s voice as we peeked
through the birches and pines in our first and only glance at the rushing holy
waters of the Wolf River. Maybe just attending this church by visiting was as
good as participating in the worship or fishing. I never will know for sure,
but Dad lowered his voice to a whisper when pointing out a rising trout to a
wide-eyed and eared ten-year old. We never fished, but what I caught that day
will be with me always.
As I drove through the towns again, I was out of place in
time. My snapshot of Up North was decades old. I couldn’t believe how much it
had changed. Most of those small hardware stores, and mom and pop places had
been replaced for the most part with a plastic sameness as Kwik e Marts grew
like cancers on my memories.
Back home some time later, I was going through old fly-boxes
owned by a Wisconsin fisherman. Many of the flies were patterns I didn’t
recognize, and with my penchant for history and old-things, that takes a bit of
doing. When I say ‘Old’ it is rather relative, for most of these flies were
purchased and fished during my lifetime, in fact in the very period of those
youthful vacations. Old is relative, but I was alarmed by the amount of gray in
my beard this morning when I shaved; like rust on those hooks of those
flies…
These flies were not commercial patterns in the strict
sense; they were ‘Gas-station flies.’ They were not perfect by any standard,
yet some of them were. Tails were often too long or short, wings too bulky,
materials set off-kilter, and heads too obese. They would never make the
quality test of a modern overseas fly company today.
Maybe that is a good thing. Today flies are tied in an
almost clinical perfection in Asia and Africa by people who have never seen a
trout stream. That kind of perfection can be flawed in economy of scale. How
many hundred dozen do you want? Regional patterns and local ties like I held in
my hand slowly disappeared or became scarce in that economy. These were unique
and like a mirror in time. They held a place on a map…
Back when these flies were created, every great river had a
local shop. I am not talking about a modern fly-shop in any sense. These shops
were often places that sold gas, bottles of cold pop, flasks of brandy and
bourbon, and sporting tackle. They were small operations run by locals. In a
rural economy back then, they could exist on a shoestring, or maybe by selling
a few shoestrings.
When one left the city and drove Up North, one always
stopped at the local shop to fill up the Buick, add a quart of oil, pick up a
needed item forgotten or worn-out, and to find out the local forecast for the
fishing conditions and see what ‘They were biting on.’ The guy you went to talk
to always knew your name as you knew his. Norm or Stumpy would be behind the
counter. The flies that were working would be in a cardboard tray on the
counter. They were tied by guys that fished the river every day. They knew
exactly what was working, and the patterns were made up on the spot. “The
Woodcock Special’ may be a great stone-fly imitation, but it could also be
because somebody’s brother shot three woodcock last week. These people hunted.
Other than a few materials such as the hooks, floss, and hackle, the materials
used most likely saw the front porch of a hunting cabin, and spent a few weeks
in borax and salt. The flies smelled like wood-smoke and deer hair. You
purchased a half-dozen of each and clipping them into the tin fly-box, knew
that you had the hatch all figured out because you trusted an authentic local
expert.
Authentic…
That word summons so many images and feelings in me as I
close my eyes… because I was there. I may just have been a little punter, but
little punters have big eyes. What I saw and experienced as I walked through
these local ‘Sporting-goods’ stores was real, authentic, rural, honest, local.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was breathing in history along with the
dust. Yes… dust. Much of the shelving was covered with a fine powdering of
dust. It lay on the boxes of muck-boots, the barrel of nets, and on the tackle
that was timeless. I have grown to like dust. Dust is the most authentic thing
of all, for all life is made of it. To a modern retailer, these places would
need a massive cleaning and refit. There were no merchandising standards other
than “The hip waders are in the back aisle under the shotgun shells.” Fish
mounts and old bowling trophies sat or hung crookedly. There was no product
rotation, so as a kid, I could always find an old Daredevil spoon or cap-pistol
that was priced sometime in the past decade, and would be cheap enough for a
pestered parent to buy. If you asked for something, the owner would furrow his
brows, ask his wife, and she would root through an old box and find it. It was
like a kind of magic. Muskie plugs and bucktail streamers appearing out of the
primordial lost spaces of dust. The clutter was beautiful…
The fly-fisher never used all those local flies, but it was
always a part of consideration and good conduct that one made a purchase of a
few things to support the local store. The excess flies got stored away and now
sit in front of me along with a fiberglass fly rod made locally for fishing the
northern Wisconsin rivers. It is an odd rod by today’s standards…
standards…
Standards that have in time made these purpose made rods
look obscure…. but they weren’t.
This rod is a seven footer for a seven-weight fly line.
Short and with authority. It was designed and built off a Fisher glass blank by
a man who owned a local shop like this. It was and is the perfect tool for the
rivers it was born on. It was designed for brushy rivers with big trout and
sweepers and log hazards. Throwing big size 2 hex nymphs on the Bibon marsh at
night and catching alligators of brown trout as long as your arm while keeping
them out of the rushes and cattails? Here is your rod. This wasn’t the Missouri
river, and not all rods had to be 9 foot 5 weights. This was a specialty rod.
When we look at the history of fly-fishing, we see as we descend the map a
growing myopia of fishing culture, equipment, and tactics. These were grown
locally and fed on long studies and days a field. The Letort and her
micro-terrestrials and the rods to match. The Au Sable and the midge rod and
long boat. The Wolf and her huge trout and deep rocky runs grew the large
weighted stoneflies that made the rod in front of me a necessity. Each local
fishery grew in myopia then, there was no internet, and thank god for that, for
if there was, Marinaro, Fox, Flick, and the other local experts would all be
told that they were doing it wrong… Instead, the local tackle and flies grew in
a vacuum of sorts. The river grew the fish, which grew the fishermen, who grew
the fly patterns and tackle, which became part of our history and culture.
Yankee ingenuity at its best.
When we hold one of these flies in our hands, we must be
aware that there was experimentation here and serendipity. They were
purpose-built by a tier who lived in a small cabin and traded them for gas and
cigarette money. That kind of small economy and craft is what made America
rich…. not monetarily, but culturally. These flies are a time machine, with
rusty hooks, faded colors, and hackle chewed by bugs and fish alike, small
pieces of gut and nylon attesting to memories made on the rivers. The rivers
grew all of this. We are all children of rivers.
A fly is an artificial deception to the trout, but also a
word that means to travel through the air. This spring, a few of these that are
in better condition will do just that at the end of my rod, a fresh leader, and
a fresh perspective into local history. The honesty of knowledge that led to
their creation in less complicated times will still deceive the fish, but my
memories from those childhood travels through the Gas station sporting-goods
stores will never deceive me or fade. The hooks on these old flies may need
sharpening a bit, but my memories are as sharp as ever. I can still smell the
pipe-smoke and the dust….. I can still see the Wolf River through the pines and
hear Dad’s voice… whispering.
Dedicated to my Father and all the other dreamers back in
the day, To the moms and pops that ran these small shops, the flies and tiers,
and to Joe Balestrieri, and Bob Blumreich who remember… Up North.
Copyright 2018 Erik Helm
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