Tales from a Flyshop part two.

Tales from a flyshop part 2



X marks the Spot

Everyone likes an inside tip on where to go. After all, there are places to fish that are better than others. However, in our time-saving and time-starved technology shackled and over-busy world there seem to be more and more anglers that want to fish like it is an appointment in an electronic calendar. 7:00 am, Get coffee and bagel. 7:20 am catch steelhead, etc.

 

To this end, those of us in flyshops take an unending series of calls when anadromous fish enter our rivers. “Where do I go?” I usually try to give some vague but potentially strong advice like “Between this and that is a great stretch of water a mile long. Look for water between 2 and 6 feet deep moving at a walking pace, and have confidence in your fly. Put it in the water and fish.” If somebody had told me this 20 years ago, it might have saved me a lot of trouble and fussing. Once in awhile, somebody actually listens to this and I get to play the mystic hero-wizard who led the customer to a great day on the water, but nine times out of ten it is not enough. See, they want to know exactly where to stand, exactly where the fish will be, and exactly which one single fly will work. Reading water and the thousands of variables that make this sport more adventure than catching be damned, they just want to press a button, catch a fish, repeat. So I came up with an idea. I would find a rock in the water somewhere, paint a big red ‘X’ on the top, mark its GPS coordinates, and then give this map to those customers that wanted instant gratification. We could even place a bench on shore near the rock, and others could wait there turn to get to fish from ‘The Spot.’ For obvious reasons, this never made it to fruition, even if it would provide a barrel of laughs.

Measuring

We are all guilty at one time or another of the minor sin of over-estimating the size and weight of fish we just caught. These errors can be separated into two categories: Excited but honest mistakes soon corrected with the aid of a simple tape-measure, and those obstinate and multiplying miss-measurements that just keep on getting bigger every time the yarn is told.

It amazes me how many times I under or over estimate a fish. Weight and length seem sometimes always bigger in the water and lesser in hand. This may be why the great Don Zahner said that if God intended us to measure our catch, he would have given the fish bigger scales! That comes to mind when listening to the tales of anglers gesticulating with histrionics to the great demi-gods of fish they have landed, fish so epic they are as likely to exist as Santa Claus or Hercules. Apparently in this land of epic tales fish fall into two size categories: small and BIG! Thus if an angler lands a nice brown trout on a tiny spring creek, the fish will always be over 14” if it is deemed enough of a fish to tell the buddies about down at the corner bar. If it is a bigger western river or the fish is to be caught on streamers, it will never be under 20 inches. Fish smaller than that are all a lot smaller. Indeed no ‘tweeners exist. In this world of purple skies and fishing gods, fish miraculously metamorphose from a dinky 10 inches to over twenty pounds in a split second. The ten inchers only exist to provide meals for those epic fish and a prelude to the moment the excited angler wipes his brow, gulps down his beer, and lets rip a whopper of a tale.

I know this because I have to be the listener like the buddies at the bar, except that I am entirely a captive audience and without needed lubrication of the spirit kind. Then when it comes time for that 50 lb steelhead caught from ‘Stocker Creek’ to appear as a photo, one must politely smile and nod at the 10 pound fish in the photo. Only once did I venture a glib remark or try to suggest a new portable tape measure. A bloke was telling of epic angling in a creek so full of fish that those of us in the know call it ‘Retard Creek.’ It gets a run of small lake-run steelhead or rainbows so out of proportion to its size that anyone can catch ten or even thirty a day. Pools no longer than fifty feet might hold fifty fish. The weight of the fish he seemed to have caught would make them all world records, beating out the great fish of British Columbia on the Thompson, Washington’s Skagit, or the B-run fish of Idaho’s Clearwater. I asked for his autograph after a bit, and told him he had caught all ten of the world record steelhead. He never batted an eyelid at my attempt to bring a little reality to Oz.

Big Box Misadventures

Why pay good money for quality equipment set up by experts at a fly shop when you can just go down to the Hunters and Anglers Mega-Warehouse and get the same stuff for half the price?

This is why:

A customer came into the shop with a reel, line and backing he had purchased from one of these Big Box Stores (after this referred to as BBS). He wanted me to check the backing. I looked at it and it seemed to fill the large arbor reel to the correct point, allowing the line to fill the reel and leaving a small gap between the line-guard of the reel. “Looks fine to me” I said, handing the reel back to the guy. “Can you make sure?” He pleaded. “I am going down to Florida salt-water fishing and I want to make sure it is O.K.” I humored him by stripping off the flyline and examining the backing. What the hell was this? Thick and sticky line lay in my hand. ‘What is this crap?” I asked.
He brought out a spool now empty from his pocket “Fly Line Backing” it read.

The stuff was the same cord that I use to sew leather when making rod-tubes. It is commercially called ‘Simulated Sinew.’ It is strong as heck but heavily waxed for tight purchase on the leather. This BBS actually sold, marketed, and used it for backing, quickly filling up the customer’s spool with a grand thirty feet. The first fish he caught in the salt would have stripped his line and carried it to the horizon…. Especially since the knot used to attach the backing to the fly line was a common granny knot, and the backing was not secured to the reel in any way. I rigged up his reel properly, charged him nothing, but made him promise that he would never go back there to save a few bucks.

Erik’s old equipment broker and free appraisal services

Mention fly-fishing to any twenty people at random, and ten of them will have some ‘fly rods’ and stuff that belonged to their uncle Zachary or Grandpa now ‘somewhere’ and worth a lot of money.
All of these people end up in my flyshop sooner or later I swear.
The most common are the guys with crooked and bent old production dime-store cane rods that the hopeful antique owner intends to allow him to put in the new swimming pool and deck on his house. They never actually ask me to appraise the rods, but just want me to “Look at them.” Now I love all antique tackle, but I also am running a business selling new tackle… or trying to. Convinced that the treasure discovered in the attic is the Mona Lisa of fly rods, they are usually disappointed when I tell them to hang it on the wall.

Many rod outfits brought in are in curious states. I have had fly rods with spinning reels on them loaded with fly-line, 8 wt rods with 5 wt lines and vice-versa, rods with old rubber and bakelite handles that melted to my hands when I picked them up, rods with repairs obviously conducted under the influence of alcohol and inappropriate tools, entire rods assembled from incongruous rod sections belonging to separate rods, rods that when assembled, fell apart in my hands, elderly widows with their dead husband’s entire collection of tackle, and my favorite of all: Automatic Reels.
What were we thinking when these were made?

Most of these are in a sad state of rust and dust when they are brought in to have new line placed on them. Always trying to be accommodating, I have literally had several of these explode on me while stringing on new line, and have had to pick bits of broken springs out of my beard and hair.
That reminds me of a guy who came into one of the shops on Christmas Eve at 4:30 pm. We closed at 5, and he wanted to use his coupon, which would expire that day. He produced an old cardboard box with a rusty reel full of dead spiders and spider eggs, and wanted new line. What the hell was he thinking? It was Christmas Eve for Santa’s sake, and we wanted to go home already. “What is the weight of the rod?” He didn’t know and hadn’t brought it along. I sold him a six-weight line and loaded it onto the reel afterwards thoroughly washing my hands of dirt and dead spider parts. Merry Christmas!

Odd Rodkins!

One couple came in to show me their new rods a custom rod builder had made for them. I had taught them a beginning fly-fishing class, and they wanted equipment. Instead of purchasing entry-level gear from me, they “Knew Someone” who built custom rods, and would have him build them each a rod. ‘Custom’ was fitting in an ironic sense. They unwrapped the rods for me to see, and I was overwhelmed by the powerful smell of varnish. Lovely wood reel seat spacers accompanied a plastic bait casting handle and multi-colored wrappings worthy of a toddler with a new box of crayons. The rods themselves were 6 feet long and seemed to be spinning rod blanks. Here was a true ‘Custom’ rod indeed. One third spinning rod, one third bait caster, and one third fly rod, and entirely covered from tip to butt in varnish.

I need a few flies…

This is a curious phenomenon…. Customers often come in and tell me they are planning a trip to a dream destination and river in Montana, Wyoming, The Bahamas, etc. They need a few flies for the trip. I make suggestions after asking the necessary questions, and they come to the counter with… 4 flies.
No, not a dozen of 4 patterns, but 4 flies…. For their trip… for their trip to that great dream destination… filled with epic fish… for a week…. In the wilderness…
4 flies.
4 bloody flies.
One fly to get dropped in the river, one to get lost before they get there, one to stick in the tree behind them, and the last one… the magic fly… to break off on their first fish.
Despite my attempts at good-natured advice as to the proper equipped angler, they often leave the shop with only those 4 flies.

Broken rods!

The true bane of existence for anyone working in a fly-shop are broken rods. I like to say there are two kinds of anglers; those who have broken a rod or two, and those that soon will. It is just a fact of life with brittle long skinny sticks like this. I rather think I could amend saying to more fully represent reality… “There are two kinds of anglers; those that having broken their rod, will gladly pay a small warranty fee and get a new rod in return, and the kind that blame me for breaking their rod.

Well, not always me specifically… often it is the manufacturer that gets blamed as well. So how did I get to be the blame fall-guy? I was there to receive the anger and frustration of the customer…therefore my fault. It always mystifies me how people seem to destroy their rods. I have broken a few, and with only one exception, it was my fault. I fell on two of them, one while tumbling on wet clay and the other when loose rocks slid out from under me. Never did I blame the person who sold me the rod. These guys crack me up. Most of the breakage happens when neophyte fly-fishermen foul hook salmon that are making their spawning run up great lakes tributaries. Big fish hooked in the fins, long brittle rods, and anglers that don’t understand how to let the fish run and wear itself out results in lines waiting at the door at opening times with sad or angry looks and a rod tube in hand.
I asked one guy whose rod had broken on landing a king salmon what tippet and leader combination he was using. “Huh?” he answered. It turns out he was tying straight 20 lb. Mono on his line as a leader. No wonder his rod broke.

I get guys coming in with 5 wt rods shattered on salmon. What were they thinking? The poor fish hooked in the ass and jumping down the river followed by a tangle of line and the tip section of a five-weight fly rod was heard by one piscatorial-eared passerby to exclaim “I was just trying to have sex!”
and on it goes…

Fishing Reports

Want an accurate fishing report? Good luck. See us at fly-shops have to be part fiction writer and part social-psychiatrist to put together a report.
Here are several examples and translations:
Fishing: Great
Someone caught a fish yesterday, there are fish in the river, the river is not completely blown out, that rumor about the escaped alligator is only partly true, the truck filled with gasoline crashed and exploded downstream from the last hundred yards of river, so there are still fish to be had, The river has not completely dried up, although it is 100 degrees out, fish can still be had at dawn and dusk, etc.
Fishing: Good
That fire you read about wasn’t near the river, it WAS the river. Don’t go. Stay home. Be very afraid.
See, these are for profit operations, and they profit from you going fishing and visiting their shops. They are not going to tell you that you have a better chance of taking a trophy trout from the river Styx with a dry fly in the pitch darkness while being rowed to Hades by the devil himself, then catching a fish in their river! If they say the fishing is just So-so, you might want to consider a game of ping-pong instead.
Then come all the inherent problems with rating the fishing. What is “Good” after all? To one angry angler complaining about our fishing reports “Good” was not good enough. He caught two wild brown trout @ 10 - 11 inches each on a dry-fly from a local creek. See, I would consider that “Good” fishing… apparently he didn’t. He wanted to catch numbers. That numbers problem is why tributary fishing reports for salmon and steelhead are often very relative. “Good” refers to when an angler has a near 100% chance to catch dozens of fish. “Great” refers to when while gearing up at the car, a errant salmon trying to jump the water falls accidentally lands in you car, upsets a grocery sack of spices onto itself, guts itself, and then flips onto the hot manifold and begins baking nicely.
“Just O.K.” is when you have a decent chance of landing a fish if you actually have some skills. That way when somebody who can only cast 10 feet and is more than half-drunk enters the river, they won’t come in your shop afterwards bearing firearms and complaining about your misleading reports.
Its all about setting and managing expectations, and the setting of those expectations is often beyond one’s control.

Beginners and experts

I maintain that there are only two kinds of fly fishers: Beginners and experts. Beginners have never caught a fish. Experts have caught at least one fish. Give me the beginners every time.
Think that is a Tongue In Cheek observation….
Meet the cast of the “Experts Club,” all experts in their own minds…
One guy didn’t know a Blue wing olive was a mayfly. He thought it was a midge. He was ‘guiding’ several other anglers at the time.
Another guy didn’t know the difference between a salmon and a steelhead, although by his own accounts, he had “Caught thousands of ‘em.”
One gentleman seemed to correlate 5X tippet and leader with 5 lb and 5 wt. He thought you could only use 5 lb. Test tippet with a 5X leader because his rod was a five weight.
Another guy complained that his new rod he bought from us ‘sucked’. He said that it didn’t cast right. He told us he used the same line on his other rod and it worked fine. This rod was a 9 wt.. His other rod? A 4 wt. “Nobody told me,” he complained. He told us that he had been fly-fishing for over 20 years.
One old codger thought that the WF designation on a fly line stood for “Wrinkle-Free” He was planning on ironing his fly line to get the kinks out.

Some tales from a flyshop

A few tales from a flyshop:



I am a bit of a collector of humorous true stories of folly. My sense of humor can be rather ironic, or sardonic. Fictional stories of human foibles are always amusing, but when they are true tales… ah, now we have a real gem.

My time running a flyshop often included bizarre encounters with a variety of customers. There were those who took themselves way too seriously, individuals that would not listen, people that always asked me the same three questions, homeless people killing a few hours, customers who would never speak to me… well, you get the idea.

I don’t want to give the impression that all my customers were eccentric, indeed, most were wonderful persons, and I still call many ‘friend’ to this day. However, just like the stories of personal mishaps, strange individuals stick out in my mind like characters out of Chekov or Joyce.

Here are a few examples of those individuals and incidents burned into my memory.

Pedro and the line

In the department store that my fly shop was part of, we had an employee whose job title was “Cleaning.”
Pedro always smiled as he went about his tasks. He had the joy and innocence of a child. He also spoke little comprehendable English. He had been in the country for quite a few years, but only spoke Spanish and a few jumbled English phrases. Conversations beyond “Hello, how are you?” turned into comedies of errors.
One day, a customer came into the shop to have all 300 yards of his salt water backing replaced. I mentioned that it would take me a half-hour at least, and he decided to take lunch. “I will be back to pick it up at two o’clock sharp, my plane leaves for the Bahamas at four.” Two hours should be plenty of time I thought.

Half way through the process of removing the backing to an awaiting plastic garbage pail in the back room, I was called back into the shop to aid a customer. When I returned, the sight that greeted me was one of horror. There stood Pedro with the fly line all tangled in a heap by his pile of trash. “Erik… Que?” he asked, holding up the pile. “NO QUE!” I responded, rushing forward to grab the line. Alas, it was in a hopeless tangle. You probably wonder why I coiled the line into a cardboard box instead of using a line-winder. The company I worked for was notoriously cheap, and we had no line winder. Indeed, even the reel-winder was defective, and ran backwards.

Suffice it to say I was covered with terror sweat when I wound the last coil of line on the customer’s reel just in time for him to pick it up and drive to the airport. Untangling that fly line added a few gray hairs to my head.




Midwest cutthroat

Every once and awhile you get a person who is convinced that he or she is right about an observation despite being told by experts that they are incorrect. Such a customer walked into the shop one day and wanted to buy flies for cutthroat trout. “Where are you fishing?” I asked. The answer was on the warm water tributary of Lake Michigan that is our local river. He went on to explain that he had been fishing the day before, and he had spotted some fish that ran about four or five pounds spawning in the river. He had thrown every fly he had at them, but could not get them to eat. He described the fish as having a sort of red coloration to their pectoral fins. Finally, the light went on in my brain. “Those are redhorse,” I explained. “A kind of sucker.”
“They were cutthroat,” he argued. “I know my trouts!”

I didn’t argue further. He obviously “Knew his trouts.” Ever since then, it has been a joke to me when asked what I am fishing for, to reply “Wisconsin Cutthroat!”



Of glo-bugs and hoppers.

The most annoying time of the year for me was the season when salmon ran our river to spawn. Dark and nasty, these Chinook salmon were often covered with fungus. Their appearance in the river caused all sorts of fools to come out of the woodwork to attempt to catch them in only inches of water. The preferred method of ‘fly fishing’ for these boots is to use glo-bugs and split-shot.

Every phone call at this time of year was the same: “Are the salmon runnin?”
Every customer likewise asked the follow-up question, “What color glo-bugs are them salmon taking?”

Despite my best efforts to interest anglers in changing their tactics and using streamers, it was always the glo-bugs that sold.

So one day, when the 999th customer was explaining to me that the fish would only take pink glo-bugs, I said to him, “That’s not what the last guy said. He was catching them on grasshoppers.” The guy looked at me incredulously for a few seconds before I broke into a smile, and told him that I was just kidding.

He walked out the door with a bag of hopper patterns, despite my protests again and again that I was just kidding.

The bigwig.

Some people have an inflated view of themselves. This was obviously the case with one very prominent lawyer that was also a former bigwig with a prominent fishing and recreation organization. They say that fly anglers can be arrogant. How true that was became apparent when I approached this gentleman one afternoon to ask him if he needed any help. “Do you know who I am?” He asked with a rather haughty inflection.
“Do you know who I am?” I responded before I could catch myself. His eyebrows rose with incredulous shock at my lack of groveling.

I never saw him again.

The lawyer and the deceiver

The lack of chartreuse tying thread for deceivers led me to suggest to yet another lawyer that many tiers simply used white thread, and covered the head later with colored fingernail polish.
“Do you even TIE FLIES?” he asked.
“No, actually I just walked in from the street,” I responded. “That’s why I came up to you and asked if you needed any help with the thread.”

I never saw that guy again either. I have got to work on my people skills.

What weight is it?

The sheer number of fishermen that came into the shop looking to buy fly line and yet not knowing what weight rod they had was simply baffling. I kind of wondered what kind of goofy setup they were fishing with. Which leads us to the next customer…

The lawyer and the backwards line.

More lawyers. It is not my intent to pick on lawyers, but I knew that these customers were lawyers because they told me so.
Me: “Hi, can I help you?”
Them: “I’m a lawyer.”
To this day I am unsure if this was supposed to be some kind of warning, or simply an introduction. It reminds me of a giant grizzly wandering wild the woods with a wooden placard around his neck that reads “Bear.”

Two gentlemen in suits came into the shop during the lunch hour on a Friday, and I approached to see if I could help, or simply direct them to anything.

“Were lawyers.”

The taller lawyer explained that he was an ‘expert’ fly fisherman, and that he was going to take his friend fly fishing for the first time on a trout stream.

This situation is very difficult to handle. The novice or beginner will often overlook advice in favor of his buddy’s. The ‘expert’ buddy doesn’t want to be contradicted, so I was often forced in these situations to stand back as poor decisions were made on the novice’s behalf.

Sensing from body language that I was not wanted, I remarked that the reel that the ‘expert’ was holding was quite nice and “May I see it?”

“Help yourself’” he said.

I noticed that the line badly needed cleaning, and after getting his permission, I started stripping it off the reel. It seemed to be some sort of level two or three weight line. Then, after fifty feet of line lay at my feet, it got a lot fatter.

“What weight line is this?” I asked.
“Five weight. My spare reel. Gonna lend it to my buddy here.”

Please forgive me dear reader. I could not help myself.

“You know,” I began. “The fly line is on backwards.”

He looked up, and realizing that I had effectively removed his mantle of ‘expert’, mumbled “I guess that’s why it never cast right.”

While I reversed the line and cleaned it, the novice listened to his friend’s advice with, if I read his facial expressions correctly, a bit of apprehension.




Match the hatch (cork handle)

A very accomplished local fly fisherman came to me one day with a rod to send back to the manufacturer. This was a service that we offered free as a courtesy, and was a weekly occurrence.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
He pointed to a deep hole in the cork handle, and told me a story.
Apparently, he was fishing the rod when some sort of insect decided it was time to hatch… from the cork of his rod! It squirmed its way out of the cork, hatched, and flew away, leaving behind the large hollow home of his larval stage.
On the line entitled ‘Defect or issue,’ I wrote. “Bug hatched from cork. Please replace.”
I often wonder what the manufacturer thought when they got that one, but sure enough, they replaced the rod. Wonder where the cork-eating bug ended up…

Fly reels and bourbon don’t mix

Calmer heads prevailed when a guy who was obviously stinking drunk came into the shop spitting with anger at the Orvis Battenkill reel that he had bought from us. My colleague Bill handled the situation perfectly. I, on the other hand, was in favor of placing the reel far up his anal region.

His complaint was that the reel spool was scraping and bent. This, of course, was due to the fact that he had clearly fallen on it in a drunken stupor, a fact that he never told us. His anger should have been directed inward, as it was obvious that he was at fault. There are some people in this world for which any sense of personal responsibility did not exist. Here was a prime example.

Bill calmed me down, placated the customer, and motioned me into the back room to escape the booze fumes as well as replace the reel. He then bent the reel back into shape with his bare hands. Returning to the customer, he told him that he had replaced the reel with a new one. The goon was drunk enough that he probably could not see properly to determine that it was the same reel, and had enough of a distorted sense of time to not notice that it only took us five minutes to ‘replace’ the reel. He yelled a few more threats our way about defective expensive gear and then staggered out of the shop. We never saw him again. Thank God.



“Its on sale!”

Human psychology is a funny thing, especially when it comes to sales.
Like most retail establishments, I held an annual sale. In this case, it was a store-wide sale in all departments. It attracted all kinds of goofy bargain hunters. Early on, I found that if you reduced the price of something far enough, it would sell. I sold two trout priests at 70% off to a guy who didn’t fish and had no idea what they were. A pair of size 13 wading boots that were discontinued sold to a short woman that wore a size seven. When I stated that I thought that they would never fit her, she exclaimed with big eyes “But they are on sale!!”

Old flylines placed in a discount bin always sold as well. An ancient seven weight level line found in the back room sold to a guy who was intending to fish for bonefish. I did try to explain that it would not work, but it WAS ON SALE!! He bought it anyway. His expensive dream vacation to Belize would be torpedoed by trying to save twenty bucks on a line.

Getting rid of spare spools became a chore. I had a whole shelf of discontinued spools in the back room. I finally put a sticker on each spool that read “Was $900.00… Now only $15.00!!”
They sold like hot cakes. Elderly woman purchased them as gifts. If you got one, then I am truly sorry.

“You know… a spey line!”


One of my customers came in one day to show me the incredible ‘deal’ he had purchased in the bargain cave of a local big-box sporting goods store.

It was a two handed spey rod that he paid fifty bucks for. He had an old Pfluger reel to go along with it.
“What weight line did you get for it?” I asked, observing that the rod was marked as a 6/7.
“You know, a spey line,” he answered.
I looked at the line. It was a long belly 10/11 weight.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Might make a good weed-whacker,” I replied, handing the rod and line back to him.

This is a funny local phenomenon. People here seem to take great pride in a bargain without realizing whom they are speaking to. Kind of like a guy who sits for hours in a doctor’s office in order to show the doctor how much money he saved by performing his own surgery using an old pair of sewing scissors.

Saving money can lead to wasting money if you are not careful.

I learned this the hard way when in sixth grade. I pestered my mom to bid on an ancient trumpet in the school’s blind auction. For ten dollars, we took the thing home. I thought I was pretty smart. I already had a nice student trumpet, but for only a few bucks, I now had another one. Then I took it to the local musical instrument store. The brass expert examined it and handing it back to me, explained all the myriad defects. Just repairing the valves would set me back by six months of paper route earnings. “What should I do?” I asked him.
“Make a lamp out of it,” he replied.

Or a weed-whacker…

Ultra-light brain

A customer came in one day looking for a one-weight rod. Due to lack of sales in super heavy or ultra light rods, I did not stock any one-weights. The guy was disappointed, and told me that he used a one-weight for all his fly fishing. I though he was referring to trout, but when he took me over to the bragging board, sure enough, there were several photos of him with large steelhead.
“Wow, that must have been some fight,” I said.
“Yea… it took me an hour to land it, and by the time I got it to the bank, it had died.”

The gentleman

I got the call at home on my day off. My coworker Eric was excited. “Wait till you see what this old guy left on your desk!” he said.

The next day a large bag greeted me that was filled with ten or twelve Hardy perfect reels in various sizes.
The customer wanted new lines placed on all the reels and spare spools, and for me to tighten, adjust, and fix any defects. Who was he? Who was this guy with such a collection? Who was this who trusted me to service his reels?

It turned out that he was a customer that years before had brought me a hardy reel to get a line placed on, and remembered that I had fixed the handle on his reel, and washed, cleaned, and oiled it for no charge. He had a better memory than I did.

When he came in to pick up his reels he was well dressed and had manners of a European gentleman. I had saved him some money by cleaning one line instead of replacing it. He thanked me kindly and profusely.

It was an honor to meet him, and an honor to service his reels.  His sincere thanks still resonates with me.

The Fly Shop and the General Store

The Fly Shop and the General Store
Copyright 2009, Erik Helm

Preface:
Although this story is a piece of fiction, it is based on my own observations. Fly shops, and indeed many retail establishments today seem to all look alike, kind of like fast food restaurants for anglers. They carry much of the same product, and seem to be arranged by the same person. Everything is in perfect rows and logos are everywhere. Contrast that with shops or stores that are more unique and have charm, such as the Redshed Flyshop in Peck Idaho, the old Angler’s Roost in new York, or even a general store, and I at least, yearn for a time when everything was not made ubiquitous. Bill Schreiber built the fly shop that I worked at and finally took over, and he cultivated a different look and feel. ‘Quaint and interesting’ might have been descriptions applied. ‘Unique’ certainly was. I also remember the joy of going into small town hardware and general stores in northern Wisconsin, and finding curious fishing lures from twenty years ago still on sale along side cap guns and toy bow and arrow sets. Places such as this are like miniature museums in their way. Nostalgia? Perhaps… but I still get all funny inside when I find a special place like this. A place where I can root around and find the odd item, chat with interesting and eccentric shop keepers, and waste a few hours apart from the plastic sameness of our modern world. I usually emerge with stuff I don’t need, but might in time become part of a memory.
Erik Helm, August 2009

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It was what I call a ‘slow trip’.
I was meandering around some public waters on a fair to middling Atlantic Salmon river for a few days, not expecting much else but scenery and the odd fish, but the whole fishing experience seemed more important than numbers of fish as I grew older. I had hooked a nice fresh hen of around ten pounds or so, watched some eagles nest and fish, and drew a few sketches of the river that might make a subject for a nice watercolor.

The mid-day heat was not conducive to fishing, so I drove to the local town to augment my food supplies and perhaps see a bit of late 19th century main street architecture. The town was all I could have hoped for. Ancient brick facades with faded painted advertising on their sides stood in rank like forgotten soldiers. The ads were for products ridiculously outdated: chocolate soft drinks from the prohibition period, dubious patent medicines guaranteed to either cure you or kill you, and curiously named hair tonics. The street was only a block long, and was festively decorated with flowers and somewhat tattered flags. A lone dog wandered across the empty street near an old fire station. A few cars were parked here and there, mostly concentrated at the end of the block where a newly painted sign announced ‘Fly Shop.’

At the local grocery store, I purchased a few tins of soup, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of cold lemonade. The girl behind the register was as pretty and shy as the town itself.

I then made my way towards the end of the main street towards the fly shop. I love a good fly shop, and have been known to lose all track of time while fondling the various gadgets and gear of our obscure sport. The fly shop stood apart from the rest of the town in that it was newly constructed in the fashion of a log home. It was the only new structure on the street. Large inviting windows filled the front and were filled with tackle, while the only neon sign in town welcomed ‘Open’.

As I opened the door, the first thing that hit me was the cool breeze of the air conditioning. It smelled of fresh plastic, mothballs, and potpourri. A large flat screen television hung behind the counter playing some sort of fishing video that flashed boldly forth with glory shots of fish and anglers. It reminded me of a rock video, complete with an irritating hip-hop accompaniment. “Hey, like, can I help you?” offered a twenty something stereotype wearing a ball cap with a stylized toothy fish skeleton. “Thanks, but no” I replied, “Just poking around.” “No problem, Dude” the kid said, “but make sure to, like, check out the new flies we have and stuff.”

The shop was full to the brim with product segmented in like types: rods over there, fly bins poised at easy height, glass cases full of new shiny reels with colorful anodizing, an entire wall of fly fishing clothing lit individually by track lighting, pontoon boats suspended overhead, shelves of fly lines and accessories, a rotating display of aggressive looking polarized sunglasses, towers of leaders and tippet, and framed photographs of fish and trophy mounts. Above all, there were logos. Signs popped out everywhere, proclaiming the latest and greatest manufacturers, many which were new to me. The shop kid was busy ringing up a middle-aged man in a business suit who had a pile of purchases at the counter. I whistled inwardly when the total was given. I thought I might like a new pair of woolen socks, as some of mine had seen better days and were a bit war weary. The pair I found on the meticulously organized clothing wall was quite nice. They should be for fifty dollars I thought as I put them carefully back. I looked at the fly rods next. They were the best that money could buy. Expertly designed and light in the hand, they reminded me of colorful little performance sports cars lined up for sale. The only problem was that they were all the same. The local shop in my hometown carried the exact same rods. Placing two rods of the same line weight and length side by side, Only the manufacturer logo differed. The reel seats, guides, and even the graphite color were similar.
Turning to the fly bins, I found the display with the ‘must have’ flies for the local river. I read the display a second and third time to make certain, as I recognized none of the featured flies. These flies were constructed of plastic and tinsel, rabbit strips and flash, and sported names such as ‘Metal magnet’, ‘Ron’s killer’, and ‘Neon seducer’. I suddenly felt out of place and claustrophobic. Turning to leave, I bumped into a display rack of T-shirts bearing the slogans ‘Zip my fly!’, ‘Chrome member’, and ‘Salmon slayer.’

The heat that hit me full force as I exited the shop was welcome and appreciated.

I was walking back towards the car, when I passed a store with a neglected look. A weary sign proclaimed ‘General and Hardware store’. Paint peeled off in strips where there was paint, and a lazy dog slept next to a worn welcome mat. The place looked like a Norman Rockwell print that had been left in the sun for a hundred years. The display windows were full of dust, paint cans, a ladder, an old bait-casting rod, a faded American flag, several ancient copies of Popular Mechanics, and quite a few dead flies and moths. A hand printed sign hanging from a nail read ‘ Fishing tackel and bait.’ I smiled at the misspelling.

As I opened the door, a smell of dust and paint thinner mixed with rubber and pipe tobacco wafted out at me. Past the dimly lit aisles sat an old man at a counter piled up with odds and ends and papers. Indeed, he seemed to be buried in the debris of his business. He peered up from his newspaper, and looked at me curiously through coke-bottle glasses. “Can I help you, Sir?” he inquired. “Good afternoon.” I greeted. “I am just killing time and poking around… not looking for anything in particular.” “Whell,” the wizened man drawled out, “ If you’re not looking for anything special, you are bound to find it here. Take your time, nothing moves very fast in this store, especially the merchandise.” He chuckled at his own joke, and busied himself with his newspaper.

My eyes were slowly adjusting to the difference in light level, and as they did the store and its curiosities emerged. The shelving was hand made from whatever scrap had come to hand in God only knows what period. They were covered with mysterious boxes, Filson and Woolrich checkered shirts, denim bib-overalls, steel-toed work boots, rubber hip boots, bins of nails and screws, tins of grease, pinwheels, and other ephemera. At the end of the first aisle were hats that were out of place in time. Straw sun hats, woolen ball caps with built-in earmuffs, fedoras, and pork-pie hats were hung from a makeshift display of old wire coat hangers twisted together. Proceeding casually to the next aisle, I stirred up a cloud of dust that danced in the dimly filtered rays of the sun that shown through front window. In front of me were toys. Die cast farm implements and miniature tractors, plastic animal collections, boxes of army-men, dolls in country dresses, cap guns, metal lunch boxes, Indian head-dresses with crooked feathers, and rubber tomahawks, among other amusements, were lined up in no special order. Directly underneath was a shelf full of old Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery books mixed in with well-fingered comic books. I sniffed the delicious aroma of aging paper and ink.

At the very rear of the store was a vast wall of pegboard dedicated to fishing tackle of all kinds. Spinning and bait casting rods were mixed together. Old level wind reels sat upon their cardboard boxes. Wooden plugs and wire leaders were tangled together. Silver minnows dangled from a peg, and dardevle spoons and Mepps spinners hung from cardboard. Plastic or bubble-wrapped merchandise was conspicuously absent. Over in a corner of the pegboard was a shelf of fly reels. Automatic reels: Pflugers and Shakespeare models sat oiled and ready. A fiberglass fly rod stood along side an early Fenwick graphite model. Oiled braided lines spilled out of their tins, their lids askew. A container of Mucilin leaked onto a box of tying supplies. Galvanized tins held split shot, and cardboard cards held little bags of hooks. Off to the side, half obscured by an old wicker creel, was a stained off- white cardboard display of flies. I held my breath as I moved closer. They were full dress salmon flies. I removed the whole display card and read the inscription. “Hand tied Salmon flies by Hardy Brothers, England” it read. There were a dozen or so remaining on the card. Each was held by a single staple that enveloped the hook. There were Jock Scotts, Green Highlanders, Silver Doctors, and Thunder and Lightings, all probably tied sometime in the nineteen-fifties. I had indeed found an unexpected treasure, just as the proprietor had predicted. Written in black crayon on the top of the card were the words ‘Salmon flies - .50 cents each.’ I decided the true place for these flies would be in the water in time for the evening bite, so I walked slowly to the counter.

In front of the counter and to one side was an authentic red and white metal Coca-Cola cooler, filled with frost and returnable shorty bottles of Coke. Another cooler partially covered with a slab of wood stood nearby, with a hand-made sign proclaiming “Nightcrawlers, ten for a quarter.” On the counter near the old cash register was a display of pocketknives, and I remembered my father purchasing a Barlow knife for my tenth birthday just like the one displayed. I opened the cola cooler and set a bottle on the counter along with the card of flies.

“Found something, eh?” the proprietor chuckled. “That’ll be six dollars and a quarter.” He wrote up the receipt by hand. “Not much call for old flies like them anymore. Not since that other new fishing shop opened. Hardware don’t sell too well nohow…that super-mart on the highway takes most of that now.”

“Been awhile since I have been to a store like this,” I said. “Brings a smile to one’s face.” “Yea… he he… times don’t change too much around here, got no reason too.”
“Thank you for that” I said, offering him my hand.
“Say mister,” he muttered, scrunching up his great white eyebrows in concentration, “You fishin’ the river for salmon?”
I nodded affirmatively, telling him I was camped near the public water.
“I haint fished it in awhile ‘cause of my gouty leg, but I can tell ya about a secret hole.” The old man proceeded to describe a hidden spot between known beats. A little ledge-rock outcropping hidden underwater that, unless you knew it was there, would never seem to be fish holding water.

As I emerged from the old building with its sagging porch and sleepy dog, I saw a European sports car pull away from the fly shop, the back seat loaded with new gear.

That evening, I celebrated with a cigar the beautiful buck salmon that I caught and released in the out of the way ledge-rock run the old man had described. It took one of the little Green Highlanders from his store almost casually, and then went berserk, leaping all over the river.

Sometimes the best that life has to offer comes behind an old crooked door, or in a musty box. It is given or sold to us by people as odd as a Dickens character. I would have it no other way.