Home Spun

 

Homemade rod tube and reel case

 

‘Tis poverty alone, Diophantus, that awakens the arts; poverty is the very teacher of labor…’

Theocritus, from the Fisherman’s Dream: 3^rd century BC

 

The other day an angler friend sent me a care package containing, among other things, a complete leader building kit consisting of dozens of tippet and leader spools sorted by diameter, and a leader gauge. I have not built full trout leaders for quite some time, but upon receiving such a generous gift, sat down to do a little experimentation. I started with taking readings on various leaders I have from the 1970s through the modern day, and by reading leader specifications from Bergman, Ritz, and others. After fiddling around with a pencil and paper and a tape measure, I came up with 2 very different formulas for a 9-foot 4x leader. I assembled them, coiled them in envelopes labeled with the measurements and dimensions, and set a book on top of them by error. Today I found them while moving the book they rested under. It being sunny, I thought it no better time to try them out in the yard on several rods. The jury is out yet on which design I like better, but the end-game is not the subject of this diversion, it is the journey…

For many fly anglers, especially of the older generation, thrift and necessity led to experimenting with equipment. Thrift because, well just that: many of us had little means at the time, and a dollar saved was a dollar more for gas money to get us to the rivers. Necessity because the extraordinary expanse of good tackle and options available today was just not around yet.

In talking to other anglers both contemporary and older than me, I was told stories which led to this theme being developed. There were consistencies in the tales of homemade fixes, invention, and experiment that led to critical thinking and a foundation in the sport. That led directly to innovations in product available today, but also created better anglers more connected to their sport. Whether it was thrift or necessity or both matters not, it led to the same learning process.

Let’s look at a few examples…

When one had a fly-line that was too bright or the wrong color, boiling red onionskins produced a colored liquid that dyed the line a more muted color of buckskin and olive. Onions were cheap, and you could fry them with some sausage and peppers afterward and have a nice dinner.

When fishing with a braided or furled leader, loops for connection were often not available. Orvis braided leaders at the time came with a hollow butt and instructions on how to strip the end of the fly line with acetone. One then attached the braided leader permanently to the fly line with super glue and a careful insertion of the line tip into the hollow butt of the leader. If you wanted to put on a sink-tip, you either needed to cut the whole affair apart and start over, or come up with some novel solution. Modeling clay rubbed into the braid would work great, but then it was near impossible to extract it. The solution was ingenious: toothpaste. One rubbed toothpaste into the braid of the leader and it sank nicely. If you wanted it to float again, just rub out the toothpaste in the water and treat it with silicone. It also had the side-effect of shining up the teeth of the trout. Nothing like a little impromptu dental care to help nature along!

When faced with a challenge, anglers overcame it the only way they were able to, by experimenting around the kitchen table and futzing their way to a solution through creativity.

Take my first sink tip for salmon and steelhead. I went to Reinke Brothers on Greenfield Avenue in Milwaukee, a business that has been in the same place since its founding in 1950. I remember going there with dad on the bus from our east-side home. It took two hours back in 1975. The place hadn’t changed much twenty-odd years later, and I recognized various pieces of rod-building accessories dad had used in building his fiberglass rods. I found a thirty-foot coil of lead core line with a braided outer surface. For three dollars, I purchased it along with sundry feathers and whatnot, and went home and constructed interchangeable sinking tips. I saved money, and I learned to whip braids and coat the line with pliobond. They worked great until the lead separated and flew out of the core in little pieces that hit you in the head on the forward cast, but I caught fish with them! It laid a foundation that enabled me in later years to splice fly lines and add loops.

My first fly rod was a blank purchased from the same store, and hand-assembled and wrapped at my kitchen table in my apartment. I still have it. It is a nice 8 weight. I learned so much by building it (with dad’s old rod making tools and components), that I built a second one. I think the whole kit and caboodle set me back 40 bucks.

Since I had no money at the time, my first fly-box was one I made from a piece of mahogany carved while sitting on the couch with no tools but a pocket-knife that was given me by my mom and purchased at my Grandfather’s hardware store, Theisen Brothers, in central Wisconsin sometime in the 1940s. The box worked fine, and I learned how to carve wood and why doing it on your couch might lead to an adventure with a vacuum cleaner.

wood fly box carved with pocketknife

We bent the available hooks we had with pliers in order to make them fit the intended fly patterns. We sewed fleece patches to the back of old ball caps to hold flies.

Last year I acquired my first silk fly lines. I am of the plastic generation, but curiosity and historical knowledge drove me to goof around with them. The initial process of mixing boiled linseed oil with turpentine and spar varnish and treating the lines while monitoring the relative stiffness, flexibility, and smoothness of the stages of transformation gave me a deeper appreciation of what it took at one time to just go fishing. The sheer amount of necessary preparations both before and after a day on the stream might put many of today’s anglers off their beer. It sure taught patience, and a reverence of and care of one’s tackle. Cane rods were rubbed down and dried before they went back into their tubes, and the silk lines had to be dried every night by removing them from the reel, and then treating them with mucilin in the morning. These little tackle rituals performed of necessity every day one went fishing were just part of the whole experience.

I am self-taught through experimentation, failure, success, and reading. I guess that was the way I was raised. Our home was always filled with books. Dad was an avid reader, as was mom. Dad was a classical pianist who was mostly self-taught, and even tuned his own grand piano, although in the invective-filled afternoons and evenings he sat on the floor with the whole keyboard action disassembled and by now getting a bit into the brandy, we wished he would just pay for a professional tuner. We were all autodidacts from a sense of curiosity, thrift, and necessity. I cherish that upbringing now here in 2018 when I needed a sign for my business guiding and teaching fly-fishing. Instead of just getting a sign painter to make one for me, I did it myself, and learned that this kind of reward from creativity can be exhilarating. It turned out quite nice.

When my mother began her painting in Wisconsin in the 1940s, she attended Layton School of Art in Milwaukee. Her teachers were among the noted Wisconsin artists of the 20^th century, as she became as well. They focused on foundation first. The students were taught to mix their own mediums, create resins and rabbit glues, and blend all sorts of toxic mixtures to allow them to paint with oils on a board in the styles of the old masters. Mom had a basement full of what looked like apothecary bottles with faded hand lettered labels, but they would allow her to prepare any surface for any medium of painting at will, and not be dependant on the availability of store-bought materials. Of course, thrift also played a part here for both my parents and many of the anglers who we owe so much to were children of the great depression, where money was tight or non-existent, and everything had to be made from scratch or modified… thus homespun.

In that foundation that was laid by experimentation, reading and soaking up knowledge, and trial and error, expertise was born, in angling, art, and life. Here is an excerpt of a biographical piece written about my mother just before she passed.

“In a way, (Mary) Helm is glad she never got an art degree. Learning from books on her own time gave her the freedom to explore many different styles. She alternately jumped form pencil to pastel, from pastel to watercolor, watercolor to oil and back again. Helm is also surprised at the ignorance of students who have had more educational opportunities. "I would mention something and they (the students) had never heard of it. I was surprised how little they really know about art."

Early 1940s self portrait by Mary Theisen Helm

That is locked into my memories as each weekend she returned from her job at the university with armfuls of books for both her and my dad. They spent their weekends learning. It cost nothing but time.

 

Time is a thing we had in the past too. Time was there to make the most of since all the time-saving devices and technologies had not been invented yet, and so thus we had more time for ourselves. The great irony of the information age… Our assets as sportsmen, tinkerers, homespun naturalists and armchair philosophers consisted of energy and time along with a few cherished tools of the trade.

 

Back in the day, most flyrods were labeled with a set of 2 numbers such as 5/6. The reason as explained to us was that the rod would take either a double-taper five or a weight-forward six line. Correct. However there is also another hidden reason. Most anglers had only one rod. The situations where people went on a fishing trip with a selection of 7 rods at their disposal were limited to the very few. A fly-rod had to be able to fish for panfish for the freezer, trout on both smaller streams and large, and even chuck bait for perch and bass. The angler in order to make this work often carried two spools for his or her reel with two separate line sizes. One had to slow down or speed up the casting stroke in order to make this work, and anglers were more connected to their gear at an essential level due to necessity. It made them more aware of what they had, and how to make it work, even if it often required a few modifications at the kitchen table involving glue, wax, boiled onion skins, or even a sewing needle.

 

Today we have at our disposal an ever-expanding assortment of arguably better tackle available, and definitely easier to use and set up. It is designed to take any futzing or modification out of the equation. The new influx of anglers, especially after the movie ‘A River Runs Through It’ came on the scene are able to get to the fishing and catching much faster. However, that often led to what I experienced at my 17 years of running fly-shops: a certain disconnection from one’s gear. It was common to have an angler not know what weight rod he had when wishing to purchase a new line, or not know how to attach a leader or sinking tip. Although the new gear and systems made it so much easier, the lack of necessary preparation and knowledge gained led to a lack of foundation. If something went wrong, they did not know how to address it. The purchased solutions of ease only worked if it included no interaction with the angler outside of the actual fishing.

 

This is why the anglers in the past, and older ones still present, are able to cope with many more variables. They remember the days of placing a safety pin or two in their fly vest to ‘come in handy some day’. That could be a motto for a whole generation…

 

Thrift and necessity led to experimentation. Experimentation led to knowledge. Knowledge in theory and application built upon itself to allow adaptation. Adaptation made us better anglers and more connected to our tools. Homespun may have itched a bit, but it was cheap, available and durable… and we made it ourselves and patched it as it wore. We didn’t just buy a new rod when the old one started to wear, we learned to re-wrap guides and varnish the thread wraps, we built leaders from scratch.

 

Speaking of leaders, I wanted a spool of nylon for building them back around ten years ago. I had none at my shop for the very reason that nobody bought the ones I had, and I had to sell them for ½ off. Even tippet material sales dropped off, because it was easier buy a new leader than to re-build one. That explained the reason a customer came in and told me that his leader was defective because the 9’ 5x contraption would not fit through the eye of the hook. I asked to look at it. It was a leader butt 2 feet long and looked like rope. On the explanation given, he replied, “What’s tippet?”

 

Tippet might be the direct link between us and the fish, but in the background, behind the scenes and present in shaded lamps seeing us bent over a task late of a summer evening before the morning fishing, that necessity of using one’s hands and minds provides a greater link still. That of homespun knowledge.

 

Copyright 2018 Erik Helm, of Classical Angler

 

 

The Eclipse of the Wet Fly

 

Of all the aspects and methods of fly-fishing, none stood so dominant and disappeared so fast as the wet fly and its fishing techniques. Look back to the book ‘Trout’ by Ray Bergman, one of the seminal tomes of the sport, and we find it opening at the very front with 9 pages filled with wet flies. Within 40 years of its publication, the wet fly in all its style, colors, and glory was eclipsed and disappeared like the passenger pigeon as newer nymph and bobber techniques developed allowing easier catching. Wet flies were banished to the lochs of Ireland and Wales from which they were born. Except… for people like me that are so curious that they can’t leave well enough alone!

Wet Flies on Hardy reel with my wet fly box.

For those that think that fishing with a wet fly is no longer a good way to catch trout, or inelegant, au contraire! It worked in the past, and it works just as well today… if it could emerge from the shroud of history. Not that there is much opportunity, for a trip to a fly shop and a query regarding a stock of wets might raise some eyebrows as very few or none are available, and the kid behind the counter may not even know what they are.

This is a shame, since all the thought and skill put into their development deserves another look. What about those gaudy colors one might ask? Well, see.. the developers of such flies as Greenwell’s Glory, Claret and Grouse, Tup’s Indispensable, Butcher, etc. designed them to be fished wet. When wet that yellow silk with a dark hook underneath turns the perfect olive. The claret becomes a wonderful glowing deep brown, and the oranges a fiery sienna. Wet flies can represent anything in the water in a swimming stage. Swung downstream they are a hatching nymph, pulsed and twitched a swimming nymph, and fished upstream an emerger. They are as versatile as they are beautiful. Those names that call from the past such as the Professor or Governor were lovely too. The lighter flies could be dressed with floatant and fished dry. Indeed, this is how the dry fly developed. The wet fly was first. A partridge and green, a wet fly without a wing known as a North Country wet due to it’s origin in Yorkshire makes a deadly caddis emerger in faster water. ‘Soft-Hackles,’ the category of fly that includes unwinged flies often hackled with soft grouse or partridge feathers have seen a resurgence in some circles due to their being championed and written about by Sylvester Nemes, but still seem to be a long shot to be found in an American trout fly-box.

In the past, and still practiced in the British Isles is the technique of assembling the “Cast.” This is an arrangement of a number of flies attached to a leader at different spacing and different arrangement. A point fly and droppers and dapplers: the arrangement of such and sequence leading to many scotch-fueled arguments and squabbles after the fishing was done. However, we don’t have to place 3 flies on a leader to fish a wet….

In fact, the oldest technique to fly-fishing may be the wet-fly swing. Funny, but that was eclipsed too, banished to the world of spey flies and rods. I keep having to explain it to anglers on the stream. No, drag is good! Just cast it across and swing it down below you. Control speed and depth by leading or following the fly with the rod tip. Add mends and experiment with casting angles. How many today could identify the Leisenring Lift? This is the moment the swung fly becomes tight and begins to rise in the water column: a sure sign to the trout that this bug is alive and needs to be eaten! A single wet fly fished on the swing or actively can be deadly! Tied on a larger hook such as a size 8 heavy wet hook, they can represent even a baitfish. One can fish them just as we fish a modern streamer.

It isn’t only the flies and how they were fished that were eclipsed and then relegated to the ash bin, but also the amazing art of tying the wet fly. The blending of dubbings and colors takes up whole books, as does correct feathers for winging and the proper colors of floss. The techniques of hackling a wet and how to reverse and hump a wing, correct proportions, and dubbing blending are an important aspect of the art of fly-tying, yet few people would even know where to start.

The ironic thing is it is easy. Tying the flies is comparatively easy, and fishing them is simple as well.

 

You don’t need any special equipment either. I like fishing heavy and long old wet-fly rods with sloppy action because I think it is fun, but any rod will work. Add a small sink-tip or sinking poly-leader to your line if you wish.

British tubular steel wet fly rod with a nice brown trout caught swinging a wet fly.

 

It might open angler’s eyes to a whole ‘new’ way of approaching the rivers and streams, but first we have to overcome the prejudice of unpopularity. G.E.M. Skues and Kingsmill Moore rusting away in some attic…

 

It makes no sense. The wet fly is still viable… Possibly even more so today when generations of trout have never seen its like on the stream…

 

Perhaps it is time to get a little wet…

Well Bought and Well Worn



One of Frosty's old fly boxes with 1920s Monatague rod and Hardy reel.

This year I went on my first deer hunt. I inherited from my Father a beautiful Steyr Mannlicher model ‘M’ bolt action with rich wood stock and fine bluing. He may never have shot it, and it certainly had never seen the field. I put on dad’s old hunting boots and took along a pair of wonderful Swarovski binoculars he used for bird watching for many years. After 3 hours of sitting in the cold on the last evening, the deer season ended without a shot being fired. I got up with numb legs and made my way down the hillside back to the cabin. Halfway there I had to step over a series of logs. Since I had limited feeling in my feet, my right boot caught on the obstruction and I took a header, putting a scratch in the rifle.

 

Back at the cabin after a dinner of wild game I showed the scratch in the rifle to my compatriots. “Good,” one of them exclaimed… “Now it is used and a real hunting rifle.”

 

I pondered on that a bit and then began a discussion on equipment and tackle for hunting and fishing. The theme that was developing was one of choosing one or two special pieces of gear, using them well, and caring for them.

 

Back home, I met with the son of Frosty Stevens, a fly-fisherman back in the day on the northern Wisconsin streams such as the Wolf and the Peshtigo. He and his wife made the 3 hour journey from home to make the gift to me of Frosty’s tackle including framed trout prints, his vest, and his beautiful hand-made wooden trout net among other things. It was a very special moment. They wanted the memories to continue with someone who could truly appreciate it. I was and am grateful and humbled. In the course of discussions, we discovered that his old fishing partner was Carl Blomberg. Carl’s son was Ron Blomberg, who married my mother’s cousin. We said at the same time ‘Six degrees of separation.” A connection had been made.

Frosty's wooden net. Hand made by Harry Baumann

 

As I examined the gear, I noticed one thing right away. The gear was well worn and cared for. The flies were used and little bits of tippet were still tied to several. They were arranged meticulously in old metal boxes, and most were hand-tied locally. The rods had dirty grips and sets to them. The leader wallets were worn at the edges. Frosty owned tackle that was among the best one could buy back in the day. It told a story of a man who was passionate about his sport, and the small collection of tackle was well maintained and well used. He chose his gear carefully, and from examining the knots and whatnot, I realized that here was a man who knew what he was doing, and did it very well indeed.

 

This is why I love old fly-fishing gear. It has a legacy. It seeps of history and encounters on the river and stream, and its owner’s personality and soul are part of it now.

 

Later that day I was looking at used tackle sites online, and I noticed something. So much gear had been purchased and was now for sale that was very lightly used and practically new. That led to some reflection on a bygone era in America and the modern world.

 

My grandmother owned a Singer sewing machine. A treadle model of all metal, it was used for years and years converting the older boys pants into skirts for the girls, sewing dresses, and endlessly patching and fixing things. For all I know, it most likely is still being used. It was probably an expensive model, and for a family raising ten children on one income in rural central Wisconsin, it was an investment. They had bought the best they could afford, used it well, and cherished it. They oiled it, tightened the belt, and polished it. It gave back in functionality by clothing the whole family during the Great Depression. Parallel this to fly-fishing gear and look at Frosty’s equipment and we see the same themes. Well chosen equipment, cared for and used. The purpose of the tool was more important than the quantity owned. Collectors would be laughed at.

 

If the limitation of owning a few pieces of fine tackle instead of 20 rods ever occurred to people like Frosty, it would be a foreign concept. One used what one had. Skill in the outdoors and reading and learning made up for limitations. If one had a hard time casting, he or she didn’t just sell the rod and buy a new one hoping that skill could be purchased, instead they went fishing and learned to use the gear they had.

 

Trout I caught this fall on Frosty Steven's old H&I Tonka Prince, his CFO reel and his line.

Contrast that with today. In our consumer-driven world things are commodities; their souls stripped by mass production, they no longer mean the same thing to us. They no longer carry the years and the memories in their dents and scratches, their worn pawls and gears. People buy and sell things in a never ending quest for the magic bean, buying into the concept that new equals better. Can’t shoot straight? Better buy a newer gun! On and on it goes.

 

Maybe it is time to take a trip back in the philosophy of commodity. There seems to be an emerging movement of downsizing and the craft movement is giving us special hand-made things that are beautiful and have character like Frosty’s wooden net. They used to call any of us that showed up on the stream with battered and well-worn gear “Old Timers.” I think that should rather refer to the philosophy of use rather than our physical age. “Buy the best you can afford, and choose it well. Educate yourself on and in the sport. Take care of and cherish the gear, and hand it down to the next generation with scratches and memories.”

 

My dad’s hunting boots which he never used are now muddy and need to be cleaned. I think I will leave the mud on, but polish them a bit and treat them with wax. A day one comes home without muddy boots is a day wasted.

We all have to pass through some day. I would like to go in style, with my boots worn, my vest patched, my reel scarred, and the cork on my rods well worn with memories of a life well lived.

 

Anachronisms and Jeep antennas

Recently I have come into possession of a 1950s vintage British Loch fly rod ten feet long and made of tubular steel. That’s right… tubular steel. Heard nothing good about this material? Heard that it was an evolutionary dead end in fly-rod materials? So did I. Until I cast this thing. Perhaps tubular steel might be worth a second look.

 

The rod is slow and very full flexing as one could expect. One feels the bend into the grip. It has a nifty little classic metal and rubber butt cap to allow the lower hand to perform some or most of the casting work and provide a fighting base.

So, if we think about it a bit, what we effectively have here is a switch rod, allowing both single-hand and two-hand casting techniques. Interesting. The rod has an agate stripping guide and tip, and is painted to look like bamboo. In the 1950s this would have been a less expensive alternative to cane, but with all the trimmings of a top of the line rod. Gee, but isn’t the switch-rod a modern thing? Nope.

Casting it is an exercise in slowing down and feeling the rod. When one gets it right, the line flies out, the rod doing all the work.

Back after WWII, the British commandeered surplus jeep antennas, and turned them into fishing rods. These non-purpose built tubular steel rods were rumored to be pretty awful, as one can well imagine. This rod is as far from a jeep antenna as one can get… although I did pick up the BBC on it the other day casting it near some overhead power lines…

What makes me sit and wonder though, is the forgotten possibility of tubular steel. After all, this rod is incredible, and that is with 1950s technology and alloy development. What would a modern rod made of this material cast like?

What next for the ‘Anachronistic Angler’?

The enigma rod

Fritz Schreck 8' 1" 6 wt rod and old Hardy reel with Irish salmon doubles

Part One, the Phoenix rising


“I have a rod for you…”

Thus it began the night before I was to drive up to the Bois Brule’ river in the pine and birch forests of Lake Superior to fish for steelhead. Packing and final preparations such as shopping for supplies and groceries would have to wait. I got a call at work from friend and bamboo rod guru Joe Balestrieri, and when he found out that I was driving to the Brule’, he uttered those prophetic words.


Dusk found me at his home, where he awaited with the rod and a reel spooled with a flyline. “I think you may like it, and nobody can appreciate it anyway, so I want it to go to a good home,” he said as he was taking it out of its green bag and putting it together. “Fish it.” “It might break, I dunno… It’s a Swiss Schreck 8 foot 1 inch.” “What….Who?” I thought. “Schreck? Geez, that means ‘Horror’ in German.”

He cast it effortlessly and handed it to me. “I think she is a 6/7,” he stated while sipping what he referred to as a Finnish Martini (Vodka and apple-juice). I picked up the rod and easily threw a tight loop of line 50 feet. I was surprised and shocked at how easy it was to cast a graceful loop with this rod. I pulled out more line and cast a tight 60 feet and the line cranked the reel at the end. “What the hell?” I stated out loud. “Did you tweak this rod?” “What the hell is this… What did…. How?” He was chuckling as we hurried to the safety of his den as it began drizzling. After a few glasses of his Spey-Side single malt that had more peat taste than bog-water, and long conversations on hand-made musky plugs, fly rods, angling, theory, art, aesthetics, literature and what-not, he bade me farewell to the Brule’ and I went on my way home with the windows open to hopefully dissipate the bog-smell from my person.

What was this rod?

It took awhile and a bit of searching before I could put together a provenance. Balestrieri had received the rod as part of some vague trade/acquisition involving a reel from some guy in Italy. The rod was made by a Swiss rod maker named Fritz Schreck, who, according to Rolf Baginski’s book on European bamboo, was a self-taught craftsman with quite a loyal following in Europe itself. He made rods under the ‘Kingfisher’ logo, and was noted for his taper design by trial and error, and for his eccentric way of using only the power-fibers of the cane, and assembling as many as 36 strips to make each section, instead of the common six strip method. Balestrieri had found some Swedish maple burl for a reel seat, and used it to compliment the odd but lustrous way each of the 36 pieces were flamed a different shade in the heat-treating process, making for long running lines of intricate blending of chocolates, coffees and caramels. He described the state of the rod to me as “A tomato-stake” when he got it. The reel seat and cork were past dereliction and some of the splices in the rod needed fixing.

Here was something new to me, and fascinating. A little-known rod-maker hardly seen or represented in America had crafted this fine instrument, and it had traveled from Italy to Balestrieri, who lovingly restored it, offered it for sale, and since nobody seemed to want it, sold it to me. It was back from the dead, complete with new rich brown silk wraps and a new bigger stripping guide, and destined to make music again on the water.

I placed it in my car in the morning, paired with a hangover and a Hardy Bougle’ mk IV 3 ½” reel. This was the “Use the good China” reel I had written about 7 years earlier after I found it in my reel bag nearly un-fished after I almost dinged it on a boat frame once. It was too valuable to fish… Then I was listening to a radio story where a woman was telling the tale of her mother’s good china which she had found preserved and safely put away after her passing, and decided to actually use it, unlike her mother. “Use the good China” became a symbolic phrase for sucking the marrow out of life, for using the good reel, and not collecting things to be used only once or twice on special occasions, but to brighten our every day lives with their use. So the Phoenix rod, back from the graveyard of an Italian closet buried under old shoes and the “Use the Good China” reel would be paired up. “Fitting,” I thought to myself as I arranged all the clutter of the trip in the trunk and back seat of the Volkswagen.

Part 2, the Phoenix fishing

On the Brule'

There would be no prettier place anywhere where I would go to baptize this new rod than ‘The river of presidents’. The lower Brule snakes its way through a canyon filled with a wild forest, grouse, and wolves. Their howling can accompany one through the woods on a late-exit from the river. On the drive up, I spotted a bull moose in a swampy field filled with cranberry bogs and springs feeding multiple river systems. A good omen, and a rare sight for Wisconsin.

I was alone on day one, for my friend was not to arrive until the following afternoon. I slept in the car that night, the cries of distant wolves haunting my sleep. The next morning broke bright and sunny, and I headed upriver to a smaller and narrower reach of the Brule’ and assembled the rod, geared up, and got on the water. Here I was, fishing the Schreck, and clearly completely out of my mind. There were somewhere in the river, steelhead pushing 30”, and I was using an 8’ 1” restored tomato stake and a reel with almost no drag at all. “Well, Carpe Diem damn it!” I thought aloud.

The rod performed flawlessly, especially with over-head casting. It threw without any difficulty a 7’ sink tip with a large green-butt skunk tied spey-style. It could perform spey-casts too, although it got tricky with a rod that short and a sink-tip and large fly. The rod and I got to know each other that day. I slowed down a bit in my casting, became smoother. I began to bond with the rod. I sat on a rock and looked at it in the bright sun. Not a gaudy rod, but rich with somber hues of memorable scotches and morning teas. A rod built for a purpose. Sea trout? Grayling? A workhorse. It did everything I asked of it within reason, like a fine shotgun that just mounts to your shoulder and swings like an old friend. Pick up the line.. backcast… put it down… and the rod was accurate as an arrow too!

Last year our little crew was visiting with two young fishermen from Minnesota late at night in the motel parking lot, when after enough lubrication for the tongue and 3 days fishless one of them solemnly brought forth the following phrase, “The Brule’ is beautiful, but she is a cruel woman.” This could sum up all my trips here for steelhead, where a swung fly, despite all the beautiful water, just has a hard time connecting with the fish, despite my long steelhead experience, or those of friends who she has enticed to her waters and dismissed with a turn of face and a wry smile. However, I would be guilty of sacrilege worthy of being tarred and feathered if I were to fish a nymph or pink plastic worm thrown with a bobber and split shot on that holy place, or with the new rod. We left after 3 days of hard fishing, knowing the river a good deal better, including why not to follow me when I think I find a deer trail, and having a wonderful time altogether…albeit fishless.

Part 3, Back on home waters…

Storms followed me back from the Brule’ the whole way, and by the time I was back at work, the skies were dark with rain, and the rivers coming up in flow. The first opportunity I got, I was in my local Lake Michigan tributary armed with the Schreck rod and a new sense of hope and expectation… and wind.

It blew. 30 mph gusts and sustained winds of 15 to 20 mph greeted me as I got my feet wet. Oh hooray. Perfect place for a bamboo rod. Up-stream winds too. I had to use a sling-around modified Belgian cast in order not to hook myself in the ear. I had to wade closer in order that my fly would not land upstream of me. Leaves littered the water. Every cast seemed to hook a leaf. If I dangled the fly in the water it collected leaves as the fall winds cleared oaks, maples, elms and willows of a color palette rich in frustration.

I took out of my old rusty Altoids tin a blue and black tube fly dressed in the wing and body to resemble an Atlantic Salmon fly. It was the choice not to resemble a leaf, and offer a big enough target in the optical-saturated water.

The rod performed beautifully given the horrible conditions. I still had to wade closer to the taking lies than I wanted, but found with a 25-30’ cast I had perfect control to steer the fly around in the bubble line and boulder bottom. I yearned to catch a fish, lake run brown or steelhead alike, either would be fine. I was like an anachronism out there in the river. Nobody does this... a bamboo rod and a big classic fly fished on the swing for big fish. I felt like I was summoning ghosts of the past as the winds whispered and wailed with imagined voices, and shadows raced across the water.

Then it happened… or something did. I had a tentative grab on the terminus or dangle of my swing. Instinctively I did nothing. Another little pull. It was definitely a fish, but since the river had king and coho salmon in it, I was afraid to set the hook, lest I foul hook a decaying salmon. Finally the loop of line pulled out from my rod hand, and the reel turned a few clicks. Aha! The ‘Aha’ turned out to be a small 19” steelhead. I set the hook, and was off to the races. The little male couldn’t really go too far in this water, so after a short battle and a screaming reel, my little Schreck rod bent and unbent and easily landed the fish, my heart beating a touch faster now.

What a hell of a rod. A true one of a kind, possibly the only one in North America… and I had baptized it ten minutes from my home.


The rest of that great day was spent in love with the rod, but frustrated with the fish, due to either the optical saturation of leaves in the water, the bright sun, or a combination of factors, I kept getting very tentative grabs like a steelhead coming for the fly, grabbing it, and then dropping it during the turn. I had six of these non-hook-ups in all, one which pulled out drag on the reel, and when I set the hook, found nothing but empty water. I just couldn’t seal the deal until evening, with dusk falling, I waited out the tentative grab again, and when I set against only a speculation of feeling, was hard into a steelhead which went upstream and airborne, causing the reel to sing an aria and the rod to take a deep bending bow to luck, to provenance, to history. “I have a rod for you…”

I stood looking at the fading sunset now painting the horizon a deep pink matching the sides of the steelhead I just released, and thought about the chain of events that found me here with a smile on my face, with a rod I never had heard of, and even if I had, never would have understood without casting it. A rod from Italy made in Switzerland by an eccentric genius reborn in loving hands and restored by my friend to bend again in the wind and on fish. What a journey.

Another very worthwhile blog

Samual at Headwaters of History ( Link: http://www.headwatersofhistory.com/ ) has put together a site dedicated to fly-fishing history, conservation, and other subjects and musings. An excellent read, inciteful, and frequently updated, this blog is one of the little gems, in this writers opinion.
Check it out!