FLY FISHING IN STEWART PARK (Without Vedder Crossing Grasshoppers) Background One of the real joys of having a skilled outdoorsman for a father was always being able to look forward to the weekends. Of course, during the school year weekends offered a break from studies (except homework) but they would often promise to be an adventure either hunting or, more frequently, fishing. My dad used many styles of fishing and he was comfortable in any type of fishing trip. If we were off to Campbell River for salmon fishing by boat near Quadra Island, Ripple Rock or any of the adjacent waters...he was game. Tyee or any other type of salmon or even halibut and bass was okay. He was skilled at trolling or jigging and we never came home skunked as he knew which areas and times were best. During one summer we camped at Miracle Beach near Black Creek, the Gulf of Georgia could be counted on to produce and we fished our hearts out limiting each day. When I look back, it was not much of a holiday for my mother who was at the camp canning salmon which was no small feat given all was done with a Coleman stove, endless cans of naphtha and cases of Mason jars. I know once canning for the day was done she would bask in the sun, read books and swim...she always considered it a ‘rest’ although it seemed she was working hard putting up innumerable quarts of salmon for the coming winter. When it came to fresh water fishing my dad could troll and spin cast like a champ. If it was steelhead time, then his casting of a spin’n’glo with a treble hook and a glob of home-made roe (he used more “20 Mule Team Borax” for preserving roe than my mom ever used in her washing machine). He could make the pencil lead weight dance on the river’s bottom as the fluorescent coloured float would signal the location of the inviting spin’n’glo and egg mass. Fishing with a fly rod was my dad’s greatest joy and he was a purist. Nothing but the best quality, custom-made cane rods ever graced his skillful hands. The names hand-written on the edges of the cane shafts were memorable: Scotty, Featherstonehaugh and Fenwick. He had an array of different bamboo cane rods with matching reels; with each reel having multiple drums that could be swapped out surely and quickly. Each drum had its own special fly line- dry or wet, rocket-head or regular. Whatever the river run was before him, he had the exact array of equipment at his disposal From the late spring until the fall it was given that trips to the Cache Creek area for fishing the Thompson River would be almost a weekly event. The area of Deadman’s Flats near Kamloops Lake downstream towards Cache Creek would prove to be productive. As crazy as it seems we would travel a terrific length of the river, upstream or downstream from Wallachin by means of a specialized hardwood boat with a Nova-Scotia hull. How I started as a fly fisherman. When I was knee-high to a grasshopper (about age 8) I was deemed to be ready to learn the art of fly fishing. The only non-cane fly rod in the house was an 8’ composite one with a simple 1:1 fly reel and a sturdy dry fly line, backing and a 6 pound leader. I remember it was a Friday night when dad sat on my bed and told me it was time for me to learn how to fly fish. Like the .22 cal. rifle I was taught to handle and shoot the year before, getting my hands on a fly rod was a privileged rite of passage. “Are we going fishing this weekend?” I asked. “No, but you will be practice fishing tomorrow morning” was the answer. This is not what I had in mind. I thought I was to join him and my older brother Clare. Clare could fish almost as well as our dad and I envied him. After I had breakfast dad brought out the composite rod and reel. He took it all apart and showed how it was assembled, lining up the rod pieces properly...even demonstrating how the tension controls worked and how the bearings were installed on the centre shaft. I learned all the right names of the parts and how to care for everything and safeguard all against damage. He taught me how to safely carry my rod trailing behind me, where to position my hand to hold the cork butt. I learned various knots self-constricting knots used to attach a leader to a fly line and a hook to a leader. This took a couple of hours. Out came his fishing bag with all the aluminum fly cases I admired so much. There were hundreds of flies of different sizes and types; categorized for salt, freshwater, salmon, trout, dry, wet, straight or off-set shank, hook size, etc. He allowed me to pick out a large salmon-streamer – it was big and brightly coloured. He then took the hook and, with his fishing pliers, cut the loop and barbs off. As I looked at him like he was crazy he explained that I would be practicing in Stewart Park until I could competently control the rod, line and fly. I was a bit crest-fallen. With that, he picked up a hula-hoop and walked out to Stewart Park as I followed, rod in hand. He told me where to stand and then paced out about 30 feet and laid the hula-hoop down. As I stood to the side he flawlessly demonstrated each fundamental of fly casting and line handling before handing it all to me. He stood there patiently and continually coached me as I tried repeatedly to control the rod (10 o’clock; 2 o’clock, etc.) and feed the line out as my wrist action provided the necessary power to give action to the rod’s tip. I needed to keep the line, leader and fly off the ground until the final forward thrust when, letting the line held in my left hand go, caused the final section of line shoot out in a graceful loop and drop the fly into the centre of the distant hula-hoop. I practiced for a long time that day...and in succeeding days, often with an audience of kids from the VLA neighborhood teasing me and kibitzing. I told them to keep their distance and avoid the hook, which, of course had no loop or barb…but they didn’t know that. Undaunted, I persisted. After a week’s practicing I could feed the lineout, keep it off the ground and get that fly consistently into the hula-hoop’s middle. When I had mastered that objective, I informed my father who came out to verify my claims with direct observation. He pronounced me ready to join him on his next trip. I was so very proud- I was Roy Scott certified with a rifle and a fly rod. It was mid-week and the next weekend was to be a trip to the Thompson River to fish for Kamloops rainbow trout and we could use some grasshoppers from Vedder Crossing. Catching grasshoppers I knew about for I had done it with him and my brother Clare on many occasions before. Thursday afternoon was a warm, dry day when I got off school. We had supper early and dad, my brother Clare and I went out to the Camp Chilliwack Long-Distance Rifle Range at Vedder Crossing. It was perfect. Dry, ankle-high grass and gravel a seventy yards wide and over three hundred yards long. We each had our own corn-broom with which to trap a grasshopper as soon as it landed. By slowly drawing the bristles back you could slowly expose the grasshopper without hurting him and then grasp him gently until he could be put into our waist-mounted bait boxes with a spring loaded lid. The box swivelled so it was always upside down with some grass in it. As you righted, it the hoppers would then be on the bottom with the grass on top of them...affording you enough time to open the lid and deposit your latest hopper. Every half hour we would empty our bait boxes into a grasshopper cage my dad built. It had good 1”X1” wood framing and was fitted with heavy duty nylon fly screen- it had a hinged lid with a series of positive latches. Filled with some dry grass, leaves and twigs...it made a nice home for the hoppers for the next last days of their lives. (By the way, fiddling with the latches and opening the lid while sitting in the back of the family station wagon, hauling a boat trailer, driving up to Cache Creek was a bad idea. One could often see grasshoppers and other insects hitting a vehicle’s windshield but seldom could one see grasshoppers hopping/flying out of a vehicle.) Once we got to our camping spot on a piece of private property at Walachin, everything was quickly set-up. We would try and stay in the shade avoiding the heat of the day, have supper early and be ready to get as many hours of fishing in as we could during the late afternoon before loss of daylight would compel us to return to camp. Supper out of the way, we set off on our boat to a terrific spot accessible only by water and put ashore. We got our rods ready and then I had a quick course in how to mount a live grasshopper onto a straight-shanked bare hook. One had to thread the hook into the underside of the hopper under its throat...feed the hood through the thorax and then down and out the abdomen in one steady manoeuvre. When done right the hopper spread its vibrantly-coloured wings and moved its appendages non-stop. Can you imagine what that looks like to a fish gazing up at a meal spread out on the water’s surface? D-y-n-a-m-i-t-e Dad placed me just upstream from a particular hole and watched as I did a perfect cast out upstream of the hole and slowly raised the rod tip, gathering in a bit of line at a time. On my first cast I got a soul-satisfying hit as a 3 pound Kamloops rainbow trout attacked the irresistible grasshopper. The hook set, I played that fish in the fast moving water for over 10 minutes while my dad watched and called out suggestions about ‘let him go – you only have a 6 pound test leader’ or ‘pick up the slack line’. Apart from verbal coaching, dad declined to help me at all. Having tired the trout out, he was coached to the river’s edge where the water was slower in a back-eddy...allowing me to dip my net under him. After I had the fish under complete control...only then did I look at my father who was beaming as much as I was. That was my first fish on a fly rod and, as long as I live, I shall never forget it. I caught two others that day but none could compare with the exhilaration of my first one. There began my love of fly fishing which continues to this very day. One of my sons is an avid fisherman and thankfully, Dianna shares the fishing bug with me. A bad day’s fishing beats a good day’s work every time: https://youtube/watch?v=GehkRQWGjAk
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 17:06:02 +0000
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