I’ve heard it said that all fishermen stay young until they die, for fishing is the only dream of youth that doth not grow stale with age.
I forget who said it, but it must be true.
When I was about 14, I started wielding a fly rod, and did fairly well that first summer.
However, when the fall weather chilled the streams my confidence plummeted with the mercury, and I reverted to using worms.
My great uncle Scott Blankenship from Bluefield occasionally would invite me on a Sunday afternoon fishing excursion to nearby Western Virginia streams.
He was only in his mid-60’s at the time, but most of his life had been devoted to two things: fishing and baseball. (Not to mention that he was a U.S. Army machine gunner in the Argonne Forest during World War I.)
His favorite hurler had been the great Walter Johnson, who once pitched back-to-back no-hitters in a single day for the old Washington Senators—at least, that’s what my uncle Scott told me.
He’d flip his fly line and lean his head back and proclaim proudly: “On a cloudy day, you couldn’t e’en see the ball. The umpar had to listen fer the ball to hit the mitt. One day, the ketcher looked back at the ump, after he’d called a strike, and said: `Didn’t that’en sound a bit low, ump’?”
I’d heard him tell it a hundred times. But I always chuckled, out of politeness, I suppose.
Uncle Scott was a die-hard baseball fan, all right, and he was just as devoted when it came to fishing.
He toted a tackle box laden with fresh-water flies of all colors and sizes.
I guess he must have programmed the feathered creations in their special plastic containers the way a country doctor kept his pill bottles.
Having retired in his late 50s, the old man lived to fish. And he rarely missed an opportunity, even if it meant teaming up with a novice like me.
But when he saw the worm on my hook, I received a proper lecture, then he demonstrated that trout would, indeed, still take flies, even in hot weather.
He was a graceful, accurate caster with the uncanny smarts that most anglers could only dream of attaining. Within seconds a rainbow danced to the surface of the stream, near the shoreline where he waded.
After releasing two more fish he waded ashore, then from a small wooden box plucked a fly he identified only as a “brown bug.”
It had a spindly brown body with long, skimpy hackles. “When ya git home,” he advised, peeping over his wire-rimmed spectacles, “git yerself some twine and some brown feathers outta yer pillow, and make yer own.”
He pointed to a rock near the edge of the stream where we were fishing. “Git downstream from where ya figger the fish is layin’, then study yer water upstream. Ya gotta chuck yer fly in jest the right spot, so’s it’ll wash down like a real bug. Flip that line up and git some slack in ‘er.
“Ya fly fishin’ or tryin’ to snag ‘em?
“Now chuck that fly up above that rock and let it come back on a slack line like I told ya. When a fish grabs it, the line’ll give a little twitch—But ya gotta pay attention or ya won’t see nuthin’.”
I cast where the old-timer had pointed, then without seeing the fish hit or setting the hook, I was promptly into a nice rainbow.
“By gosh, boy, ya learn fast!’’ crowed my aquatic mentor. “Always knew I missed my callin’—I shoulda been a teacher.”
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Top o’ the morning!