Keith Barton’s post, Old School Best Left to History, over at Singlebarbed.com was too funny! But it brought back some great memories too.

In the mid-80′s I had a friend who was learning to fly fish. He asked me one day if I wanted to go fish with him. I told him I didn’t have any fly fishing equipment. He suggested I ask around. So I asked my dad. Sure enough, he had rod, reel and flies.

All of his tackle was from the mid-60′s. I never knew my father to fly fish. In fact, I only knew him to fish once. We were on a family vacation in the high sierras. We had a small rubber raft on a lake. I had a small rod and reel combo I received for a present. We stopped and picked up some worms on the way up. While on the rubber raft in the middle of the lake something grabbed my worm and took it and the top half of my pole away with him, then snapped me off. I was left sitting there with half a fishing pole. The rest of the trip didn’t fare much better—it rained four days straight and we sat in the tent while my father told fractured fairy tales (like the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons).

I borrow my father’s tackle to fish with my friend. It’s all in pretty good shape when I borrow it because he used it only a couple of times. The pictures show the use I put it through during five years of fishing with it.

There was a reel in a box. It was an automatic reel (if you haven’t experienced one of these, find one to play with just for the heck of it). The reel had line and leader. (I have the reel somewhere, but I couldn’t find it for picture-taking.) It looks much like this one. There was a fly box:

and some fine “floatant”:

This wasn’t any fly fishing trip, this was to Henry’s Fork. At the time I had no idea this was a fly fishing hot spot. That snobs, dry fly purists and other hoity-toities would be there, bedecked with the finest accoutrements money could buy. I was just some bumpkin showing up on their fabled waters with a Garcia rod, a box of purdy-lookin flies:

and the best waders I could borrow:

There I was, standing along the shore (couldn’t wade too far in with those hip waders) frothing the water with my garishly bright fly selection while well-dressed dandies gently wisped their flies about. In the two or so hours I was there with the other five or so fishers, I walked away having caught three fish, the others were fishless.

These are the actual flies I used on that little expedition about 20 years ago:

I believe it was the beautiful red one in the center that caught the fish for me.

Thanks for the memories Keith!

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