The Fly Rod

[iboats.com]

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I was pretty happy with my willow pole, worms and a bobber for several years. The war was over and we had moved from the country to town, so I had to bicycle a few miles to my favorite fishing holes. I guess I was a pretty familiar sight cruising down Main Street on my bike with my pole sticking about 9' in the air, like those antennae on the State Troopers cars, and a can of worms in the basket. I sometimes tied a small flag to the top of my pole.

I would pass the town park, where young veterans, still in uniform, sat and swapped stories with the old timers (WWI veterans) or played checkers while waiting for a job to come along. The young men wore a badge signifying an Honorable Discharge sewn on their uniforms. They jokingly called the eagle on the badge a "ruptured duck". Mike Nicholson was usually there in his wheel chair. He had left high school to enlist when he was 17 and got hit very near the end of the war. The Army had built him a new thigh bone, but it took several years before he could walk on it well. He would return to high school a few years ahead of me.

The woodland where my favorite fishing holes were now had a sandy set of ruts running through it for vehicles, so I occasionally shared my fishing hole with people who had cars, and even a rare boat. It did make it easier to get there on my bike.

I liked to set myself up on shore by a shallow cove, where bluegills often spawned among the lily pads. After scouting for snakes I would settle down with a worm drifting under my bobber as far out as I could reach and wait for action.

This day there was an elderly gentleman in a small boat quietly paddling himself about the pond and casting a popping bug with a fly rod. I loved to watch an expert cast with a fly rod. It had that fluid grace that you rarely see in man-made things except maybe a sloop under full sail or a modern sailplane.

I had, of course, hungrily studied the stories about fly fishing in <i>Field and Stream</i> and <i>Outdoor Life</i>, and dreamed of someday becoming a fly fisherman. But things like a handmade split bamboo fly rod and the special floating lines, etc, were well out of my reach those days. Just something to dream about.

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I think I had strung a couple of respectable bluegills and a goggle eye (rock bass) when the fly fisherman's boat glided into my cove. He cast his popper nearly at my feet between a couple of pads. The water exploded and he had about a 2lb. bass leaping and cavorting about almost within my reach. Holy Cow!! I had been fishing right over that bass for at least an hour and had no idea that it was hiding under those pads!

After landing and releasing the fish the old fellow beached his boat by me and stepped ashore. He asked if I recognized him. I didn't. He said he was the Air Corps Major that "Uncle" Jim Willis and I had brought to this pond for a day of fishing several years before, during the war. He was now retired and lived in a nearby town.

"How would you like to try out my fly rod?" he asked. Oh, my!! Would I?
We climbed in his boat and he paddled out into the pond. After some clumsy swings of the rod I realized that I had no idea of how to cast with it. He took the rod and demonstrated, carefully explaining about casting the line and not the lure and the timing of the back cast. After a couple of hours of practice and gentle coaching I was able to gently drop the popper in open water pockets in the pads and caught a few bluegills and one small bass. I did not release them; I was a meat fisherman.

As the sun dipped toward the west my benefactor delivered me back to where my bike was parked and asked me to meet him at his car, parked on the other side of the pond. I loaded my stringer of fish in my bike basket and made my way around the pond. He was pulling his boat up on a small sandy beach. He left it there. You could do that in those days. Other people might use his boat, but nobody would steal it.

We walked over to his car, a gorgeous, 1936 Ford station wagon with a "boat rack" on the roof. "I brought you a souvenir from Japan to thank you for taking me fishing when I was stationed here." He reached in the back seat and brought out a lovely wooden box about 5 inches square and 3 feet long.

I unlatched the brass catch on the lid and opened the box. It took my breath away. Some dreams do come true! There was a beautiful, three piece (with an extra tip section) split bamboo fly rod, a reel, a spool of floating line and a small box of flies and leaders.

I fished with Major Magid several more times before his untimely death, but I will never forget his kindness to a scrawny kid who loved nothing more than fishing and who dreamed of becoming a fly fisherman.