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Advantages

 

 

To simply being there!

 

This image from the northern part of the Big Lake in NH captured this morning on a Web Cam.  Ice not out yet but it can't be long.  It's forty two degrees up there and obviously the air is warmer than the remaining ice.  Makes a nice photo, but the advantage is in being there to catch the magic moment.

 

Just for continuity, here's the shot from Rattlesnake Island we have been watching.  Won't be long!

 

 

THE PLAYERS

Time has shown that there are basically five of my friends who comprise the group of anglers who have gone each spring to the semi-wilds of New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesauke.  All of this in search of the lowly landlocked salmon.  We would gather on the last Wednesday in April and stay until the following Sunday.  In no particular order I would like to introduce the Players.

Frank, "Abe", or at times "Boat Ride"

Abe, or Frank Bell,  is our host and has been so since 1968, the first year.  That year, he and his father co-hosted me, so it was no big thing.  We went just to prove that there were really salmon in the lake and more importantly that we could catch them. 

 

Abe and I graduated High School together.  He went on to college at Colgate and then to Penn Dental , followed by a hitch in the army as a dentist.  I recall visiting he and his lovely wife at Fort Leonard Wood, in Missouri.  At that time, I was working for Merrill Lynch in my first two years of training to become a commodities broker.  I was in Chicago where I had gone for a two week training period, a brief stint which turned into six months.  When I finally left the windy city, I and my wife took a detour to visit with the young dentist "Captain" and wife in Missouri.  We then drove back to our New Jersey home through some of the more scenic back roads of W. Virginia and Virginia.  Sometime around then a book was written about the "Blue Highways" and we followed the same on the map from old Miss to Westfield, NJ.

After discharge, Abe started a dental practice in Oldwick, NJ which is central to that state in Hunterdon County.  We, at the time lived in Gladston, NJ, which was only a few miles from his office and home.

The two of us roamed around hunting most of the farms around his home in Bissel, NJ,  and became members of the Black River Road and Gun Club in Pottersville, NJ.  The club maintained a couple
hundred acres of prime hunting land and over two miles of one of the most pristine trout streams in the state. It was one of the few streams in which still had a natural spawn of brook trout.  Abe and I would each go on to preside over the club some years later.  It was on this water that we each honed our fly fishing skills.

Abe is the consummate fly fisherman.  He has whetted a fly in some of the most famous streams from the Yellowstone to New Zealand.

The lake property and house in New Hampshire was owned by his grandmother, Louise Strubin.
With her passing, Abe's father, Frank Bell, Sr. and sister owned the place.

Finally, as in most families, the property went to the offspring, Abe and his sister, and now to their children.  The property was some hundred acres of deep woods and probably 200-300 yards of shore line.  

Nicknames have stuck since high school but some more important ones added on our trips north.  "Boat Ride" stems from the fact that Abe owned the boats and drove them most of the time.  But when we didn't catch fish, he lost the title of captain and became simply "Boat Ride".  All the nicknames are used in a friendly derogatory manner, I might add. 

He was then labled as driving the tour bus and not performing his duties of guide.  It's tough living with our crowd.  If you perform, you are one thing and if you don't, your another.  Either way, you got ragged.  I think you will discover that there is no such thing as winning in this group.

"The House Magpie" on the left and our host, "Boat Ride" on the right

In his role as "Captain", he generally calls the shots with regard to the rules of fishing and our daily pool.  He is downright scornful of;

1.) an extra rod in the boat---called a boat rod and that absolutely does not count in the pool.

2). All lures must be predominately single or tandem hooks tied with feathers----metal lures do not count.

3) And lake trout do not count in the pool Bill!  Hell, we can't even convince him to allow Rainbow trout in the pool.

4) And don't even talk to me about bait!

John, "Green", or the "House Magpie"

John, AKA John Greenfield, was Abe's room mate at Penn Dental.  Yep another dentist!  A very nice guy who started out using a spinning rod and a plastic lure called a "Repala".

Now remember the rest of us are purists.  That is, when angles for trout or salmon, nothing rises to the level of a well tied artificial fly, on a leader, on a fly line, cast or held by a fly rod and reel.  So one of Abe's best friends shows up with a "Wall Mart" spinning rod and reel,  and a "Repala".  A "Repala"!  A Repala is a plastic thing made to swim just under the surface of the water and imitate a three or four inch minnow.  The thing has two or three treble hooks hanging.  I think in his second year he showed up with a "Wall Mart" (green fiberglass I think) fly rod.  He now became a full member of the club.....but. He insisted upon using a huge ghastly yellow fly called  a  "Barns Special".  This fly is meant to imitate a young perch, which is about the fifth most tasty bait on a salmon's shopping list.  It is designed to catch fishermen at the tackle store.  The rest of us use flies that approximate the most prevalent fish in the lake and number one on the shopping list, a smelt. To the best of my knowledge, he has used that fly on every trip for forty years.

 Over the years, John began to get the message and changed his ways to include other fly patterns such as the Red Grey Ghost.  That fly has caught more salmon on our trip than any other single fly.  So John went from trip goat in the early years pretty consistently to only a modest goat in our later years.  Don't get me wrong.  We all have been goats.  Your humble writer himself being one for a solid two and half years.  There is nothing wrong with that other than it is painful as hell when it happens.  And the "Friends" make sure the pain is real.

 

 

"Green" shows how to troll a Rapala on a green Wall Mart fly rod!

 John is of the opinion that the slower one plays poker, the better or more successful he will be.  He also holds his cards tightly and very, very slowly opens the hand one card at a time.  He does succeed in driving the other players from the table to do some minor chore or other and be back in time for him to bet.   His success is also inversely proportionate to the amount of adult beverages consumed.  Or course that could be said of any of us at the table, although two of us went through AA along the way and are still sober. The title of  "House Magpie" was they result of way too much Vodka one night.  He got very talkative and played his cards a lot faster as a result. That trip does test one's resolve. 

John is also the only one to suffer a heart attack while on the trip.  He felt ill, but was not diagnosed until he returned home.  Thank God.  He is in good company though as one of us has had a blood clot, another a stint in the chest, and the third a triple or quad by-pass. None of which are good enough excuse to miss a fishing trip, but amazingly we are all still on the green side of the dirt.  I mean if you can't physically fish, you can at least drive the boat.

 

More to follow!  I mean ice isn't out yet!