26 Jan 14

Chapter 5

THE BIG LAKE AND CAMP 1958

Lake Winnipesauskee is in the center of the state of New Hampshire and is a glacial lake that is 182 miles around , 72 square miles in area, and with  253 islands.  It is just the type of place for two budding anglers to explore.  And explore we did!

There was and still is a 14 foot tin boat which was our craft of choice, not because there was a choice at that time, but because in 1958 it was our only boat.  It might have had a small outboard motor, but I know it did have two oars.  Over the years, this boat has been affectionately named “Putt” for the sound it makes when running.  Or, perhaps  suggesting that it is the little boat that could!  And it was/is.  I believe more fish have been caught from this little vessel than the totality of the tuna boats in all of the Atlantic and a good number in the Pacific.  Well, that is probably a fiherman’s exaggeration.

The Bell Camp consists of a main cottage, a maid’s cottage, and a guest cottage all on about 100 acres of big woods.  There is also enough waterfront to make most realtors salivate. The main cottage consists of a kitchen, one bath, a screened in porch, living room, and three bedrooms all with no insulation.

  The fireplace is a primary source of heat with some small electric baseboard heaters for really cold nights.

There is of course the obligatory boat dock and a small rocky beach.  The rest is pine woods, owls, deer, red squirrels, chipmunks, ducks, and loons.  I suppose there have also been the occasional bear and moose wander by.  The half mile road into the camp is of course dirt, and needs to be managed every year as runoff turns it into a roaring stream as soon as snow is out.  

Ice out on the lake is an entirely different matter.  Guesses and pools amongst the locals all around the lake are taken, and the winner actually guesses ice out not within days, but hours and minutes.

Over the years, there have been subsequent trips where chain saws, hammers and saws, and paint brushes were amongst the fishing gear.  At times even golf clubs were thrown into the back of a Suburban, pick up, or SUV.  The fishing gear itself reduced itself in volume as the years progressed.  After all when you are young, there’s no telling just what lure, line, or fishing rod you might need.  We have had to refill the wood shed on a number of trips and felled dead pines to replentish it.  Yes, we burnt white pine exclusively and almost steadily for the usual five days we were present.  And yes, it became a problem one year but I get ahead of myself. 

I recall that first year of introduction.  Small mouth bass, perch, and a few pickerel were the staple of the finny creatures to fall to our offerings.  There was a place called by the family as “The Spot” which was about 150 yards off shore of the property.  None of the locals knew where it was, but some could be found watching Abe’s grandmother with binoculars, row out in “Putt”, and then catch bass one after another.  The spot today is marked by GPS, but still produces good catches.  

On our excursion, we fished the spot a number of times with success using night crawlers and helgrimites.  I lost a “Large” fish at the black bouy across from the house and to this day I am sure it was a salmon, although the time of year was way wrong.  It struck, ran out about seventy yards of line and broke the lure off, all in the wink of an eye.  We found a small cove that had a few pickerel, and spent hours catching and re-catching them.  They were not kept because of their boney nature on the dinner plate.  And this was my introduction to the big lake in 1958.

24 Jan 14

Chapter 4

 THE OUTFITTERS

My introduction to what is called, by natives of New Hampshire, as the “Big Lake” began with a requisite stop in Wolfeboro, NH. There was any number of reasons to stop in this beautiful lakeside town. The first and foremost was to find out if the fish were biting. The rest of the reasons then developed from there. We had to obtain fishing licenses and buy bait. All of these “Reasons” were fulfilled at a place along the side of the lake called the “Lake Regions Sports Shop”. A stop there was not necessary, it was mandatory! As the years moved on this sporting good store was the place where one bought a license to fish, flies to tie on the long leaders also purchased, sinking or lead core lines, and any type of fascinating flies that the owner himself tied. The other needs for supplies developed over the years as the necessity of purchasing food and adult beverages became important.

The Lake Regions Sport Shop is no longer in Wolfeboro, having been push out by a growing wine sipping, arts, and crafts crowd that have made the rents impossible. But the place in it’s time was as classic as a Norman Rockwell cover. It was owned by one Jim Warner who kept up on what the fish were doing. He would tell us who was catching what on what, he ran the shop, tied the flies, and was an all around nice guy.

Jim created a great number of the flies still used today as the lure of choice for old Salmo Salar. He is credited with inventing more than one of the flies which are supposed to imitate the smelt. Smelts are the small bait fish in the lake which provide most of the forage for the larger finny predators such as the bass, lake trout, large perch, and land lock salmon. In fact, the famed fly “Winnipesauke Smelt”, tied with tandem hooks is one of his inventions.

The latest part of April and first days of May are generally the time one wants to be on the lake to fish for salmon, and as the years past I think the arrival of the guys from New Jersey was always fun for Jim. When one asked for a license, he would say something like “Two of the other guys had already arrived”.

This was a pop shop of “Mom and Pop” fame, and Jim ran it as though you were his long lost brother. If you had gained a few pounds since the previous year, he would always say…..”Been eating well I see.” He must have remembered every one of his customers and was loved by most of the serious sport fishermen in the region. In April of 2002, Jim tied a memorial fly for his friend and fishing companion Vincent David Rodgers, Jr. This was the kind of guy he was, and so created the”Ghost Smelt” in Rodgers’ honor. 

Jim was probably the last of the proprietors at the shop who would know first hand the straight story about the current fishing conditions. When it was salmon time in the spring, Jim would be out on the lake before the shop opened trying his luck. He often could be found on spots considered a favorite by local fishing guide and friend Glenn Morrill, who he called the “Dean of Winnipesauke”. They fished such spots as Moose and Ship Islands, Rattlesnake, and of course Wolfeboro Harbor where the store could be found.

Sadly in recent years the shop in Wolfeboro was sold, resold, and moved out of town. After Jim retired, the old shop had just lost a lot of charm. Yes, the equipment, flies, live smelt, night crawlers, and hellgrammites could still be purchased. But it just wasn’t the same. And the town was changing. No longer was it the lazy old town of the lake front home of the private school up the hill. But rather it is a tourist town which had been “Found”. 

Jim still ties some flies to sell there and they are still as good as forty years ago, but you cannot find one with the old double trailer hooks. However, I do in fact, still have a couple of those old “Red Grey Ghosts” I bought on the first trip in 1958, and they still work!  

22 Jan 14

Chapter 3

"ROAD TRIP 1958"

INTO NEW HAMPSHIRE

After a high school graduation trip to Maryland, it only seemed appropriate that two apprentice fishermen with a summer free before college take another “Road Trip.” This time we were on the loose without the pressures of a chaperon but with all the juvenile anticipation of the unknown.

My friend and high school chum, Frank “Abe” Bell, was so named because he was born on Lincoln’s birthday. At least that is as close as we can come to fathoming his parents reasoning for such a name. His grandmother had a place on Lake Winnipesauke in New Hampshire. I had a 1957 or 1956 Pontiac station wagon.  That is the car in the background of my senior prom photograph and we took that vehicle into places that only a four wheeler would be seen today.

The Road trip was on.

I don’t remember the dates but, suffice to say, it was sometime between high school graduation in June of 1958 and the September beginning of college at Colgate and Penn State. Abe would go on to become a dentist and it took me eight years to earn two degrees before becoming anything like a meaningful contributor to society.

We had the time to caddy for golfing members at Westfield’s Echo Lake Country Club. I think that we were paid something like $18 for each bag for 18 holes of golf. And if we were lucky, we could get two rounds a day. High cotton back then! Today I don’t think I could carry one bag for nine holes, which is probably why those guys hired us kids in the first place.

Had we the time to earn more dollars, we would probably have ended up in northern Saskatchewan on this trip. Only because I like the word Saskatchewan and the way it rolls off the tongue. Sort of like an Elmer Fudd word, no not Fudd. Daffy Duck, that was it! "Sufferin Suckatash" type word.

As it was we made it to the upper reaches of Maine where we visited a high school chum whose parents ran a summer camp. But that is another story altogether.

Bear in mind this was the latter part of the summer of the mid 50”s. The major highway north to south was U.S. Route One, which was and still is a road meandering through most major east coast towns. Just about every red light invented by mankind can be found along this road. Today major interstates make the of 337 mile trip about six hours from central Jersey to central New Hampshire. We had no cares with regard to time…one drove and the other navigated. I think that gasoline was somewhere around thirty cents a gallon and we were flush with all those caddying dollars.

We both felt as though we were accomplished hunters and fishermen, having mastered the use of shotguns, bows and arrows, spinning rods and fly rods. We were the definition of the typical "North woods man"! In our own minds at least.  Neither had fallen any meaningful big game with bow or gun, other than a few errant squirrels and maybe a rabbit or two. Remember, we had to do our big game hunting in a major residential town, with the stress on the word residential. Today we would be arrested on the spot as armed and dangerous criminals.   Probably suspected terrorists wandering armed through our neighbors backyards. I recall there was a large raccoon, which probably counted as our group’s big game trophy. I think I was the one to climb twenty feet up the tree to shoot it, while the other five guys circled the base of the tree shouting encouragement or at best good natured derisive ragging. Baying like a pack of hounds.

Fishing on the other hand was second, just behind dating, in terms of our personal hierarchy of importance. We were good at dating and thought that we knew just about everything there was to know about fresh water fishing. I was an accomplished Chesapeake Bay salt water fisherman by then, but that really did not apply to this trip. We were headed to the land of big small mouth bass, pickerel, and wild trout. Did I mention we were good at dating?

I think that we took more fishing equipment than clothes on that trip, but we were only seventeen years old and could easily live out of the back of a car. Both of us were budding fly fishermen and were severely hooked on that type of angling. We tied our own flies, read every “Outdoor Life”, “Field and Stream” and “Sports Afield” article ever written about fishing or hunting. We dreamed about the small native brook trout and huge brown trout of the northern wilderness, the famed cut throat of the west, and the sea run rainbow and brook trout of the Canadian provinces. I suppose about that time Bill Gates had not even been born, let alone dreamed of the computer programs that made him rich. All we knew was fishing, while he was building a fortune out of his garage.  But we were going to partake of some of the best fishing in the country on this trip. In fact, the topic of girls never even came up. Much!

As I recall the actual driving was an adventure in its own right, again remembering that we were both young, maybe adults of seventeen. The travel in New Jersey was mostly the Garden State Parkway north to the Tappen Zee bridge and across the Hudson River in New York. From there it was likely the Merritt Parkway, north through Connecticut, and probably State Rt. 66 before reaching the infamous Mass. Turnpike. I now can almost visualize every turn with my eyes closed after making that trip every year for over forty years. The roads have changed as have the route numbers, but from the Mass Pike one took U.S. Rt. 125 around Boston and then Rt. 3 north through Manchester and Concord, NH before turning northeast to Wolfeboro. When at Wolfeboro the camp was only a few miles, but this little town turned out to be the base of supplies and stories for years to come. 

20 Jan 14

Chapter II

"A NEW AMERICAN GOTHIC"

In Search of Salmo Salar Sebago

It was “All in the game” and we were ready to “Catch a falling star” in the spring of ’58. Songs of the year on Billboard, school was over, loves loved, and new ones anticipated. Graduation from Westfield Senior High School in New Jersey and an era ended.

Elvis was inducted into the Army. Gigi, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Defiant Ones were hot movies of the year. Khrushchev became the premier of the Soviet Union and De Gaulle the Premier in France. But who knew?  Laurie London told us we “Had the Whole World in our Hands” and the Everly Brothers said “All we had to do was Dream”.

To write about ones high school class is a chore not taken lightly and one repeated over the years by many authors with varying degrees of success. This however, is not a story about a high school senior class. This is about two high school seniors embarking upon a life long adventure neither expected, but by which both have been amazed. Let it be said that I was and am not an “A” student as the song goes, nor a student of the English language. But I was a kid who was capable of transcending the cliques within the student body with a reasonable degree of aplomb.

Our class, not unlike most, was defined by the “Jocks” and what we now call the “Geeks”. The “In Crowd” and the “Out Crowd” were other significant descriptions. It is truly amazing to find these designations were virtually gone as early as the thirtieth year reunion. I guess because I played varsity baseball that I was in the “Jock Crowd”, but also a bit of the “In Crowd” because I dressed preppy cool. I think that I was also a member of the “Out crowd” too because I didn’t drink, never went all the way, or owned a motorcycle. I did own a ’51 Ford coupe, metallic green, and that was “In crowd”.

The car was customized as was the style of the time and I can remember trying to put after burners on the twin exhausts with the help of my friend Abe. He held the spark plugs to the exhaust pipes and I thought he said to go ahead and try it by turning on the ignition. The resulting shock caused him to jerk his head up in a crashing collision with the bumper. He was under the vehicle at the time. Abe still reminds me of that for some strange reason.

Even though the graduating class was large, there were smaller cliques as defined by a number of different things. In my case our group was defined by the neighborhood in which we lived. Whychwood was a small area of Westfield, NJ which was and is a bedroom community serving the New York City market. Many of our fathers commuted to the City every day, mothers kept the home, and we went to school. We walked to high school until one of us was old enough to drive, seventeen at the time. It would have been so un-cool to ride our bikes.  As I recall the first to get his license to drive was Kenny, “The Worm”!

We played sports after school or worked at part time jobs or both. In my case I worked part time in a sporting goods store, The Sport Center, all four years of high school. I worked three to six every day and nine till six on Saturdays. During the Christmas holidays we were open each night of the week until nine o’clock. When I worked until 9:00 PM, I ate dinner across the street at Jarvis’s drug store which also had a pretty good restaurant. School was over at 2:30 in the afternoon each day, so there was not a lot of free time for things like studying, dating, hunting, fishing, and baseball. But we all seemed to get it done including the requisite hanging out with friends at places in town like “Shades”, a soda fountain type place in town.

Innocence was never lost back then but high school hopes were always high. If a girl were to get pregnant, a real scandal would result and one out of 250 or so was a rarity. Graduates were headed for new lives, but most were destined to drift apart from their buddies after graduation.

After graduation, a summer of final togetherness was necessary before the ritual of college began. In other instances, jobs began and the reality of life was an earlier intrusion.

The nucleus of my crowd included the likes of Tom, Rick, Kenny or “Worm”, Bob or “Bobby”, Jim, Frank or “Abe” and me “Skip”. Normally after graduation, a week at the Jersey shore was the norm. Seaside Heights, NJ was the spot. This trip was really like what the college crowd today calls Spring Break. It was a right of passage for most of our colleagues. However, my parents and those of my immediate friends were much more visionary than us. We were restricted to home base and not allowed to play with the rest of our class. No drinking and womanizing for us. This really confirmed our “Out crowd” status much to our parents delight and our disgust.

I had introduced my friends to bow hunting and fishing in school so a replacement trip to my parents place on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay was the second choice. There were fewer girls, and no drinking, with my mother was the chaperon. Sort of like being followed around by the Pope 24/7. This fit the other parent’s idea of a week’s after graduation celibate celebration. We had a good time fishing, crabbing, water skiing, and chasing girls in places called Rock Hall and Piney Neck. We caught more fish than girls thankfully, so it was still a time of innocence.

The Maryland trip was the seed for a lifelong experience. This experience established a precedent for two of the graduates which carried them forward to a forty plus year tradition. A tradition not duplicated by many people within a lifetime of experiences. 

18 Jan 14

Moning all! 

 I have decided to continue my line of nostalgic thoughts for the next few entries.  For some forty plus years five of my best friends and I made an annual trek to the Big Lake in New Hampshire in search of camaraderie, booze, poker and incidentally fishing for land lock salmon.  This is the story which I posted a few years back but feel is worth repeating.

LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE, NEW HAMPSHIRE

It is late April or possibly very early may. In fact it is very early in the morning in the New Hampshire wilderness, probably 5:30 or 6:00 A.M. Well, as close to wilderness as one can get on a lake in a state so near to Boston, Ma. The sun has not completely risen over the Eastern tree line. A tree line comprised primarily of fir and pine, each competing for every square millimeter of sparse rocky soil.

The sun is still filtering through all the air pollution from the major metropolitan areas to the south such as Boston, Connecticut, and New York. The rising light is playing off the different chemicals deposited in the air, creating all the different colors one sees during the "Golden" hours.

Here the air is clear, clean, fresh and still, and likely cold at that time of morning. It smells of the pines where we spent the previous night, tightly rolled in sleeping bags, in a cabin built during the depression of the 30's.

There are five men who have spent forty two years waking to this scene or a thousand variations thereof. For over forty years these same five have endured each other's company for a week of landlocked salmon fishing on Lake Winnipesaukee. It is probably one of the only chances these men have to be together each year and the friendships can best be described as closer to that of brotherhood. There are times, of course, when the brotherhood is tested, but then that is more like sibling rivalry. Each is approaching or passing the seventy year mark, but when the card games heat up and adult beverages flow, one would think they were still in college.  

Or at least think they are of college age.

Or simply behave as if they were college age.

In the first years we would play cards till midnight and fish at five AM. The measure of the adult beverages consumed was in the gallons. Today, bedtime arrives around nine pm and an occasional bottle of wine or vodka is seen. Amazing what maturity can do, or undo!

Two boats, sometimes three, set forth into the image accompanying this piece. Each man is filled with anticipation of the first fish of the day (first winner in the daily pool of categories first, biggest and most) and even perhaps the largest of the day.  If taken early it thus reduces the competition, and creates a good natured ragging. Ragging is defined as railing, tormenting, or teasing.  In our case torment is the most appropriate definition.

Coffee cups rest on the gunnel's or seats of the boats. Fishing rods are held with anticipation, and another adventure begins. "Just look at that water", says one. "Today has to be a great day to fish". "There I saw a salmon rising to the surface". You can see such things on mornings like this. That vision was seen during the dreams of the previous three hundred sixty days.

It is really a great day to be alive pursuing the noble object of Sir Isaac Walton's prose.  Walton’s treatise is a difficult piece to read, but it is however the bible of the angler and not to be taken lightly.

16 Jan. 2014

Regression!

 "A return to a former or less developed state. A return to an earlier stage of life or a supposed previous life, esp. through hypnosis or mental illness, or as a means of escaping present anxieties!"
WOW!
I never actually looked that word up in old Websters.  Till now that is.  My last post I included a photo of my fly rod and a sunfish which I caught.  Well, seems to me that I started out my life of pursuing the fishes by catching just that type of fish.  And that's why I think I am regressing.  I mean now that I have earned the right to get my senior citizens discount at the grocery store, I should apply all that experience to higher challenges.  But that seems to be all that I am catching.  No elusive trout, noisy big mouth bass, no more the streamlined landlocked salmon, the iron sided tarpon, drum or bill fish.....Sunfish! I guess that ought to tell me something.  Right?
And let's tear apart that definition, just to be sure.  An earlier stage of life?  Well sure we all seem to remember the stuff....some good, some bad.  Just seems that now those memories become a lot more clear than the reason we just walked into the kitchen, which purpose alludes us.
I guess when I caught that first sunfish, I was former or less developed of myself.  I know I was younger and just a tad more stupid than now!  But then at age 8 or 9 you're kinda expected to act in a less mature way....aren't we?
Hypnosis....nah!  Never has happened.  But I have had some dooseys of dreams in the early morning hours.  And after I wake up wonder where the h... did that come from.  But I am not a big fan of dreams predicting anything, so being hypnotized is unlikely at this point.
Mental illness.......well I leave that up to friends and family to decide.

But, maybe the readers can see something that I can't.  Brings to mind the old joke where an individual was asked "Has there been any problems with mental illness in your family"  Answer...."No we all seem to enjoy it"!  

So that leaves --- Escaping one's anxieties!  Well yeah!  We all do it.  Don't we?  Only seems that I don't have those meaningful past anxieties any more, just a whole set of new ones.  But here's were the neat part comes in.  Because I am a seasoned citizen (note, did not say old), I am expected by one and all to behave in a certain way.  You know sit in a rocking chair in the corner and slurp and drool.

Don't think so!

That old challenge is still there!

Frankly, I don't know where all this blather came from today!

18 Jan 2014

There comes a time, generally in Jan., Feb, March or April, that I get all nostalgic about one of my favorite pastimes.

  Fishing.  

Maybe it's the smell of a pair of old waders in the attic or a landing net in the garage that kick off these feelings.  Or some one's painting of a lone fisherman along a Canadian stream in early morning mist.  Or even one of my own photos of a good friend on some stream, lake or ocean. 

 I suspect that at this time of year, there are others out there in the ether that have these same gooey feelings.  If you too are of the fraternity of seekers of piscatorial delights, just sit back and let your mind wander for a moment to your favorite place and favorite old fisherman's tale. 

I am, and the Pike Place is hot and steaming in front of me!

Long before I ever picked up a camera, I could be found wading a central New Jersey trout stream or sneaking along some pond casting for bass.  Of course there were those years, starting at age 14, that I learned to stalk the stripe bass of the Chesapeake.  And for forty plus years the on male bonding trips to Lake Winnepasaukee in New Hampshire in search of Landlocked salmon.

For some reason, I don't do much of that anymore!  Once in a while I try to educate a few of the smaller creatures over at Lake Murray.  I would like to more but duty calls from other directions.  So I live it vicariously in those early morning cups of coffee.  And you dear reader must  suffer through my ramblings.

I grew up in a time when the outdoor writers for the likes of Field & Stream or Outdoor Life were those that actually did go out and fish or hunt and were simply story tellers.  Such great writers and such great stories that a teenager like myself was taking trips to the great spots in America, Canada, Scotland and South America.  All on the shoulders of those fantastic writers.  Today, the closest magazine to those old issues is the Gray's Sporting Journal where one can still find great writers.

Today when I see a bunch of fish in the shallow waters of my mind, I can harken back to laying out forty feet of fly line and landing a dainty Royal Wolfe fly in front of the nose of a record breaking brown trout.  Done that and been there....both mentally and physically.

So, I guess my personal old man's regression is still through the literary annals of other writers who are now doing the "Doing".  I have walked that walk and now enjoy watching others doing the walking.