1 Feb 14

Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

Time has shown that there are basically five of my friends who comprise this 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.  Needless to say he became our family dentist and remained so until to his retirement.  Since the beginning just about every tooth in my mouth has fallen out, but I don't think he had much to do with that.

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.  My late father in law introduced us to the club and we were subsequently offered membership.  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 New Jersey which still has 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 wetted 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 did'nt 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.  I think you will discover that there is no such thing as a winning hand 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 are regards 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 "Rapala".

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 "Rapala".  A "Rapala"!  A Rapala 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.

Bill, "Willy the Cape", or the "Bead Merchant"

As in any group of men who at seventy something years, and still consider themselves to be in high school, nicknames have a tendency to stick.  Bill's is no exception and his refers to his physical appearance to a chicken or capon.  I think this name, not the least humorous to the reader, was probably created back when copious amounts of adult beverages consumed by the group.

"Willey the Cape" displays his professional angling style.

Bill lived in Hunterdon County, NJ and was introduced to me by another member of the group a few years after our first trip north.  He ran a Christmas shop in Hunterdon County, just outside of Oldwick.  The shop sold all sorts of decorations including beads and hence the "Bead Merchant" moniker.

Bill is a tad bit older than the rest of us, has had a couple of wives but is the last one would think of when one conjured up the dashing, Hollywood, concept of a ladies man.  But, who knew!  He is a consummate fisherman with almost as much experience in salt water as fresh.  Bill loves to analyze why the fish are biting or not biting, which drives the rest of us nuts. 

Consider this.

A backwoods cabin, deep in the New Hampshire woods, six men all sleeping in sleeping bags, in their long underwear (for at least three days), and Bill has to have sheets on his bed.  Pajamas and bathrobe with slippers.  That's Bill.

This is the man who never learned, in some forty two years, how to play poker!  We would have to explain the rules with each deal, each year!  If anyone could bluff at our card table and win, it would be he!  We play nickel, dime, quarter, dealer's choice......All the time!  If the ante is a nickel or dime, top bet is a quarter.  We don't look to make money at this game, just have fun.  If Bill bets a quarter....everyone folds.  Everyone.  He never bets, let alone raises.  He could have a royal flush and still bet only a nickel.  But that's bill.

He has had more real and imaginary physical problems up there than anyone.  Too cold was his excuse for not fishing.  His hands would get too cold.  Or his feet.  The rest of us would just layer up and not complain.  Poor circulation I guess.

One of his wives tried to keep his diet on the straight and narrow (this is not the place to do that) and put him on a low cholesterol regime.  He showed up at the lake one year with a dinner comprised of a turkey sausage dish.  Abe, upon seeing what he was expected to eat, reacted at the top of his lungs in the way only one of us could.  "Cape, what is this ....?  Insert any crass term referring to excrement.  I have to admit it was pretty bad, but we never went hungry.  

Three guys would bring  a dinner, one breakfasts, and one lunch materials.  One night we ate leftovers.  Needless to say there is enough cholesterol to stop up the Lincoln and Holland tunnels combined.  One year every one of the dinner people brought the same green vegetable.......Canned pees.  We ate those things all week long!

And who of us could forget the call from the bathroom to the one who was making a run to town for something (Probably more beer).  It is a call that compares in the north woods to that of a lonely loon.  You know that long sound one hears during the night from over a calm water surrounded by echo.  Plaintive, pleading as only an old horny bird can make, in the still of the night, when looking for his mate.  "Don't forget Feenamint!"

Paul, "Pauley", "Fuzz", DC or "Dumb Cop"

Not such a  dumb cop when he was working.  He became one of the three or four NJ State Policemen to become Captain.  But to us he will always affectionately be the "The Dumb Cop".  Paul lived across the street from "Boat Ride" in Bissel, NJ.  He has been part of the NJ crowd for years.  The town where they lived was nothing more than three roads coming together, but they were the prominent citizens.  Like the rest of us they were always sawing and cutting wood for wood stoves in the winter, growing vegetables in a garden, and raising animals which eventually made it to the freezers.  Real, gentrified, country folk.  I think he in fact, was the one to find one of the "Capes" wives in Abe's swimming pool naked with a local judge.  But we are not completely sure of all of those facts.

Paul's a big guy and in fact once at the lake picked me up in his arms and dumped me unceremoniously in the lake.  Ahhhh, the good old days and an abundance of beer and scotch.

Deal Pauley

Paul is at the end of the breakfast, lunch, dinner, and poker table.  He is probably the most avid poker enthusiast in the group.  No naps....."Let's just turn a few!"   I think that quote has been uttered a thousand time by him.  He caught on to fly fishing rather early after hanging out with Abe and I, and also took up golf.  In my opinion golf is down there, as a sport, right next to "Bait" fishing.  But we have three in the group who do it all the time and are fairly good.  This photo also reminds me that most of us smoked at one time or another.  This photo was taken back,,,I say back,,,,,when we were younger and thought we would live forever.  Today. the only ones who do smoke do so only on this trip.  I cannot understand that at all, having been a two pack a day guy myself long ago.  That is also not a milk carton on the table....probably Cheez-its or some other health food.

Paul is probably the one of the men most easily teased.  He takes it so well, but only up to a point.  Which is the point.  Caught one yet Pauley?  Here smell my hands.  This is what we're up here for.  Or perhaps it was the night at the card game when Paul so annoyed his host that Abe took Paul's watch and threw it against the wall.  Took a couple of days for everybody to get over that one.  But still remembered.

The one good thing about having him along on the trip was because he was a cop.  That meant we could drive at just about any speed we wished.  If stopped....."Paul get your badge out"!  One trip somewhere along the highway in Massachusetts, the gumball machine behind us went off and the trooper pulled us over.  His immediate commend to us, instead of license and registration please, was "You guys look like a bunch of cops going on a fishing trip".  Honestly, that was the opening line.  Paul flashed his badge and we sat and talked about the NJ State Police Picnic for fifteen minutes.  He never once commented about our speeding.  Good to know people in high places.

He also gave each one of us his business card.  Said to use it as a get out of jail free card if ever pulled over.  I tried it once in Maryland and the trooper asked me for my badge.  I told him to forget it as he probably never got the memo.  I guess he was too young to understand  reciprocity.

Pauley is probably one of the hardest workers when it came time for "Chores".  On certain years we had to do such things as a group as chop firewood, paint the porch, or build an outdoor shower.

DC is on the left with the St. Pauley Girl non-alcoholic beer.  Abe's too sons are center and rear center.  Green left middle and the Cape middle right.  I took the photo and Boat Ride is on the right with the evening or noon cocktail.  Not pertinent.  We are not a bad crew. Please notice the fact that the right wall of the newly constructed shower is parallel with the door.  This is an extremely modern convenience as proven by the hook upon which to hang one's underwear.  Perhaps a towel.

Dave, "Davey", or "Tumbler"

"Tumbler" lived in Hunterdon County NJ, and like most of us was a country gentleman.  He lived in a completely renovated old field stone barn, which was an incredible treat just to see.  He was a later addition to the crowd, but was one of the most creative people I have ever met.  His vocation was basically in New York, as was mine, which meant a two hour commute each way.  We lived at the end of the train line so it made no difference if we overslept going either way.  To this day I will never forget those old seats on the Erie Lackawana line with a bar car thick with smoke.  From the outside that car looked like it had window shades, so thick the smoke.  There was always a card game where hundreds of dollars changed hands each night.

Again nicknames stick.  This one came from a night of sipping wine.  Well, it's a little hard to justify sipping when one uses a tumbler to drink his wine.  Generally somebody has a little too much fun and earns some kind of recognition.  In this case the quote is "Hey Davey, want another tumbler?"  And of course the nickname.  It is all so much more descriptive than Dave.

This man in another of one of the most consumate fishermen in the group.  One year he tied his own flies because he felt that the comercial ones were too full or bushey.  Smelt are slim or svelt fish, not fat little chums.  Hence the tied an bunch of flies which we all used for a number of years and had amazing success.  

Please ignore the ant in the photo, but afterall I am a nature photographer.  The top fly is one of the five or so patterns Davey tied and we are still using some years later.  The bottom is the famed "Red Grey Ghost" pattern tied by Jim Warner of Wolfeboro, NH.  These Warner flies are classic and renouned all over New England.  Dave's flies, while not as well known, are certainly just as effective. 

Dave was also the owner of Miss Saigon, a Ducker boat he carried on the top of the car from Georgia to New Hampshire many years. 

This is a blog entry I wrote upon the listing of the boat for sale

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Au revoir Miss Siagon!

As most of my more intelligent and informed readers are aware, I travel to New Hampshire each spring fishing with a bunch of cronies who have been doing this for to 42 years.

If your not aware of that or don't fit into one of the two categories above.....you need to follow me more closely!

My friend from Hilton Head has for years carried his boat from Hilton Head to Wolfeboro, NH (2131 miles) and used it as his personal fishing craft.

The images here show the last voyage, 2008, of "Miss Siagon".

She is an antique and for sale.

Here is the proof of the boat's effectiveness in a photo entitled "Rainbow over Miss Saigon"

You cannot pass on this investment opportunity! Well, you can but I can't keep my used car salesman attitude hidden for that long!

The Boat

1. 3136 Ducker’s were produced
2. Built from 1947-1969
3. This one is serial number D2427 was built in 1957
4. Ducker D2427 was built by the Alumacraft Corp. in Minneapolis, MN.

She is for sale and any offer over $4000 will greedily be accepted. You also have to pay shipping and of course I have other pertinent photos of said boat.  She originally was built as a boat used to hunt waterfowl. Two hunters would venture forth in this thing and because of it's low profile was a pretty good hunting tool. Trust me....two people is crowded.  And.....the recoil from one shotgun alone would move the boat three feet on a calm day!

"Tumbler" and I have spent many a day on the water together either, just being quiet and absorbing the nature all around us, or discussing what's going on in the world in which we have absolutely no control.  Good company when I can get him off Miss Saigon.  He puts more hours in on the water than any of the rest of us and can catch fish.  Myself excluded.

One year, when fishing was great but catching slow, he decided that we needed to chum for salmon.  Now that is a salt water fishing trick used to lure predator fish to the boat.  One chops up smaller fish and throws the mess overboard to form a slick on the top of the water and chunks just under the surface.  All year long whenever he made tuna fish for salads or sandwiches, he saved the oil from the can.  He must have had a pint of the stuff.  They evidently ate a lot of tuna fish!  Now you know where I am going with this.  

Bear in mind that we "Purists" would never reduce ourselves to such a coarse attractor as "Chuming", but when nothing else works......well who knows.  He and I went out in the middle afternoon in "Putt" to do some serious fishing.  I don't think that we had caught as many as four legal size salmon all week, it was Friday, and a real morose attitude prevailed within the group.  So, we armed ourselves with ample snacks and drinks (this may have been the day he earned the Tumbler name), three flyrods and a spinning rod with (Gasp) metal. 

There is a narrow spot between Cow Island and the shore line where we have had a modicum of succcess in the past.  Place is called the "Barber's Pole", because the post used to mark the shoal is painted like a barber's pole.  I would guess the spot is somewhere around two or three hundred yards wide, a half mile long,  and offers depths from a few feet to around 30 or 40.  At any rate, the wind generally does not blow too hard in that cut, and a chum slick would stay put instead of blowing up on shore.  With all the lines out, Dave pulls out the magical elixir.  I could smell it from fifteen feet away.  Not good but we were alone and no one would no the difference unless I were to say something.  And you know I did. 

After a pint of the stuff was dumped on the water, we started to troll around it in reasonably consistent circles.  Now for you earstwhile salmon fishers, this is not the silver bullet.  We did catch a couple of fish just over the 16 inch legal length.  Unbelievable.  But the good part was when we once again met the rest at the cocktail table.  I of course had to tell the rest what he did and we spent an hour or two discussing the legalities of chumming up a landlocked salmon.  The end result was that neither fish counted in the pool which had, because of our lack of luck all week, had grown to substantial levels.  Too bad because I would have shared some of that cash.  We have a first, biggest, most pool each day for two dollars each.  Hence it is six bucks per man and one fish can be as much as thirty dollars per day to the catcher of same.

Skip, "Willy", myself

This is the tough one.  How does one write about oneself.  With humor? Autobiographically? With tongue in cheek?  In all seriousness?  In something akin to reverance?

Yes.

As I have stated here before, Abe and I go back to high school.  You know when the wagons were still crossing the country.  Or at least it seems.  We have hunted together.   Dated together.  Played pool together (his parents bought him a pool table).  And of course fished together.  Well live near enough that we could see each other weekly either in school or in young adulthood.  We both married girls named Sue.  He had two sons and I a daughter and son.  Grand children now.   He is still married but I messed it up and am divorced.  There were not too many years that I did not attend the trip to the Big Lake and when I did not, it was torture.

I am not really sure what the big draw or devotion to that place is for me.  I recall my current better half and I visited the lake in off the season and I very nearly quietly came to tears.  Why?  I am not sure, but it is the memory that place represents.   Not just the five days each year or the five very good friends that partake.  It basically has been a distinct part of my life for 42 years and represents where I have been in my journey and where I have not been.  Everything is connected it seems.  I recall having to take vacations just prior to making the annual pilgramage, just to keep the peace.  Planning what I would bring in the form of my assigned food chore.  In some weeks before the end of April each year, getting the fishing equipment ready.  This includes taking each of the tandem streamer flies out and passing them through steam from the tea kettle.  That steam sets up the feathers like new and they seem to last longer, look fresher, and stir the adrenlin.  My steam is this visit to New Hampshire each spring.

I am still astonished that after all these years all six of us are still alive.  When I was in my mid twenties or early thirties, and in my quiet times, all alone, I just hoped to live to the age of forty.  Now I want to live to a hundred so that I can act the way people think appropriate for an old man like me.  "Oh well, look at his age.  What do you expect".... age.  Only the good Lord knows how much I or the other  five have left, but I can say this.......life has been richer, more interesting, and a lot more fun with those guys and that trip. 

As I am generally behind the camera, this is one of the few images in my files in which I am a member.  From left to right......Tumbler, Boat Ride, the House Magpie, Willy, Willy the Cape, and Pauley.  The unholy six.  I repeat, now you know where they get all those stern portraits from at the "Cracker Barrell".

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30 Jan 14

Chapter 7

BEGINNINGS

The first salmon fishing trip three of us took was one very cold experience if memory serves. The cast of characters were Dr.’s senior, junior, and I. We used fly rods with of floating, sinking, or lead core fly lines, long leaders of six pound weight, and tandem streamers to attract old Salmo. A fly line is about 90 feet long and we experts attach another 10 to 15 feet of light six pound monofilament in front of the fly. Then we sit, stand, and sometimes lie down in a boat and drag our irresistible creations from dawn to dusk. Of course as we got older the mid-day obligatory nap shortened our man hours each day. As the years past however, no one on the lake spent more man hours per fish than we, when we were there.

I was probably one of the last of the three to land one of these northern fish, but I will never forget my first strike and the immediate “Oh Shit”, as the fish dropped the fly and returned to the depths. It was as if something wanted to take the rod out of my hands in a micro second of rod bending, splash, and epic jump. The involuntary verbal reaction has stood the test of time and is uttered repeatedly trip after trip……time and time again. It simply means a fish has been lost and not caught. And our frustration is voiced in that coarse expletive. It’s strange, it’s automatic, it’s well…….it’s just Oh Shit! The salmon, I am sure, has a different reaction to that moment. Of course they have a brain the size of a well used pencil eraser and their reaction is all reflex and probably not thought out. At that point our massive brains seem to approach size of the other end of the pencil and we react out of reflex as well.

Other terms which were initiated on these trips and carried on through the years were such utterances as “Boat Goat”, “Goat”, “Boat Ride Bell”, and the latest term, christened in 2009, was the “House Magpie”. It always seemed that each year a story, or mostly a joke, was shortened to a word or two, and repeated all week long at appropriate times accompanied with nonsensical laughter. Other comments as “Baseball been bery, bery good to me”, referring to a type of poker game that “Boat Ride Bell” coined. It reminds me of the old story about the jokes which were reduced to simple numbers by a group of old men who repeated them to each other so often that all they had to do was to say Number 3 or number 4.  They would all would be reduced to hysterics each time. When a newcomer to the group tried it, nobody even cracked a smile. Perplexed, he asked why?  And he was told that he evidently he “Just couldn’t tell a good joke”!  Well, that’s us!

Those first years were marked with the presence of Dr. Frank, Sr. and his long line, spinning rod. He figured, and perhaps rightly so, that the further behind the boat his presentation; the less disturbed the fish would be, and the more likely he would be to catch one. Of course we purist experts scolded him about his aversion to the amateur behavior with a “Spinning Rod” and not a fly rod. He never relented. He caught a few like that, but we teased him unmercifully about the long line. Comparing his technique to that of the tuna trawlers found on the high seas of the north Atlantic. Some years later I personally proved the long line technique to be no better than just a few feet behind the boat.

There were a number of fond memories of the good doctor, his card playing, the cocktails, and how he fit right into our “Younger” crowd. One trip up from New Jersey, he was driving and we thought that we would be found dead in the back seat of his big Lincoln Towne Car. He managed to pass a New Hampshire native who was just doing the speed limit and not harming anyone. Solid yellow line and Doc passes the fellow, deep on a curving road, in a fairly secluded pine woods. He has long since past, but also still has not lived down that bit of NASCAR trickery.

There were also mornings, and evenings for that matter, when the water on the guides of the fishing rods would freeze solid. The rods would have to be banged against the boat to break the ice free. Thank God for all the adult anti-freeze we had on hand. We were still cold, but didn’t notice it as much.

Over the years, there have been 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 amount of fishing gear became less 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. In fact in the last year, I dragged around one fly for all five days. But those early years with Abe’s father were special. After he retired to Florida, he would be the first to call on the evening of the first day of our trips. Always anxious to find out how we did and who was winning at the poker table. He was a nice man who left a lot of fond memories and not just for his immediate family, but his extended family as well.

That extended family has evolved into six people who can abide each other’s company for more than three days.....only once a year. They are Abe, John, myself, Paul, Bill and Dave was awol. These may be the men who are the history makers, but we sure as hell are not photogenic.   Now I understand where they get those pictures of old people in the antiques frames that hang in all the "Cracker Barrel" restaurants.

28 Jan 14

Chapter 6

Isectacio Salmo Salar Sabago

The real adventure began after we were all out of college and working at our chosen professions.  The period between High School and the first salmon trip to New Hampshire was a busy time.  College was begun and finished, marriages happened, careers were launched, children were born, and new groups of friends established.  Fishing more than an hour away from home was moved down the list of important things to do.  It took eleven years, but that itch to roam is sort of like a bad rash the keeps coming and going.  It’s always there, just takes a trigger to get it going again.

It was somewhere around late April 1969 when Abe, Abe’s father, and I went to the lake to fish for salmon for the first time.

That is "Isectacio Salmo Salar Sabago", or "In search of landlocked salmon".  Prior to this we had only heard heard about salmon in the big lake.

Landlocks are the same fish as the Atlantic salmon; however they live in a closed environments such as a lake. They also do not run to the sea and then return to the rivers of their birth to spawn as do their Atlantic brethren. As a consequence most all of the fish in Lake Winnipesauke are annually stocked by the state.  The mature fish are netted in the fall, the normal breeding time for these critters.  They are stripped of their eggs and milt which are then taken to hatcheries to grow and thrive in order to provide for future generations.

The first salmon taken at the Bell Camp was not by one of our merry band of expert anglers, but the wife of our perennial host.  Both Abe and I married girls named Sue.  And it was always told to me that his wife, Sue, caught the first salmon at the camp in bright sunshine off the dock on a spoon called a “Daredevil”.  However, the log for that day, also reports Abe as having caught a Salmon off the summer house that day as well.  The summer house is actually a gazebo perched on the rocky shore line on a small point of land about 40 feet from the main house.  The dock is directly behind and to the right of the summer house as we look from the water.  When we fish, the boats all leave the dock and we race to see who can get a line in the water first.  Many is the trip that the first fish caught was only fifty yards away from the dock.

This is the spot at which he caught his first fish.  For years neighborly fisherman say that they would laugh at us as we leave the dock on our daily forays.  Many would wait until we have left and then fish just about where this photo was taken.   It is a favored spot amongst the local anglers who know the water.  However, I contend that after forty years there is know one who knows these immediate waters better than we “The Expert Anglers”.

More pages from the log will show up here as I progress, but this is the one for June 21 and 22 of 1964. The fishing logs are incomplete, and our neglect at keeping an accurate record has plagued us over the years. I will endeavor to reconstruct as best as aging memory can serve.

The best time for fly fishermen, in our opinion, is immediately after the winter ice has finally melted for the season.  This usually happens in late April or early May, but can be as early as March such as this year of 2010.  The theory, and we have proven this to be an angler’s fact, is that the salmon (preferring mid fifty degree water) and lake trout (also preferring fifty degrees) stay within the layer of water that offers the most optimum temperature for their species.  It is sort of like we old folks moving to Florida when our blood circulation gets so bad that we need warm weather all year round.

The fish follow the temperature of the water up and down depending upon the season, sunlight, ambient temperature, and general weather conditions.  Believe me; we have argued these factors like old dogs chewing on a bone that no longer gives sustenance or taste.  At any rate when the water warms up in the late spring and summer, the fish will go deeper seeking that temperature they prefer.  There is a brief time in the fall and early winter when the water temperature at the surface cools sufficiently. Then they will feed on the surface again, but generally only in the early mornings or late afternoons.  Once the water freezes the upper layers of course cool, and the fish will sink again following the preferred levels.  Finally, in the spring lake ice begins to melt and form a honey comb. Those small open areas within the honey comb fill with water, thus making it heavier than the supporting water and it sinks.  All at once.  The sinking ice forces the warmer waters at lower levels to rise and the fish follow to the surface once again.  That is the time we want to be on the lake, early spring right after ice out.  Dragging (called trolling by we experts) long fly lines with long leaders of wispy monofilament, and flies designed to represent the smaller forage fish.

Therefore, the time they caught these fish and reported to the log is all wrong.  It was June (too late according to we experts), the wrong time of day (you play cards and nap in the middle of the day), and a bright sunny day to boot.  We want overcast, fog, rain, freezing rain, or snow to complete the ideal situation.  And maybe a slight breeze so that the fish don’t clearly see that which is just below the surface.  Furthermore, the lure was made of metal and not feathers and shinny beads and therefore did not count in the daily pool.  

But these were the seeds of a forty plus year odyssey.

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.