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Bundling up with warm memories during a howling storm

If we must have late spring blizzards, then I am always delighted to see them outside the windows of my office where I am snowed under by column deadlines.
Green-Highlander-for
The famous Green Highlander tied by the equally as famous Father Walter Lynch.

If we must have late spring blizzards, then I am always delighted to see them outside the windows of my office where I am snowed under by column deadlines.

This one, I expect, is our second last May — June blizzard; we can confidently predict that summer will be July 3rd this year and we should all be sure to have the day off.

These columns started exactly 44 years ago, on May 6th, 1966, and I always have and still say that the greatest reward is the interaction with the readers. But the means of that interaction have expanded and so has the territory of the column through computers, email, and the Internet, none of which were even pipedreams when I started.

But the old ways of communication still work. Last week Canada Post delivered a small package from a sender I did not recognize, but it was far too light to contain a bomb, so I opened it. Inside were a note from Blair Fry of New River Beach, N.B, and a small case containing a large Green Highlander Atlantic Salmon fly.

Mr. Fry explains that friends from Sylvan Lake have been sending him clippings of these columns all winter, and “they were like winter tonic to us and much appreciated.”

Fry lived in Alberta for 17 years, had his own drift boat, fished the Bow three or four times a season, and “the Red Deer was incredible.” He brings me up to date on an old favourite I haven’t fished for years: “One of my favorite haunts was Cow Creek and the immense hog-size browns. I was aghast when the rancher cut the spruce right to the water line.”

Fry takes me back 50 years to my three springs in Nova Scotia with his local fishing report: “ . . . our season opened on April 15th and on the 16th, to my delight, for the first time, I hit the smelt run. The brook trout were gorged on them and I had great sport with a Grey Ghost streamer . . . The trout were so full of smelt that, when you held them up, the smelt would flow out of their mouths . . . it was unreal.”

The Green Highlander, Blair Fry explains, “is tied by Father Walter Lynch who was recently inducted into the Miramichi Salmon Association’s Hall of Fame. He ties the classics.” On his card Father Lynch bills himself as “Fisher of People & Classic Fly Dresser.” He is the second fly fishing priest I have ever heard of, the other being Father Guy Carrier of St. Albert, Stettler, etc.

I have always thought the classic Atlantic salmon flies to be the most beautiful of all artificial flies and too precious to fish with, so, on my too few trips after Atlantics in Newfoundland and Cape Breton, have used the local flies tied sparsely with moose hair to replace the rare and exotic plumages of the classics, such as the jungle cock eyes, wood duck flank, and golden pheasant tippets to be seen in my gorgeous Green Highlander.

Blair Fry hinted he would like to see some of my own trout ties and I just got started sorting a few to send him when the phone rang and I heard a much older voice from the past. It was fly fishing icon, the “trout’s best friend,” Bud Lilly, formerly of West Yellowstone, Mont., now of Three Forks, where the Madison, Gallatin, and Jefferson Rivers join to make the Missouri River, and where Bud has been operating The Angler’s Retreat in the refurbished hotel that has been in his family since 1915.

I first met Bud in his West Yellowstone fly shop back in early July of 1968 when Fly Fisherman magazine had just published its first issue. My son John remembers Bud fondly, because he came down with me in 1982 when he was 12, and Bud not only believed the kid telling him that he had caught and released a 21-inch brown trout in the Gallatin River, but presented him with a big badge for his vest proclaiming that he had done just that.

Bud Lilly has chaired or been on the board of any and all trout and water conservation groups worth talking about and has been inducted into all manner of halls of fame, and even has an honorary doctorate. But he is not resting on his laurels and told me he is putting together a permanent and travelling Hatch Matching Gallery and would like to display enlargements of my photographs from my book, The Phenological Fly, and could I send him transparencies to work with?

It seems a reader gave Bud a copy of the book and it struck a responsive chord with him and his long experience as a guide, tackle dealer and angler with hatches and flowers similar to ours in Alberta.

Well, it is an honour to be asked by a living legend, and I may just have to make one more pilgrimage to Montana for the opening.

Bob Scammell is an award-winning outdoors writer living in Red Deer.