Of Griffith's Gnats And Broken Fly Rods...

May 4th, 2008 at 06:41am Mitch Mulhall 171

Many summers ago, I joined a party of favorites—me, my life-long friend Carmine, his son Andrew, and the three Dons: Carmine’s father, older brother, and nephew—for some high-country fly fishing on the Cimarron. It was no major adventure. A left turn off the two lane highway just North of Ridgeway and another fifteen or so miles uphill and we were there.

It had been a few years since I’d last guided a fly fishing trip, but my piscatorial reputation was fairly well known, if not as unwarranted as a Madonnna Grammy. Still, among people who were near enough my own kin, my angling abilities were honored.

On the trip up, little Don sat on one of middle Don’s fly rods. Cracked it in half. Middle Don had a melt down.

When we got to where we thought the fishing looked good, we parked and started stringing up rods. Carmine’s brother opened up a box of flies and asked me,

“What do you think I ought to try first?”

I’d noticed a cloud of tiny spinners over the stream a ways up stream, before we decided to stop, but everything in his box was bass-sized. I pulled out the smallest fly I could find, a size 16 Griffith’s gnat with a calf-hair post that looked like it’d spent time in a coffee grinder.

“Here” I said, holding it up. “Try this.”

He looked at me and shook his head in disgust.

“Fish with it for five minutes. If it doesn’t work, I’ll tie on something that will.”

“OK,” he said, taking the sorry looking fly from me. “Five minutes.”

To be fair, the broken fly rod had done nothing for his disposition. His disappointment obvious, and I felt a skunking coming on. I strung my rod and straightened my leader while he worked on tying that Griffith’s gnat on his tippet. When he finally cinched his knot and clipped off the tag end, he hooked the fly in rod’s cork handle and reeled in the slack.

“Where do you think I ought to fish?” he asked, looking upstream. “In the stream,” I thought to myself, but I knew what he was asking.

“See that gravel bar?” I asked, pointing to the fishiest looking feature I could see in the braided streambed before us. “I’d start there. Keep fisherman’s left. Cast up into the plunge and let the fly drift down over the left side to start. Then work right, but keep as much line off the water as you can or that fly will rip across the water like a knife.”

Middle Don caught trout after trout that afternoon, never leaving that spot. But that wasn’t the most memorable part of that trip for me. No, what I remember most is cinching my fly tying vice to a government picnic table and teaching little Don how to tie that Griffith’s Gnat: a size 18 Tiemco, wrapped with black thread, a strand of gold wire, a hook-matched pluck from a grizzly neck, and a couple tufts of peacock hurl. Big Don looked on with a large, silent grin as little Don proved a quick study. By the time we turned down the lanterns, he’d finished over a dozen flies and shared them with us. The next day, we all caught trout on his ties.

The other day on Con Games, Michael mentioned the anniversary of Bush’s landing on USS Abraham Lincoln as if it were some kind of scarlet letter, and for some I’m sure it is. It’s not for me, however. You see, little Don now plays a major role on the USS Abraham Lincoln. I have it on good authority he’s quite good at what he does, if only because on an aircraft carrier there are no fly rods to sit on…

Cheers,

Entry Filed under: Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Fly Fishing, Garfield County, The West, United Post