The following article is copyright by Tim Mead and may not be duplicated or reproduced without his expressed written permission.
As is true with many anglers, I cannot remember the first time I went
fishing. According to family legend, Dad took me fishing early
one spring, when I was scarcely three years old. He had a wooden
boat he kept on the lake behind the house. So goes the tale, we
took the boat and I caught one fat springtime crappie after another –
although we called them speckled bass. Dad held the back of my
life jacket, baited hooks, removed the fish, and put them on the
stringer.
Yet, one trip does not an angler make. Several folks played
key roles in getting me started on a lifetime commitment to
fishing.
Dad and Mom
Dad was instrumental in introducing me to fishing. In addition
to the early times together, over the years we remained good fishing
buddies. We fished together for more than 50 years, in later
years including my son, Craig.
When just a kid I learned several key fishing lessons from
Dad. The most enduring has been that all kinds of fishing should
be fun. The species caught did not make any
difference. Bluegills and sunfish were sought on the days they
were biting. If crappie were active, we went for them.
Perhaps the diverse quarry we caught was simply because I was a little guy
and Dad wanted to be sure we were successful. Nonetheless, I
learned from these times we did not have to catch a particular species to
have a good time.
Another key lesson was that getting bait was part of going
fishing. In the early years, I doubt I knew bait could be
purchased. For bait, Dad and I used whatever nature provided in
sufficient abundance -- worms, minnows, grasshoppers, crickets.
There was a cedar swamp just outside the little town in Michigan where I
was born. The earth there was black and moist and filled with
fat, blue earthworms. Though the mosquitoes in northern cedar
swamps rival any in North America, and I remember the swamp was filled with
them, I do not recall they interfered with us. Dad turned the
dirt with a shovel and I picked up the worms and dropped them in a tin
can. Over the years, I cannot remember ever digging worms where
they were as plentiful as they were there. Condominia sit on a
filled-in swamp noe and no fathers and sons dig worms there.
We also seined minnows. I must have been about five years old
the first time we netted minnows. We went to “the harbor,” a
shallow, sandy bottom inlet between the small lake and Lake
Michigan. Dad kept yelling instructions, the same instructions I
later gave Craig. “Keep the net tight.” “Keep the net close to
the bottom, they’ll get away.” Dad explained why one side of the net had
wooden floats and the other lead weights and how they helped catch the
minnows. Further, I learned we could try again if we did not get
enough minnows the first time. A lesson of some utility in life –
try again.
By the time I was in high school, I was taller than my father.
So, in tougher circumstances, like along the bank at Pickerel Lake where we
seined minnows, I operated the deep end of the minnow net. Dad
still urged me to “keep the net tight,” even though I pointed out that the
cedar limb tangled in the net came from the shore and was on his end of the
net. I can remember Mom standing on the bank admonishing, “Earl,
he can’t go any deeper. The water is right to the top of his
boots now.”
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With sister, Nancy, I display smallmouth bass and crappie from the small lake near Arcadia, Michigan where I was born |
We also used the seine to catch grasshoppers for bait. In late
summer, Michigan, if you are not a farmer, is blessed with clouds of
grasshoppers. Dad and I extended the seine and ran from one end
of the yard to the other. We then dropped the net on the grass,
with the hoppers under the mesh. The hoppers simply waited for us
to pick them off the net and drop them in the minnow bucket we used for
minnows, hoppers and crickets. Easy pickins.’
Now I realize we caught crappies and yellow perch on minnows and bluegills
and sunfish on worms, crickets and grasshoppers. At the time it
simply seemed some species bit better on some days than other
species. Dad, however, had it all figured out. We
selected bait depending on his assessment of the prospects of catching
different species. It was years before I figured that one
out.
Mom also played an important part in making me an angler. My
folks kept the house near Lake Michigan after moving the family to southern
Michigan. During the summer, Mom, my younger sister, and I
returned while Dad finished his master’s degree.
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Mom fishing off the pier at Grand Marais, Michigan. The pier has been rebuilt and no longer looks like this |
Mom let me go down to the little lake with a cane pole and sit on a
semi-public pier and fish. I was 50 years old before I learned
she was terrified I would fall in the water and drown. She could
look out the sun porch window to confirm I was still on the pier.
Even if she saw me topple into the water, however, she could not have run the
quarter mile quickly enough to yank me out. Further, Mom could
not swim, at least not well enough to save us both. But it did
not seem as frightening to me. And she never let on.
Whenever I caught fish, Mom “oohed and aahed” when I brought them
back. She cooked them even though, as I discovered years later,
she was concerned I had not cleaned them well enough.
One thing Mom did, though I doubt either of us knew how important a
contribution it was, was to assist me in reading about fishing.
Mom made a special effort to order Ted Trueblood’s The Anglers’
Handbook. And I’m sure it was Mom who made certain at Christmas I
received Ray Bergman’s Trout, Bass Fishing and J. Edson Leonard’s
Flies. I read and re-read these books and cherish them
yet.
Most of all, my folks made it possible for me to fish. Dad
took me with him, probably lots of times when he would have done better had
he fished alone. When I was a little guy, Dad always wanted, or
so I presumed, to fish for little fish and lots of them. Years
later, when I wanted to try more sophisticated techniques and fish for larger
game, Dad wanted to fish for bass and pike with bait casting
equipment. Of course, he had bait casting gear all
along. Before I was born, he spent lots of time casting for bass
at night.
I always had the gear I needed. Dad supplied hooks, poles,
bobbers, sinkers, line. Later he helped me select rods, reels,
and lures and showed me how to use them.
Bill Yunk
Bill Yunk was a purist. Trout on dry flies. That
was fishing. Anything else was done by lesser men for lesser
quarry.
Uncle Bill was not really my uncle. I was born in my parent’s
apartment, the upper floor in Bill and Eva Yunk’s home. By
default they became uncle and aunt. One evening, probably when I
was six or seven years old, I learned what taking trout on a dry fly was all
about.
Uncle Bill, Aunt Eva and I were riding back roads, probably looking for
deer. We crossed a bridge over a small creek, fifteen feet or so
across. There were half a dozen cars parked along the road and
fishermen scattered along the bank. Up and down the stream there
were splashes and swirls. The hex hatch, called caddis by the
Michigan locals, was on.
Aunt Eva urged Uncle Bill to go home, get his fly rod, and
return. “No,” he said. It would take too long, by the
time he got back the hatch would be over, the best spots were already taken,
and it was getting dark. In a few moments, however, Aunt Eva’s
urging and the purist’s itch prevailed.
Uncle Bill brought me back to the creek with him. I had never
seen anyone fly cast. It seemed to me, unlike the lessons Dad
taught, Uncle Bill spent far too much time whirling his bait around in the
air and too little with it in the water. Dad coached bait had to
be left in the water long enough for fish to find it and they could not find
it if it was not in the water. Further, Uncle Bill was using a
little blob of feathers that would never catch a fish. I can
remember thinking the other men, persons I could hear talking to one another
about the fish they were catching, must be going about it differently than
Uncle Bill.
In a few minutes, however, Uncle Bill muttered to me, “I’ve got one.” A
little boy, standing in tall marsh grass in the dark, I could not see what
was going on. Shortly, Uncle Bill had a huge brown trout, the
first I had ever seen, laid out in the grass. My recollection is
that it was about two feet long and weighed several pounds, a
trophy. When we got home and laid the fish in the kitchen sink,
it seemed like (and still does) the most beautiful fish ever.
The next summer, though Aunt Eva died in the interim, I spent a week with
Uncle Bill. He operated a mirror works for a furniture
factory. Most of the day, I hung around while Uncle Bill made
mirrors. We talked about baseball, particularly how the Detroit
Tigers were doing and why. And we talked about trout fishing.
One evening, he took me trout fishing at Bear Creek, a tributary of the
Manistee River. Bear Creek was 15 miles or so from town and a
large portion of the trip was over gravel roads. Uncle Bill could
remember when, with no cars in town, only week long trips to Bear Creek were
worth the effort. Now, however, a trip after work was
practical.
Bob Starke, one of Uncle Bill’s fishing buddies and owner-operator of the
furniture factory, went along. Bob Starke, as I recall, was not a
purist; it was rumored that he sometimes took big brown trout on
streamers. What streamers were I did not know, but I could tell
from the way Uncle Bill talked about them they were problematic ways to catch
trout. A summer or two later Bob Starke and another local trout
angler got in some sort of bragging contest. Many mornings in the
center of the meat counter in Mr. Schafer’s market there were two
brown trout caught by the contestants. Each weighed between five
and seven pounds. Disparagingly, Uncle Bill suggested they had
not been caught with dry flies.
Though I was not big enough to fly fish, I could station myself near a log
jam and drop a worm in the water. Not the same as fly fishing, of
course, but a way a kid could get started and certainly one of the steps
toward virtue.
During the evening, a bat captured Uncle Bill’s dry fly during a false
cast. I had never seen a bat before. It splashed on
the surface while Uncle Bill tried to get it unhooked. How he
accomplished that I can’t remember.
From beneath the log jam, I caught four small brook trout, the first trout
of my career. Uncle Bill and Bob Starke caught two each, so I was
the “leader” for the evening. As grown men do, though I did not
understand it at the time, they dragged me up to the home of the Department
of Conservation officer who lived near the stream to operate the rearing
ponds there. With great show, we showed our catch.
The officer was appropriately impressed with our fish, particularly the four
brookies I caught. When we got in the car to head home, I was
very impressed with my future as a trout fisherman.
The last time I fished with Uncle Bill I was in college. We
went to Bear Creek with Dad. Uncle Bill had been in failing
health for some time. Doctors told him fly fishing, at least for
the time being, would be too strenuous. Later
perhaps. So Uncle Bill was forced to fish with small lures, the
size we called “fly rod” though they were ill-suited for use with a fly
rod.
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Dad and I head off for trout fishing. We were both introduced to trout fishing by Uncle Bill, though only I sought to become a purist |
Whether any of us caught trout, I do not remember, though I could look it
up in the log book I kept at the time. But I remember Uncle Bill
admired one of my flies, an outsize #10 spent wing Adams. “Where
did you get that fly?” he asked. “You can’t get flies like that
around here. Those are just what the caddis hatch calls for.”
“Uncle Bill,” I answered, “I tied those flies. Would you like
some? Take a couple.” At the time, he refused. He
said he did not want to take flies out of my box to put in his.
When I got home I tied up a dozen or so, the very best I could make, and sent
them to him.
Whether Uncle Bill ever caught any trout on those flies, I don’t
know. But I remember I got a letter from him thanking
me. Dad told me Bill Yunk rarely wrote anyone or anything and I
should be very complimented to get a letter. I was.
Uncle Bill got me started as a trout fisherman. Many times on
streams in Montana or Alaska or one of the other famous trout fishing spots I
have thought, “I wish Uncle Bill could have fished here.” Indeed, for a time,
I was a purist, like Uncle Bill.
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Nancy, my sister, shows off a fish Millie Jones caught the week we met Dick and Millie |
Dick Jones
The Detroit Tigers, in 1950, were in first place when I met Dick Jones and
all was right in my world. My parents were friends with Dick
Jones’ parents. So, even though Dick and his wife Millie were
fifteen or twenty years older than I, they became special friends of my
sister and me. We met in the Upper Peninsula when both sets of
parents were searching sites for cabins. Perhaps the second day
we were together, the fathers and sons went to the Whitewash site on the
Sucker River trout fishing.
Dick, also a purist or nearly so, caught the then Michigan limit of 15,
with one rainbow about 15 inches long, all on dry flies. Using
worms and fishing under a shoreline stump, I caught four brook
trout. Dad and Clair Jones, Dick’s father, caught two
each. All the way back to the cabin, Dick kept up a steady
rat-a-tat about how the sons really beat the dads. He made me
feel a full partner on the winning team.
That week, Dick started to teach me how to bait cast. Dad has
some home movies of Dick coaching me, then scurrying for cover as I drew the
rod back as a prelude to another backlash. Dick also helped me
undo the tangles. Now, every time I whip a spinnerbait under
willow branches or drop a plastic worm next to a pier, I owe the first steps
and encouragement to Dick Jones. Dick was a right-hander, and he
taught me, a natural left-hander, how to cast right-handed. Now,
however, I can cast with either hand, a major advantage that I would not have
had Dick not taught me.
He also introduced me to the wonders of catching fish on artificial
lures. Pike were (and still are) plentiful in the small lake near
the cottage. Several times Dick took me with him as he cast for
pike. Once, I remember, Dick had already rowed a hundred yards
down the east side of the lake, but when I ran to the edge of the lake, he
rowed back to get me.
Dick assured me pike were so common a red-and-white Bass-Oreno dragged
behind the boat would catch one. He gave me one. The
next day I went out in a boat with others, Mom, sister Nancy and probably
Millie on the oars. Several times I thought I felt a jerk on the
line and when we got back to the cabin I had a 14 inch pike, my first pike
and my first fish on an artificial lure. In the next half dozen
years I caught a lot of bass and pike on that lure. It is now
retired and I would not put it in the water for anything.
Dick also taught me to fly cast. On the narrow trout streams
of northern Michigan, fly casting is not so easy as it looks when Lefty Kreh
does it on TV. The twisted course of the streams means alders are
always just behind the caster. When I was in the eighth or ninth
grade, the exalted status of a purist had evaded me, despite
effort.
After a couple hours of frustration on Grand Marais Creek, I quit fishing
and wandered down the stream to watch Dick and see how he did it.
From the bluff above the water, I could see Dick flicking his fly under cedar
branches, never tangling in the alders behind him. His fly landed
deftly on the water rather than slapping the surface as mine did.
Periodically, Dick caught a trout right before my eyes.
Dick saw me and yelled to ask what I was doing. I explained I
was trying to see how it was done. I had never caught a trout on
a dry fly and wanted to study someone else as I was not making much progress
on my own. “Well,” Dick said, “we’ll fix that. There
are always trout ahead of the beaver dam.”
Dick positioned me knee deep in the water and said, “Stand right there.”
He eyed the beaver pond, the direction of my likely cast and the trees and
branches behind me. With no chain saw for assistance, Dick tore
through the underbrush, clearing the way for my backcast. With a little
coaching I soon had my fly landing on the water like something
natural. After a couple such casts, darned if something did not
swirl at my fly. With more coaching on what do to then, I caught
one, then another.
Dick always had time for me, even when it seemed he was wasting
his. One year he agreed to take me bass fishing on opening
day. Though I told everyone for months that Dick was taking me
out on opening day, when the day finally arrived, I overslept.
Dick did not leave. He sat in the car waiting for me to
appear. As before, he accommodated his schedule to
mine. Mom realized, in the way I guess moms do, I was not up and
about, and hustled me out.
We went to a lake west of town. Dick rowed the boat up the
north side of the lake and we cast to the edge of the weeds. Just
at dawn I noticed a swirl only a few feet from the boat. It took
a couple of tries, but I dropped my Hula Popper in the open spot in the weeds
where the swirl was. It disappeared. With some
coaching from Dick, we got the bass in the boat. It was the first
largemouth bass I caught on a plug.
John Reule
Johnnie Reule was the Scout Master the first few years I was a
Scout. He tied some of his own flies, though I don’t think he
ever was as involved with tying as I became. For reasons I cannot
recall, Johnnie and I became fishing buddies.
Johnnie’s fishing passion was largemouth bass at night.
Starting about when I was in seventh grade, Dad, Johhnie and I went fishing
at nearby lakes, starting after dinner and fishing until
midnight. Dad or Johnnie rowed and I fished from the
bow. At the time I wished I could either row or sit in the stern:
the bow, it seemed, was where the “little guy” got assigned. Now,
of course, I know the bow is the preferred position providing the first shot
at fish.
Johnnie always wanted to go around the lake in the same
direction. His casting rod, made of split bamboo, the premier
material at the time, had a set in it. A set, or permanent bend,
was very common among bamboo rods stored upright in a closet all
winter. Johnnie fished almost exclusively with a black popper and
he believed if he always “popped” his lure in an anti-set direction the set
would be reduced or even eliminated.
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Dad with a trout he caught, at a forgotten time and place, though the wicker creel indicates the picture was taken in the mid-1950s |
Several of the first largemouth bass I ever caught were caught on those
trips. I recall one which took a black Hula Popper over an
extended weed bed. My four and a half foot steel rod bent toward
the water and hearing – rather than seeing – the splash as the two plus pound
bass jumped. When we got home, I regaled Mom with just how I had
done it. Years later, I enjoyed hearing Craig explain to his mom
how, “When the fish swam left I held my rod tip to the right and when the
fish swam right I held my rod tip to the left, just like Bill Dance said.”
Johnnie told Craig about one of our trips. While I was in high
school I scarfed up a dilapidated wooden row boat. Dad helped me
refurbish it, at least well enough that I could fish from it.
When I was alone, the boat, only ten or twelve feet long, was
fine. When two persons were in the boat, however, a pinhole
somewhere on the transom was below the water line. Johnnie, and
Dad too, had to suffer the indignity of watching their tackle box float and
sitting with their feet in the water.
Reflections
None of these people ever became famous anglers, tv personalities widely
known in the fishing community. Yet, when I showed interest in
fishing, they spent time to encourage me. In turn, the
encouragement led to a lifetime of adventure. Their patience made
it easier when it came my turn to introduce Craig to fishing.
They are all in my personal Hall of Fame.
At the time, the fish were most important. Now, the
friendships are.
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Last updated on December 20, 2013
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