THE
REEL THING March
2003
Well
it’s been a long tough and very
cold winter, but Spring’s definitely on its way.
The sap began to run in my Maples the other day and yesterday I hung
thirty-two buckets up to collect it. Sheila
and I consume a lot of maple syrup and of course the guys who go to the
Broadback River with me each year insist on pancakes and crepes with our syrup
and Maple spread on their toast with bacon and eggs.
Never mind the ten thousand calories!
Skidooing and
fishing’s still pretty good this winter with more snow and more ice to work
with than we’ve had in years. It
all augurs well for a bang-up spring and summer season as well as the water
levels in the streams and lakes should be back where they were a couple of
years ago. Perhaps the highlight
of the hard-water season to date was the lovely twenty inch trout that Sharon
caught, jigging, while the rest of us sat around moaning that our minnows were
all being ignored.
On one other
day, Jim skunked me with four great trout of his own while I basically relaxed
by the fire on shore.
We had a super
evening in the gym a couple of weeks with a fly accuracy competition limited
to bamboo rods that we’ve all made ourselves, none of which could exceed 7
½ feet in length. These are
little, but fast and powerful sticks that we build for stream fishing in tight
quarters, yet they are good enough to still produce fine accuracy results. As
expected, Jim Lloyd fired a great 96, just eking out the win over Paul
Kennedy’s 95. Paul’s score
was remarkable when considering the fact that his work has prevented his
coming out to the gym for practice more than a couple of times.
It was a treat
to see twelve different folks working with the cane sticks in this one.
It’s obviously one of the big advantages in being a member of the
S.F. & B.C.A. Jay Hackney,
Paul Becker, Bob Tanaka, Rob Beaudoin, Scott Owen have all either finished
their rods or are close to completing them.
Jay and Paul have built several beautiful wands already this winter.
Our fly tyers
have also been busy learning how to create their feathered handiwork under the
expert supervision of our master tyers, Leon Schwartz, Hans Gulde and of
course, Jim Lloyd. Sharon MacIntyre’s results have improved dramatically in
this department along with her skills on the targets in the gym. Her hard work
is paying dividends in her techniq
ues with fly and spinning rods.
Sheila should
have a bang-up year if her gym results are any indication of where she is
headed. Nobody works harder at
improving their stroke than she. We
held a twenty-point knockout game in the gym last week and although we
handicapped Jim Lloyd with a score of fifteen to begin with he still finished
first, knocking out Sheila, then Ray Cockburn after an interesting fight.
Next time we’ll start him out with eighteen instead of just fifteen.
One of the
club’s greatest supporters, Jim (Jaydee) Ddavidson has had his two knee
replacements and finally been given permission to get around a little, but
still is restricted to being on his feet for no more than ten minutes at a
time………..pretty tough for a guy who loves his fishing and his golf, but
as always, Jim retains his sense of humour and determination
to become mobile once again before too long.
The club owes
new member Robert Beaudoin a big thank-you for the splendid job of re-creating
and revising our rather redundant web site.
If for some reason or another you haven’t had a look at his work,
give it a look-see……..it’s even got pictures of Paul Becker and Robert
with bass and pickerel on it to break the monotony of all the huge trout
picture there…..just kidding, guys.
www.pathcom.com/~coachman
Perhaps the
finest distance and accuracy fly caster that I have had the pleasure of
watching over the past fifteen years, Rene Gillibert of the Oakland Fly and
Bait Casters club has accepted an invitation to conduct clinics for myself and
the rest of our fly casters who would like to see fly casting poetry in motion
along with as much personal instruction as we can squeeze in during the couple
of days of his visit with us. Rene
will be here for the weekend of April 19th.
Not too many
weeks left to hone your techniques in the gym before we pack things up there
to await the ice leaving the pond at Milliken so we can get to work on the
floating targets. If you
haven’t done so yet, please mark the dates of our annual Scarborough
Open Championships, June 7th and 8th on your
calendars. This is the highlight
event of the year for our club, so it’s to be hoped that all our members
along with the other clubs’ casters all support this one.
We would like
to have a half a dozen or so new members before we complete our winter indoor
casting season, so here’s a little incentive for our existing members.
Bring out a guest for an evening in the gym and you will be rewarded
with a superlative fillet of Gravaadlaxed trout as a thank-you from me.
Should they subsequently join the club, I’ll give you your choice of
one of my special Crocodile lures or a couple of special Despair trout flies.
That’s all
for now,
Gord
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