Strangers

There was a time when I would walk for miles to avoid other anglers. If - when driving along the river - I came across another car in a parking area then chances are good I would just keep on going. I even tried to mask my movements bank side; at times hopping from rock to rock - like some sort of wader wearing ninja - to avoid leaving footprints in the mud. On the rare occasion when I did encounter another angler, I did my best to avoid conversation, feigning ignorance of the river and answering questions with the usual, "Don't know. It's my first time here." In simplest terms, I was about as antisocial a bug chucker as ever there was. Then two things happened to make me realize my foolishness: I rediscovered steelhead and I joined the ranks of the morbidly obese.

I wasn't always a fat man, although at no point in my life have I ever been skinny, slender, scrawny or svelte. Even when I was a soldier and possessed several clearly identifiable abdominal muscles, I weighed in at 225 pounds on my best days and a little more than that on my worst. I can only trace my family tree back a few generations, but I'm fairly certain that if I followed it to its source I'd discover my forbears hailed from someplace very cold and that they needed every bit of God's natural insulation.

 

While I am grateful for the extra warmth as I stand hip deep in a February cold river, I find the weight does tend to slow me down during the warmer months of the year. I'll still hike as far as I must to get to whatever piece of river I fancy fishing, but I'm not getting there quite as quickly, I'm not hopping along rocks like an outsized frog, and I'm not nearly as likely to go out of my way to avoid other anglers. Some days I'll even pause for a little while and strike up a conversation, and much to my surprise, I've enjoyed the overwhelming majority of those discussions. With few notable exceptions, the other anglers I've met streamside are men and women with whom I would enjoy spending a day on the water. Ironically, these conversations most often occur along the banks of the Salmon River - a stream with a reputation for combat fishing and rudeness amongst the anglers who chase its trout and salmon.

I've said it more times than I count, both on this blog and elsewhere, that steelhead are a special gamefish. They're eager to take a fly, they're big, and they're fast - ridiculously fast. They're also accessible, and within a day's drive of many of the country's major metropolitan areas. This puts an excess of pressure on the most popular rivers as throngs of people embark on a great annual migration to steelhead choked water. The Salmon River likely sees as many anglers as any other steelhead water on either the east or west coast; in all likelihood she absorbs more bug chuckers, gear heads, pinners, and bait dunkers than most any other comparable piece of water. As a consequence, finding privacy on the Salmon River is sometimes a difficult endeavor. So what is a metalhead-loving bug chucker to do?

To my way of thinking, we have two choices. We can accept that the best water on the river is likely occupied, and try to get away from the crowd by fishing less prolific beats, or we can introduce ourselves to the other anglers who frequent the most popular runs. As I've said, there was a time when the second option wasn't even a choice for me. I couldn't bear being anywhere near an angler who wasn't part of my group. My attitude began to change, however, as I realized that the few people I met stream side all seemed to be good people who felt exactly as I did about steelhead - regardless of the method they employed in the pursuit.

I'm reminded of Leon. Leon was an older fella', perhaps in his mid seventies, who I encountered some years ago on a November trip to the river. Leon was nearby when I hooked one especially hot hen that took me into my backing several times before I was able to land her about 200 yards downstream of the run in which she was hooked. Unsolicited, the old fella did his best to follow me downstream - recording on a Flip video camera my attempt to subdue one the hardest fighting fish I've ever hooked. He later asked my email address and sent me both the file and his congratulations. He and I still correspond from time to time.

Then there was Utica. Utica was a 16 year old kid who fished alongside us on one of the rare days when we just didn't have it in us to hike a mile through the snow or pay $50.00 to fish water less traveled. As it turned out, Utica and I were both guilty of the same crime - truancy. He was a student at a local high school, and he was skipping class to hook a steelie. I was a teacher, and I was doing exactly the same. Utica was cordial, funny, and eager to learn. More to the point, he reminded me of the best qualities young people possess, and at the end of the day I was eager to get back in the classroom with my students.

Of course, I couldn't write this piece if I didn't mention Lou. I met Lou in one of the river's many parking areas when I overheard him berating himself for leaving his fly boxes at home; the poor guy had made a long drive and had no flies with which to fish. I opened my boxes and gifted him a dozen or so different bugs and then went on my way. Later that day, I again encountered Lou - this time grinning wide as he had just caught his first steelhead on one of the flies I had given him. We exchanged information and some time later I received a walnut turkey box call, hand made by Lou (who is the owner of Boss Tom Turkey Calls) and inscribed to "The Rusty Spinner."

It may very well be impossible to fish one popular section of the river without running into Char, Dick, Dave or Kenny. They're good guys, regulars on the Salmon who are happy to help the uninitiated if the uninitiated just take the time to ask. The only payment they'll expect is the opportunity to engage in some good natured ribbing every time the initiate loses a fish. I know this first hand.

And as I sit here at the keyboard, I find myself thinking of the fellas from Virginia - whose names I now forget - who inquired about the spey rod I was fishing, and then asked me to photograph them with the fish I caught so that they could impress their wives and friends. We fished together for the better part of the afternoon; I still laugh when I think of them showing off my fish to their sweethearts.

Most recently, I had the good fortune of meeting Sergeant First Class Trent Myer. Sergeant Myer is stationed at Fort Drum with the Army's 10th Mountain Division where he is the program leader of the post's branch of Project Healing Waters. He and I found ourselves fishing within seventy-five feet of each other when I hooked a 20lb king salmon that I was forced to chase right through the water Sergeant Myer's group was fishing. After I brought the king to hand, Sergeant Myer introduced himself, his son Hunter, and their friend Jim - a PHW volunteer who shares my penchant for Orvis Odyssey reels. We talked and fished together the remainder of the day.

My point here is not to be anecdotal, but rather to demonstrate the quality of people we may meet if only we're open to the experience. Solitude certainly has it's place, but if fishing brings us some of the best moments in our lives then I have to wonder how much better those moments might be if we shared them with someone. After all, we're all strangers until we've been properly introduced, and if we're meeting on the banks of a river then chances are we have more in common than not.

Gunner, Missile ... Hopper

Stay with me here ...

The TOW missile has been one of the U.S. military's standard anti-tank weapons since first being introduced in the late 1960s. When I was a soldier (many years and several pant sizes ago) TOWs were just about the biggest and baddest piece of ordinance that an average grunt like myself was ever trusted to handle. It's probably a good thing too because I was foolish in all the ways young men are often foolish, and I really enjoyed making things go "Boom!" - perhaps a bit too much.

TOW is an acronym for "Tube launched, Optically tracked, Wire guided." As the name implies, TOWs are tethered to their firing tubes and guidance apparatus via a ridiculously thin and strong wire that spools out for a maximum distance of 3750 meters. Think about how many pheasant tails a bug chucker could tie with that much wire. Assume the average tyer uses three inches of wire per fly, and understand that one meter equals just over 39 inches. That means one meter gets us roughly 13 flies.  Multiply 13 by 3750 and we discover that one TOW fired to its maximum range will give us a yield of 48750 pheasant tails.

Make flies, not war.

Anyway ... I remember wanting a memento of the first TOW missile I ever fired (on a live fire range in the California desert). Unfortunately, once a round is expended, little remains but the aforementioned wire - draped across the landscape from launcher to smouldering target. With no other option, I did what any fly-tying infantry soldier would do, and I scooped up as much of Uncle Sam's wire as I could retrieve and fit into the cargo pockets of my uniform. For half a decade, the First Infantry Division and the Raytheon company provided the ribbing for nearly every nymph I tied.

All of this brings us to Sergeant Shaun Gruner, a fly tyer and Army veteran who is a little more creative than was I in applying military surplus to his piscatorial pursuits.

Shaun began his military career many years after mine had ended. He went through basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia in 2007, and first deployed to Afghanistan in January of 2009. Gruner survived that deployment and another in 2010, only to be felled by a golf-ball sized rock while on a run along the dusty roads of Fort Bliss, Texas. Torn ligaments in his right foot prevented Sergeant Gruner from continuing to serve, and in January of this year he was given a medical retirement from the Army. He and his wife have now settled in Arizona.

As is the case with so many bug chuckers, Sergeant Gruner began fishing as a young boy but didn't pick up a fly rod until later in life. Gruner's first trout on a fly was hooked entirely by accident (incidentally, most of the trout I've caught in 30 years of fly fishing have been hooked accidentally). That first fish took Gruner's bug when Shaun dropped his backcast a little too low, and the trout found the sergeant's misplaced fly too good to ignore. 

After a long hiatus, Sergeant Gruner now hopes to return to fishing with the long rod. He has started (or rather re-started) tying his own flies, but lacks a collection of that materials that many of us consider essential. True to his military training, however, Shaun has adapted to the situation. He ties a grasshopper pattern that uses materials taken from items that are common to any soldier serving at any post in the world.

Shaun first shared this fly with the world via the Project Healing Waters Facebook page, and he has graciously agreed to do likewise here on The Rusty Spinner.

Shaun Gruner's "Commando Hopper"

Hook: Any appropriately sized such as the Orvis 2x Dry-Fly
Rib: Copper Wire
Body and Head: Closed cell foam cut from a military issue sleeping mat
Legs: Knotted waxed-thread taken from a uniform repair kit
Eyes: 550 cord - burned and melted at each end (a brilliant idea)
Hackle: Olive grizzly