Rustic Details: A Place to Hang Your Hat

Needing a place to hang my Stetson and slicker I had found and old leather wrapped coat hook and mounted it next to the wall phone near the bar.

The old wall phone does indeed work.

Above the phone is a small collection of dry flies from the spring of 1922 on the Esopus River in Upstate New York.

I had picked up the phone years ago at an auction with a winning bid of about $10. A little research and a bit of rewiring the hand piece and the phone was back in action. The hat and coat are simply my rain gear.

I had been tying flies for fishing and trading them with an old angler up near Roscoe NY. I had met him midstream. He had been fishing quite a bit upstream from me working his way down when he stepped in a hole, lost his footing and went up to his neck in the cold water. His waders were full and he couldn’t get footing to get up and was laughing so hard he just didn’t have the strength.

I quickly made my way up to him and helped him back to shore. We sat there stream side and talked and quickly became friends fishing within sight of each other for the next two seasons.

He proudly showed me the flies that he had tied and was impressed by mine. He taught me several new patterns in trade for #22 tricos as he said his eyes and fingers were not up to it anymore. I would tie up a few dozen of them and he would teach me more patterns. For every pattern he taught I would tie dozens of new flies for him and we would sit in the afternoon sun and he’d tell me stories of the streams.

At the beginning of the third season I was approached by someone about my age – he said he recognized me by his grandfathers description as well as the hat and the old cane rod. He asked me quite a few questions and we talked for a while. I told him about his grandpa teaching me the traditional patterns as well as many of his own. I produced my fly box and showed him some of the unique flies his grandpa taught me. He recognized the the intricate dragon flies and crickets. Those were mostly for show and never touched the water. Every angler has a couple of those in their box. Having a few of them on hand I gave him a couple of each.

He explained that his grandfather had passed away earlier that winter but he had something for me that his grandpa wanted me to have.

We walked over to his car talking about his grandfather. He reached in and handed me a box. “He told me to tell you to start from the last one he had you tie and work your way through the rest”. I opened the box and here was this framed collection of dry flies from the spring of 1922 with a thank you note. He smiled and said that his grandpa was quite fond of telling the story.

2 comments