Fly Fisherman Throwback: Fear of Fly Fishing

Editor's note: Flyfisherman.com will periodically be posting articles written and published before the Internet, from the Fly Fisherman magazine print archives. The wit and wisdom from legendary fly-fishing writers like Ernest Schwiebert, Gary LaFontaine, Lefty Kreh, Robert Traver, Gary Borger, Joan & Lee Wulff, Vince Marinaro, Doug Swisher & Carl Richards, Nick Lyons, and many more deserve a second life. These articles are reprinted here exactly as published in their day and may contain information, philosophies, or language that reveals a different time and age. This should be used for historical purposes only.

This article originally appeared in the December1988 issue of Fly Fisherman magazine. Click here for a PDF of the print version of "Fear of Fly Fishing."

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Jack Ohman is a sick man. He is also a political cartoonist for the Portland Oregonian newspaper. He is also a fly fisherman. And he has just completed his first sick book–on fly fishing, an excerpt of which appears below. It is so whacky that we thought readers might like to judge for themselves.

I should explain my judgement of Ohman as a sick man. He is a cartoonist of the first magnitude, and one cannot reach such brilliance without a touch of the whacky. At the center of this man who has such ability to scald political pomposity with pen and ink is a fisherman who wants most of all to throw feathers at fish. The same can be said of Fly Fisherman's other cartoonists, John Troy and Robert Randall.

And what makes these artists so special is their ability to portray their often-irreverent views of the sport they love most. In a sport with men who occasionally take themselves too seriously, these cartoons are both hilarious and refreshing. We can laugh at ourselves. A few comments on the selections. We tried to pick the strongest of contemporary viewpoints on fly fishing and fishermen types in a high-viewpoint book. Some fishermen will be offended by opinions so forcefully delivered. So be it.

The book itself is autobiographical. Ohman explains where he came from and how he got to where he is now, which helps us understand his perspectives on fly fishing.

–The Editor

Profiles

Bait Fisherman

• Have names like Junior, Bubba, Al
• '65 Bel Air, '71 LTD, '67 Ford F-250
• Zebco, Eagle Claw, Shakespeare
• Talks about sexual experience
• Beats carp to death with a baseball bat
• Nightcrawlers
• Bud, Bud, Bud

Fly Fishermen

• Have names like Roger, Doug, Jon
• Volvos, BMW, Jeep Cherokee
• Orvis, Winston, Hardy
• Talks about fishing experiences
• Catch-and-release
• Matching the hatch
• Coronas, Heineken's, St. Pauli Girl

Bait Fishing Persona

• NAME: Alton "Buzz" Bondo.
• OCCUPATION: Unemployable.
• RESIDENCE: Toledo, Ohio, Mobile Villa Garden Estates.
• AGE: 39 (looks 55).
• QUOTE: "Hey, you wanna catch fish, or dontcha? Pass the cheese hooks."

Buzz is a major presence at the U-Ketchum Trout Pond off of County Road 8. Ohio doesn't actually have any indigenous trout except for those that live in aquariums, so the U­Ketchum is a big attraction for the fly-fishing impaired.

Buzz is usually relaxed–okay anesthetized–so he doesn't really fish for the pure relaxation of it all. It's just another way to get away from his wife (Babs, Beauty Consultant, Miss Maumee River Third Place runner-up, 1966), and kids (Alton Jr., 17; Du Wayne, 16; Wayne Lee, 15; Earl, 13; Shirl, 12; and Bobbie Lou, 11).

Buzz ties fly patterns of his own creation: The Cheez Whiz, Velveeta Special, Kraft's Hopper, Doughball Coachman, Corn Doctor, Maize Quill.

Fly Fishing Personas

• NAME: Watson Crick.
• OCCUPATION: Systems analyst.
• RESIDENCE: Condo, Silicon Valley.
• AGE: Median.
• QUOTE: "All fishing systems nominal."

Watson can't have fun fly fishing unless he's got all the latest high-tech breakthrough equipment. He knows the density of his boron rod, the tensile strength of his 400-grain line, the drag coefficient of his fly, how much wind resistance a parachute-wing Adams has versus a hackle-wing, the porosity of elk hair, the exact chemical composition of Gehrke's Gink, the gear ratio on his multiplier, the genus and species of every single aquatic insect, the solunar tables, and the viscosity of the water's meniscus. But he doesn't catch any fish.

• NAME: Elliott Abrams Richardson IV
• OCCUPATION: Bond trader.
• RESIDENCE: Upper East Seventies brownstone, Manhattan.
• AGE: 35.
• QUOTE: "Sell."

Elliott makes s730,000 a year trading pieces of paper with French bond traders. It's a stressful life; Elliott used to un­ wind by taking martinis through an IV bag and inflaming his nasal passages with Bolivian Marching Powder, but he decided that he needed a hobby to help him relax. Elliott chose fly fishing because it's a little-not much-cheaper than his recreational drug intake. Elliott doesn't have a good selection of fly water to indulge his habit, so he usually charters a plane up to Maine or New Hampshire instead of roll casting for condoms–"Chicago Trout"–in the East River.

• NAME: Orvis Bodmer Thomas.
• OCCUPATION: Geezer.
• RESIDENCE: Hidden Valley Ranch, Antelope, Oregon (formerly Rajneesh, Oregon).
• AGE: 77 ("Hell, I can remember when Christ was a corporal.").
• QUOTE: "Get the hell outta my drift, you yuppie son of a bitch, or I'll put a crease in your noodle."

Orv has been fishing the same stretch of the Deschutes for 45 years, and doesn't like it when the investment bankers and lawyers from Portland and Seattle come down in their Blazers and Eddie Bauer Broncos and splash into the river and jangle up the dry-fly water with lousy casts. "A guy gets a subscription to Fly Fisherman, and all of a sudden he's in my hole slinging around the wrong patterns and leaving white wine boules all over the goddam bank."

Catch-and-Release

Catch-and-release became popular in the late sixties and early seventies, when there seemed to be a limit on everything but lying politicians. The 1970s were an era of limits; everyone was hung up on preserving the environment. There were cover stories in Time and Newsweek about the distinct possibility of all life on earth being extinguished by 1979 because of cans and tires floating in rivers, and there was also the growing realization on the part of the fishermen that you couldn't catch 212 trout every day and expect to repeat the numbers.

For some, catch-and-release seemed to be yet another milepost on the short freeway co one world Communism, where denial of the right to slaughter fish was just another example of big government telling us what to do, where the next exit was the fluoridation of Budweiser.

Your trout is subdued. He's tired, he's shocked as hell that that juicy little nymph turned out to be a mouthful of fur and wire, and he's looking at the net like it's euthanasia.

Equipment

Nets are very awkward to carry around while you 're trout fishing. They always seem to get caught on a branch as you're walking along–you keep moving forward, the elastic stretches to its maximum tensile strength, and then the net breaks off and hits you directly between the shoulder blades at about 2,000 feet per second.

Currently, leader manufacturers use the "X" system of rating tippet weights. X is a cross, which is a shorthand phrase for cross-eyed, which is what happens when you attempt to tie a fly on a 7X leader.

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