Sportsman's Legacy

by William G. Tapply

  THREAD: Gray 6/0.

  WINGS: Wood-duck flank feather.

  TAILS: Two stripped grizzly-hackle quills.

  BODY: Stripped peacock herl.

  HACKLE: Mixed ginger and grizzly.

  Follow the tying sequence above. Here are some tips to help you achieve just the right look.

  The wings should be as tall as the shank is long, and they should be cocked slightly forward with about a 45-degree angle between them.

  To splay the tails, make a figure-eight wrap around the stripped grizzlyhackle quills; then fix them in place with a small drop of head cement.

  To strip the fuzz off the peacock herl, use a soft pencil eraser.

  Wind the hackles separately, making one turn behind the wings and two turns in front, and tie them off behind the eye of the hook.

  TYING A NEARENUF

  PHOTO COURTESY OF AMERICAN ANGLER MAGAZINE

  Bill’s final fishing trip with his dad, H.G. “Tap” Tapply. This 2002 piece always sang for me, especially after... well, you know.

  ~vst

  GONE FISHIN’—2

  We usually rumble across the iron bridge, turn off the road, follow the bumpy ruts beside the field, and park Dad’s wagon at the water’s edge to offload the canoe, but on this gray afternoon in January we’ve come in my car, and we have to leave it beside the road and slog through knee-deep snow to the stream.

  Today we leave the rods in the car. We haven’t bothered with the canoe. I brush the snow off a boulder beside the water for Dad, then perch on my own rock next to him.

  “Looks kinda different in the winter, huh?” he says.

  The black currents flow against the crusty ice along the banks and swirl slowly around the bridge abutments. The alders and willows are black and skeletal against the snow. The sky overhead is leaden. The winter air carries the taste of more snow.

  “No mayflies today,” I offer.

  Dad laughs quietly. “I can count the mayfly hatches we’ve encountered here on the fingers of one hand. Objectively, it’s not much of a trout stream.”

  “But we do love it,” I say.

  “That we do,” he says softly.

  We’ve been coming to this little stream for nearly forty years. We discovered it soon after Dad moved to New Hampshire, and over the years we’ve explored its entire twenty-odd miles. It empties a spring-fed trout pond, meanders through pine-and-hardwood forest, opens up for a couple of miles in a bog, and reenters the forest before it dumps into the lake. We know every pool and run and riffle, every eddy and backwater and hole, and I guess at one time or another we’ve caught trout from all of them. We’ve been skunked plenty of times, too. We’ve packed away a lot of memories here.

  We’ve always come with the same purpose: To have some time with each other. Sharing a canoe on a quiet woodland trout stream for an afternoon, taking turns paddling and casting, has been our way of staying connected. The fishing is quite secondary, although before today we never considered leaving our fly rods behind.

  It’s a wild, pretty little stream, mayflies or no mayflies. In June the cardinal flowers and wild irises and marigolds splash patches of color over the banks, and in the fall the maples form a crimson-and-gold canopy overhead. We’ve rounded a bend, paddling or push-poling quietly, and found deer and, on a couple of occasions, a moose standing in the shallows. Kingfishers and herons hunt trout here, and in the fall migrating warblers swarm in the bushes. We’ve flushed woodducks and blacks and mallards. We’ve always planned to come back in October for a shotgun-and-flyrod float, but grouse season has inevitably distracted us.

  What we’ve liked best of all about our stream is its inaccessibility. Just two bridges cross it -- this iron bridge at about the half-way mark, and the highway bridge near its terminus. Its brush-clogged mud banks and silty bottom make it impossible to wade or fish from shore. The only way is from a little canoe, the way we’ve always done it. There are rocky riffles that in low-water years we’ve had to drag over. Enough uprooted pines lie across the water to discourage recreational canoeists and kayakers. They have never discouraged us.

  We’re thankful that our stream does not appear on the state’s list of stocked waters. The New England brook trout that live here were either born in one of its tiny tributaries or have wandered up or down from the ponds at either end. Except for the occasional kid dangling a worm from one of the bridges, in forty years we have never encountered another fisherman here.

  Dad and I sit there beside each other, watching the dark January water flow past us. Forty years, a hundred trips, at least. I’m having vague thoughts of immortality and eternity, thoughts that swirl in my mind like the black currents in our stream, elusive, opaque thoughts I can’t quite sink a hook into. Past, present, and future mingle, the river and the memories . . .

  It’s a sunny Saturday in May, or maybe June or September. I’ve driven to New Hampshire to spend some time with my father. His wagon is parked in the driveway. He’s already strapped on the canoe, packed corned-beef sandwiches and bottles of Hires root beer in the basket, stowed the fishing gear. He’s waiting for me in the yard, pretending to be busy weeding a flower garden or repairing a birdfeeder. When I pull in, he looks up, waves, glances at his watch. I’m early. I’ve been looking forward to this all week. He has, too, I know.

  A half hour later we cross the iron bridge. We offload the canoe, stow the gear, rig the rods. We argue about who will start in the bow with the rod and who will paddle. It’s an argument I have never won. Dad always asserts his seniority and takes the stern seat.

  He pushes us upstream. I sit up front and scan the water for the dimple of a rising trout. Now and then he digs in his paddle and holds the canoe. He says nothing, but after all these years, no words needed. I know he wants me to drift my bushy dry fly through that current seam or along that shaded undercut bank or against that boulder. We both remember a time when we took a trout there.

  Where the stream meanders through the bog, Dad grabs a branch to hold us still. “Listen,” he whispers.

  It’s the weird, booming “pump-er-lunk” call of the bittern, a haunting, wild sound that never fails to make me shiver, a sound I will forever associate with our stream, with Dad. It sounds close, and we look hard. But as often as we’ve heard Mr. Bittern, we’ve never once been able to spot him.

  After a couple of hours we beach the canoe and sit on a sunny patch of grass with the picnic basket between us. We discuss baseball, politics, religion, economics. We disagree on a lot of things. I call him a stubborn old Yankee. He calls me a crazy communist. We like to debate. But we never argue. We listen to each other, and we learn from each other.

  When the sandwiches and root beer are gone, we lie back on the grass. We listen to the music of the birds and the water, and we gaze up through the lacy tree branches to the sky, and it’s easy to wind back through the years to all the other times Dad and I have been together at this stream, or at some other stream. It never mattered where we were or whether we caught many trout. Time and place were irrelevant as long as we shared them.

  Dad murmurs, “It’s good to get out, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say quietly. “It’s always good to get out.”

  After a while, he stands up and stretches. “Let’s go catch some trout.” He tries to take the paddle.

  I grab it from him. “My turn,” I say. “I’d rather paddle.”

  “So would I. Don’t be selfish.”

  He grumbles, of course, but he takes the bow seat and picks up the rod. We’ve done this a hundred times. We both love to fish.

  We drift downstream. Dad rollcasts his little bucktail against the bank. He’s as effortless and graceful and accurate as ever. Watching him from behind, I can almost convince myself that nothing has changed in forty years, that the stream will always be here, and we will, too . . .

  “You must be getting cold,” Dad says.

  “You taught me not to complain,” I reply. “How about you?”

 
; “Ha, ha,” he says. “Very funny.”

  Hard little snowflakes are spitting down from the low January sky. I haven’t noticed them til just now.

  “Storm coming,” I say.

  “Won’t bother me,” he says. “But maybe it’s time.”

  I nod and stand up. “Okay. It’s time.”

  Dad’s ashes swirl and disappear in the dark currents, mingling with our stream and with our memories.

  “You’re on your own this time,” I tell him. I lift my hand. “Tight lines.”

  Then I turn and trudge across the snow-covered field to my car, on my own myself, for the first time in my life.

  At the start of each season, Bill contributed a personal letter to his website. Written in the beginning of summer, 2009, here is his final letter to his readers and friends.

  ~vst

  SUMMER SOLSTICE 2009

  Chickadee Farm

  Hancock, NH

  Summer Solstice 2009

  Dear Friends,

  Belatedly . . .

  These quarterly greetings are supposed to coincide with the changing of the seasons, and this one should’ve been written two weeks ago upon the Summer Solstice. Some health issues forced me to postpone it until now. Happily, I am again up and about and writing again.

  The first thing that needs to be said about this past spring is that I didn’t fish anywhere near as much as I’d planned. Those pesky ailments kept me home from a trip to the Bahamas and another to Montana as well as several New England day-trips I’d planned with various friends. I did manage to sneak out a few times locally. But I’m feeling fishing-deprived and hope to make up for it before the summer is over.

  On the writing front, my third Stoney Calhoun novel, Dark Tiger, is due out on September 29, and around that time my bird-hunting book, Upland Autumn, is scheduled to appear. My suspense/thriller The Nomination is due out sometime next spring, as is a book of fishing essays called Are We Fly Fishing Yet? (became Every Day Was Special)

  I have turned in a new Brady Coyne novel – called, at least for now, Outwitting Trolls—to my publisher. More on that later.

  I still write for the magazines – my monthly back-page column for American Angler called “Reading the Currents,” a couple of features for Upland Almanac each year, and frequent articles on writing for The Writer magazine.

  Vicki is undoubtedly much busier than I am. She has signed a contract with St. Martin’s Press to write a knitting book called 10 Secrets of the LaidBack Knitters—a project close to her heart. She’s also been doing a lot of tricky graphic-design work and, in her spare time (right!) she works on her newest Tally Whyte suspense novel. All of this while taking care of me. What a woman!

  Our kids continue to do what they do and do it well. Blake recently moved to Los Angeles to pursue his newest business ventures. He’s rooming with Ben, who continues to work with his father producing the magazine Smart Family. Mike is enjoying his new position with ePublishingPartners, Sarah is working at a summer camp between stints as a reading teacher in the Dedham public schools, and Melissa continues to be challenged (and sometimes over-worked) as court attorney at the Family Court in San Francisco.

  Our animals—Gracie and Muffin, the dogs, and Cranberry, the cat—always make us smile.

  Vicki and I are looking forward to our week on Martha’s Vineyard at the end of July, where we’ll be joined by Ben and Blake and Peter and Kathleen and Summer.

  Then, before you know it, school will be starting up again.

  Enjoy your summer. Don’t let it get away from you.

  All best,

  Bill

  Thank yous don’t usually come at the end of a book, but I felt I must say something to express my profound thanks to those who helped me create this expanded edition. For their love and support: Muriel and Martha; Mike, Melissa, and Sarah; Kate and Corey; Blake and Ben; Coreena; Peter, Kathleen and Summer; and Kim and John;

  For Mike’s outstanding new introduction; for Blake’s superb design work; for Jay Elliott’s exceptional copy editing and advice; and for Linda Roghaar’s faith and expert shepherding in steering this expanded edition to press.

  This is a book of all of our hearts. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we did aiding in its creation.

  —Vicki Stiefel (Tapply)

  I am grateful to Nick Lyons for encouraging me to tackle this project. It has been, more than any other in my life, a genuine labor of love.

  The incidents and people of this memoir are as accurately recalled as my memory allows. I have, without telling them why, checked my recollections against those of my parents. Mum remembers things sharply, and I depend on her for the truth. Dad admits that his memory sometimes fails him, and he cheerfully practices the novelist’s art of “improving” on history if he thinks it will make a better story.

  I don’t think this history needs improving, and I’ve tried not to do it. But insofar as I have, I am confident that I have remained faithful to the important truths.

  I appreciate Mum and Dad’s forbearance and innocent collaboration. They patiently answered my oblique inquiries and debated the details of stories from our shared past, and they intuitively understood that I did not want them questioning my sudden interest.

  During one of these nostalgic encounters, Dad looked at Mum and said, “Someone must’ve asked him to write my obituary.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said.

  —W.G.T.

  ACTON, MASSACHUSETTS, APRIL 1993

  H.G. “TAP” TAPPLY PADDLES HIS CANOE

  About the Book

  The original Sportsman’s Legacy was the a story of a remarkable relationship between father and son. It could have been the tale of any father and son whose lifelong bond was forged in the outdoors, except that the father was H.G. “Tap” Tapply, who for half a century stood tall among the giants of a generation of beloved sporting writers, including Lee Wulff, Burton Spiller, Ted Trueblood, and others. The son, author William G. Tapply, was revered in his own right as the author of more than 30 mystery novels, a dozen outdoor books, and hundreds of articles. This new edition expands on the original themes of cherishing nature’s fragile mysteries, of loving her wild creatures, and of how an indelible bond formed between father and son can spark a deep and profound love of family and friends.

  Complete Original Edition, Plus

  + 60+ new photographs of Bill, “Tap” Tapply, and others

  + Introductions by Bill’s wife, Vicki, and his son, Mike

  + Seven additional chapters by Bill, including Tap’s Nearenuf fly

  + The Phil ‘n’ Bill Show, Bill’s dialogue with Philip R. Craig