A Fly Fisher's Sixty Seasons

by Steve Raymond

  A few guides had even learned to tie flies, and their day-to-day exposure to the fishing gave them intimate knowledge of the most effective patterns. Another improvement was that the awkward punts we’d used for transportation ten years earlier had been replaced by giant outriggers, each with a central platform, benches, and a roof for protection from the elements. A steersman ran the outboard from a small compartment in the stern while the senior guide usually rode far up in the bow, using hand signals to direct the steersman. The outriggers handled much better than the punts and also were much better at keeping their passengers dry.

  However, the seating arrangement offered an irresistible opportunity to at least one guide who apparently missed the afternoon siestas that had been the norm ten years earlier. I discovered this one afternoon when the outrigger droned monotonously across the lagoon for at least an hour, never changing course and bypassing many fishy-looking flats. It finally dawned on me it also had been a very long time since I’d seen the guide up front give any hand signals to the steersman back aft. That’s when I realized the guide had been asleep the whole time, costing us (other clients were aboard, too) at least an hour’s fishing time.

  The same guide later did something that might have gotten him tarred and feathered had he done it anywhere but Christmas Island. I was fishing without a guide that day and had just hooked a sizable bonefish when the guide came trudging up on my right with a client in tow. He saw I was playing a fish and there was plenty of room for him and his fisherman to go behind me; instead, he led his client directly in front of me and lifted my line off the water so both he and the client could duck under it. I was so startled by this egregious breach of angling etiquette I didn’t know what to say. Miraculously, the fish was still on and I finally landed it, but I also made it a point to avoid that particular guide for the remainder of the trip.

  I was able to fish alone that day because it was then still permissible to fish without a guide on Christmas Island, just by saying you didn’t want one. I’d used a guide the first two or three days until I was satisfied I’d regained my “eyes” well enough to see bonefish and note what progress the guides had made since my initial visit, but after that I opted to fish without one. One of those days turned out to be the greatest day of bonefishing I’ve ever had, with or without a guide, which only served to reinforce my feeling that, when possible, it’s often more productive and more fun to fish alone.

  When I wrote my article I gave the guides a mixed report, although it was obvious most of the veteran guides had made substantial progress in a decade.

  There was one more sign of “progress:” The sign suggesting “contributions to the staff welfare fund in lieu of tipping” was no longer hanging in the dining room at the Captain Cook Hotel.

  More about guides later.

  THE LOWDOWN ON LUNDBOM

  THERE ARE dozens of lakes scattered around the town of Merritt in southern British Columbia, and although Joan and I had spent several days sampling several of them, we had found only mediocre fishing. The only nearby lake we hadn’t tried was named Lundbom. I’d been avoiding it for years because I didn’t like the name.

  “Lund” and “bom,” it seemed to me, were a pair of syllables that just didn’t fit together. Instead of blending smoothly, they seemed to crash into one another, like a couple of cars on the freeway. At the time I had no idea where the name came from; I just thought it was ugly, and that’s why I’d never visited the lake. I suppose only a newspaper editor could be put off by something like that.

  Much later I learned from the British Columbia Geographical Names Office that the lake was named for Angus William Lundbom, sometimes spelled Lundboom, a local magistrate in the 1880s. I suppose it wasn’t his fault he had such an awkward name; even spelling it Lundboom didn’t seem to help much, in my opinion.

  But Lundbom/Lundboom did have one thing in his favor: He was perhaps the area’s first true conservationist. Environmentalists and conservationists never have had an easy time in British Columbia, and Lundbom was no exception. He was deeply concerned about what he considered destructive overgrazing of the area’s rich grasslands—so concerned he “went out of his mind,” according to one area historian. Eventually he was removed from the community—involuntarily.

  In later years I would grow to appreciate the great irony of that.

  At the time, however, Lundbom Lake was the closest untried water, and I finally decided to put aside my dislike for its awkward name and check it out. So we followed a pair of ruts through a narrow gap between two hills until we came out on the crest of another hill, this one overlooking a valley filled with water: Lundbom Lake.

  The lake was long and fairly narrow, lying almost exactly on an east-west axis. If you stretched your imagination, you might think its shape resembled a human foot—the left one. The shoreline on our right, the lake’s south side, rose steeply to a high ridge heavily timbered with pine, fir, and groves of aspen. On the foot’s north side, rolling hills climbed gradually to a lower ridge covered with grass and sunflowers. A dirt road followed the north shoreline toward the lake’s east end, where a shallow bay marked the foot’s big toe. The shoreline at that point was bordered by a high, grassy slope with a fringe of timber on top. It was a beautiful spot, and totally deserted.

  From the crest of the hill we could see a pair of greasy ruts leading down to the southwest corner of the lake, evidence that people might have camped or launched boats there. I put the carryall—today it would be called a sport-utility vehicle—in low gear and started cautiously down the hill. There was soft ground at the bottom and deep ruts where previous visitors had spun their wheels trying to get free. I stopped short of the ruts, got out, and walked down to the lakeshore to see what Lundbom Lake’s larder might hold in terms of trout food.

  Weeds in the shallows were teeming with freshwater shrimp, or scuds, always a good sign. I could also see fair numbers of large water boatmen scooting around; another good sign. On the surface of the lake was the floating wreckage of a late-season flight of winged ants. Normally when you see ants on the surface the trout are rushing to take them, but I saw no rises. Not a good sign.

  The absence of rises gave us pause, but eventually we decided to launch our boat—I had a lightweight ten-foot wooden rowboat at the time—and start exploring the lake.

  A gentle westerly breeze pushed us along the south side of the lake as we fished. The shoreline dropped off rather quickly into deeper water, not apparently very conducive to fly fishing, and nothing came to our flies. We stuck with it, though, and the breeze gradually took us to the far end of the lake, where we could see a rocky point jutting from the other side. The point was guarded by a line of dead fir trees standing in the water, victims of drowning in the high water of spring. Now their skeletal limbs gestured stiffly over the water near the point.

  Suddenly I saw a large fish jump near the point. It was the first sign of trout we had seen, so we rowed toward the spot, dropped anchor, and began casting toward shallow water near shore. Joan’s first cast had hardly touched the water when her fly was seized by a strong fish that vaulted into the air and fell back with a heavy splash. Its first leap was followed by several more, coupled with a pair of speedy runs, and after a long fight she landed a beautiful Kamloops trout. It was only about seventeen inches long, but very thick and fat, with silver flanks decorated by a slim ribbon of pink.

  That was the beginning of fifteen minutes of wild fishing. When it ended we had each landed two fish, all virtually identical, and missed several others. But the breeze had freshened while we were busy exercising the trout, and now sizable waves were lapping at our boat. The anchor began dragging, and before we could react the wind had blown us right into the area where the trout had been feeding. Naturally they fled, and our fun was over.

  It took two hours to row against the wind back to the boat launch.

  That was our first visit to Lundbom Lake: September 26, 1968.

  We spent the night in Merrit
t and returned to Lundbom the next day. This time we followed the road along the north shore to the rocky point where we’d caught fish the day before. We’d also noticed evidence that people had camped on the point, leaving several rock fire pits. A few aspen also stood on the point, old trees of unusual size, though several bore the marks of beavers and a couple were already lying on the ground. As before, no other people were in sight, and the empty lake stretched before us.

  The day was bright and sunny, although a stiff breeze was blowing, again from the west, but the fishing started fast. During the first half hour I took a trout of about two and a half pounds and another a pound heavier. Then the fishing slowed—actually, it stopped altogether. I fished till early evening with no further success, then retired to a campfire Joan had built on the point. We dined on grilled steak while bats dipped and turned overhead and coyotes howled in the hills.

  We spent the night there and awoke to a frosty morning. Anxious to start fishing, I vowed to catch a four-pounder before breakfast. It took only a few minutes to make good on the vow. Fishing close to the point, I hooked a strong fish that ran immediately and put up a long struggle before I brought it to hand. On my pocket scale it registered a quarter-pound short of the five-pound mark, the largest fish I’d caught all season.

  From then until midafternoon we enjoyed fishing that was never especially fast but always intensely interesting. I released three more trout between two and three pounds each and lost two others while Joan took a three-pounder and lost another good fish. She also caught and released seven smaller trout casting a nymph from shore. The weather was perfect—warm, bright, and calm—and this being a Saturday, we had company for the first time; four or five other boats were on the lake at one time or another.

  The fishing tailed off in late afternoon, but we tried again in the evening when a good rise was in progress, the best we’d seen. Nothing was visible on the surface, however, and the trout ignored the assortment of dry flies and nymphs we offered.

  “This has to rank as one of the better lakes I’ve seen,” I wrote in my diary that evening. “It has a fine gravel bottom, underwater weed beds, plenty of natural feed, and splendid fish. We will have to return to Lundbom.”

  Even though I still didn’t like its name.

  We did return, the following June, arriving on what became an unbearably hot day with the temperature in the nineties. The sun was a fiery blot in a glassy sky, but the usual westerly breeze offered comfort. Our daughter, Stephanie, had been born in December and was with us, which meant Joan spent most of her time ashore looking after her while I fished, with pauses for lunch and to spell Joan so she could fish a while. I landed seven trout for my efforts, but the largest weighed only a pound. There was little sign of the bigger fish we had seen in the fall.

  But we did see something else remarkable: Traveling sedges were hatching, mostly at the west end of the lake, and they were big, some an inch and a half long. They popped to the surface, spread their wings to dry, then started motoring around in random patterns. Trout can scarcely resist such big, mobile targets, but on this day only smaller trout seemed interested. Two fell for my skated imitation and four others took a sedge pupa imitation I’d tied earlier in the day. Joan landed a dark fish of about three pounds and a smaller fish on a skated Muddler Minnow, and we both missed many other strikes in the windy chop.

  The next day also was hot and bright. After fishing briefly in the morning without result, we decided to break camp and spent the remainder of the day and all the next visiting some of the other nearby lakes. After experiencing minimal results, we returned to Lundbom “not because we expected to find any better angling,” I wrote, “but because it has become one of our favorite spots and is certainly one of the most attractive places I know.”

  As usual, we had the lake to ourselves. The absence of other fishermen seemed mysterious, but we assumed it was because the fishing in Lundbom wasn’t very easy and never very fast. Having witnessed many crowded angling venues, I certainly wasn’t bothered by the fact that most of the time we seemed to have Lundbom to ourselves. Maybe other people didn’t like its name either.

  The next day was Friday the thirteenth. The sedges were still hatching and trout were rising, but as before they were mostly small. Eight fell for my imitations, the largest only thirteen inches. Afternoon, however, brought a long-hoped-for change in the weather as a brief thunderstorm gave us a hard shower. A young mule deer buck, his twin spikes still covered in velvet, wandered through our camp on the rocky point, chased by thunder. We fished again in the evening, hoping the change in weather might bring bigger fish to the surface, but again only small trout came to our flies.

  That was the last day of our trip.

  We returned on a warm Indian summer day in late September. I landed eight trout that day, including five weighing more than two pounds each and a couple that weighed three. We had visited several other lakes earlier, but “Lundbom was much more alive than any of the others,” I wrote. “It was teeming with shrimp, as usual, and there was a good hatch of water boatmen. Chironomids emerged throughout the day and for a while there were black ants on the water. Fish rose steadily all day … A beautiful sunset capped a fine day of fishing.”

  For the next two days I fished under cloudless autumn skies, with only a gentle riffle on the water, but the bright sun seemed to have put a damper on trout activity. Nevertheless, Joan and I each landed several fish as large as three pounds and I managed to lose a couple that looked bigger. Most of the trout were feeding on scuds, but a couple had been taking water boatmen.

  For us the year 1971 passed without a trip to Lundbom, but on May 25, 1972, I left Joan and Stephanie at a motel in Merritt and drove alone to the lake, arriving in late afternoon. It was a lovely warm spring day and the lake was as pretty as ever. Over the next few hours I hooked six trout on a scud pattern and landed only three, but the smallest weighed four pounds and the largest six and a half. When the sun finally dipped below the horizon, the activity ended, leaving a glass-calm lake with a nearly full moon floating overhead—a scene of beauty to thrill the soul.

  It was after 10 p.m. when I got back to the motel in Merritt. Joan was waiting with a message that Roger LeCompte, the motel proprietor, wanted to interview me for his “fishing report” show on CJNL, the local radio station, which was scheduled to air at 7:15 the next morning. He had left word for me to come see him no matter how late the hour.

  I’d met Roger previously and knew him as a highly voluble self-styled fishing guide. He’d read my book about Kamloops trout and apparently considered me something of a celebrity, although I hardly felt the part. I was dead tired, but went to his quarters anyway, prepared for an interminable monologue, and that’s what I got. Roger discoursed at length on fishing acquaintances, a half-dozen lakes, and local fish-stocking records. Finally he got around to his “broadcast,” turned on a tape recorder, and started asking questions and recording my answers, although by then I was so fatigued I hardly knew what I was saying. When the interview was over, he left to deliver the recording to the home of the CJNL morning announcer, and I gratefully headed back to my room.

  Joan wanted to know about the interview, but the only thing I could clearly remember from Roger’s monologue was his intriguing theory of why Lundbom Lake was so productive. Speaking in a thick French-Canadian accent, which made it sound as if he were talking through his nose, he had said: “In zee fall when zee water iz low, zee cowz goez down to zee shore and shitz. Zen in zee spring, when zee water iz high, it covers up zee shitz and zee lake is fertilized.”

  I was desperate for sleep, but Joan wanted to hear the radio broadcast and set the alarm clock for 7 a.m. When it went off she got up and turned on CJNL. Waking up to twangy country and western music isn’t my idea of a good start to the day, but that’s how my day started. We listened in anticipation until it was 7:15, but the music continued without interruption. The same thing happened at 7:30. Finally, about a quarter to 8, the sad songs
of lost loves and alcoholic cowboys ended abruptly and an announcer came on. “My apologies to fishermen who were expecting the fishing report at 7:15,” he said. “I blew it. Left the darn thing at home.”

  So much for my radio debut in Merritt.

  Maybe it was a good thing; I’d been so tired I didn’t remember anything I’d said during the interview. I might even have mentioned Lundbom Lake, and I didn’t think it needed any publicity.

  That would come soon enough.

  WEIGHT FORWARD

  THE FIRST time I heard the term “weight forward,” I thought they were talking about me. Then I realized the conversation was actually about what was at the time a revolutionary idea in fly-line design, a line thick at one end and thin at the other. That was a radical departure from the double-tapered lines—thick in the middle and thin at both ends—that were then in common use.

  The big advantage of a double taper was that when one end wore out, you could reverse the line and continue using the other end, thus saving the cost of a new line—about $6.50, which seemed like a lot of money in those days. The new weight-forward design offered a wholly different advantage: A thick section of line at one end would pull the thinner running line behind it, making longer casts possible. Of course, when the line wore out you’d have to plunk down money for a new one, but that seemed like a minor trade-off. Who wouldn’t want to cast farther?

  So when the first commercially made weight-forward line came on the market, I quickly bought one and loaded it onto a reel. I couldn’t wait to try it out.

  The place I chose to do that was a trout-filled lake in the heart of the Columbia Basin, and it took only the first few casts for the new line to prove its worth. It not only cast farther than a double-taper, but casting seemed a lot easier, and I was delighted with the line’s performance.

  I’d been fishing only a little while when I saw a big trout rise far out. I double-hauled and shot line toward the spot, and right away I could tell this was by far the longest cast I’d ever made. The weight-forward belly of the line flew an incredible distance across the lake, well past my target, and finally fell to the water and sank slowly out of sight.