This interview was conducted with Jack Hutchinson on May 25th, 2006 in Everett, Washington. The interviewer is Tamara Belts.
TB: Today is May 25th, 2006 and I am Tamara Belts. I am down here in Everett with Mr. Jack Hutchinson who is a long-time fly fisherman. I forgot to bring the Informed Consent Agreement, but Jack you do know that you are being recorded, is that correct?
JH: Yes, I do.
TB: Excellent. My first question is where were you born and raised?
JH: I was born in Oregon City, Oregon, because my grandmother had what I refer to as a two-bed hospital. She was a single parent with three boys and one girl. They came from Wisconsin (I don’t know when they got out here). Anyway, she was an RN and Oregon City, I don’t know what the population was, but it did not have a hospital. You had to go to Portland which was fifteen miles. She established a small hospital of maybe twenty-five beds and my mother went down there to have me. At the time, my parents were living in Tumwater, right across from the Olympia Brewery. We stayed there until 1930 I think when they moved up here because Sound View Pulp Mill had just opened their new mill here. My Dad had experience in paper making so he got on there and was there until he died really, that was about 1957-58. Unfortunately, I wasn’t around for about the last five or six years [of his life]. I was in school and in the Army and whatever, I really missed him.
TB: What schools did you attend?
JH: I graduated from [Everett Public] High in 1946 and I applied at Washington State and was accepted. I didn’t want to go to a big school. The University [of Washington] was like 15,000 and Washington State was about half that. I got over in that country I think maybe to visit a friend. I didn’t see any water, didn’t see any green trees, and I said, “No thanks! But this was so late that I couldn’t really go anywhere else, so I went to Everett Community College (which was right downtown at that time) for a year and transferred to the University [of Washington] then.
I didn’t know what I was going to do [so] I took the business classes. I think its business administration now; it was economics and business then. You had fifteen hours, you got three books, and that’s it. My grades sort of showed that there was no interest in it. Finally, it was suggested to me that the university offered testing and guidance services for $20. They would give you a test, sort of a general test, and then they would look at it and ask you to take two or three more localized tests. They suggested that I go to art school. Anyway, I went to art school!
TB: What art school did you go to?
JH: This was the University of Washington’s School of Art, I had to declare a major, so I majored in interior design; they had a very good school at that time. They don’t even have it anymore. The main teacher was Hope Foote and she ran the place like she owned it – she did. When she passed away they didn’t have anybody to fall back on I guess. We had our differences -- I’ll put it that way. I ended up graduating in general art. She told me not to come back to class! This was a senior class. I went to the head of the school and complained and he said to go back to class, so I went back to class. She went to him and they talked it over and suggested that I switch my major to general art. That’s what I did; I learned to draw and paint in the morning and in the afternoon I was in the senior classes (people that had been doing this for three years or whatever). I got by alright, I graduated in 1952.
I had been deferred by the military (I missed World War II by one year); I was deferred for all that schooling. They catch you! At last, they catch you. I was sent down to the Signal Corps School down at San Luis Obispo, California. There were quite a few of us people who had had advanced schooling. From there we went for a big boat ride that way (pointing west) to Japan (because this is Korean War time). I think there were three of us who ended up staying in Japan and all the rest went to Korea. We got there when the snow was knee-deep and it stayed knee-deep for six months! This [was] way up in Sapporo, Hokkaido.
I came back to the states in 1954. I talked to a friend in Seattle who suggested I see a friend of his who at that time was building metal furniture (because I had a background in furniture design). I built metal furniture for the next year. This guy had at one time attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He suggested I go to Brooklyn, which is what I did. I had two years at Pratt, got a BFA degree there and then worked in the city, the big city, for three years. People started moving away; my friends started moving away, it’s a very big city if you don’t know anybody there. While I was there I began thinking about fishing again, I was right in a good area but I didn’t know it. During that time my Father died; I’m the only child and there are no other relatives around, so I figured I better move back here. I came back in 1960.
At that time they were building the Seattle World’s Fair. I had met another guy down there who was [into] furniture. He and his wife had this nice house up on the hill overlooking Lake Union. They decided to move. He bought another house up there, so I took their apartment. Great view! Sometime around that time, they decided to build I-5 right in front of my window. They cut off about half of my view of the bottom of the lake. I said, “Time to move!” I had been working with a company who did some of the design work at the Fair at that time.
During that time I was visiting all of the sporting shops (there weren’t many fly shops at that time) in the city. I walked into one and this guy became my mentor, really, he was on the way out. He had had a couple of partners who had deserted him and took money and everything; this was during the 60’s. We would steelhead every Sunday; another friend of ours would come by, [and] we would go all the way up to Darrington to start. During this time I got another job in Seattle with a design office so I commuted down there for four years or so which is not as bad as it is now. I probably got off work at five, and in an attempt to miss the traffic, I would stop at Roy Patrick’s Fly Shop. We would talk until he closed shop, which was about 6:30. Mrs. Patrick worked in a ladies’ shop downtown; [and then] she would get home, that’s how I got to know Roy.
I went back to work maybe in Seattle. I went to Vancouver, B.C. for one job, which was basically just a salesman’s job [and] I’m not a good salesman. [but] I made good friends up there. I also went down to Vancouver, Washington. We had worked for a year on one job, I don’t know if you have heard of the Thirteen Coins Restaurant in Seattle, it’s quite a nice small restaurant. Anyway, I had done some work on that for another firm. I heard that they were going to put a Thirteen Coins in the Vancouver area, that’s how I ended up in Vancouver, Washington. In fact, the owner was actually a Hood I think. He died suddenly, so that job down in Vancouver that we had worked on for almost a year, suddenly stopped. The guy I was working for started paring people (including me), that was one of the reasons he went out of business I think. That brings us to about 1970 I guess.
For a while I wasn’t working [and] I decided to research a book on aquatic insects. I stopped work on that when I went back to work. Unfortunately in this business, you have work when they have work, when they don’t have work, then you are out of work. It’s one of those jobs. In the meantime, about 1970 or 1971 I think, Roy Patrick died very suddenly. Died while tying flies, would you believe? He used to tie flies in the evening for the orders he would get. I have the last fly he tied at home, it’s only partially tied. Mrs. Patrick employed a couple other people, and they didn’t work out. She had met me before and I was out of work so I said, “Why don’t I come work for you?” I worked there for the next nine years I guess. I’m trying to think of when I left there. My Mother was failing; she wasn’t ill, she was just weak and frail, she didn’t do any walking [and] I came home to take care of her. She passed when she was 88, so that would be 1989 when she died. That’s about it.
In the meantime, I joined the Washington Fly Fishing Club in Seattle. I used to go to their Wednesday luncheons even before I was a member, really. There I met people like Letcher Lambuth.
TB: Why don’t you tell me about him? He’s pretty well-known.
JH: I think I have given you a picture of Letcher, I will if I haven’t before. He was a commercial real estate businessman. Letcher used to come to these luncheons, although he was legally blind, he could still hear. He would walk around town with no cane, no nothing. Amazing! At that time I was buying angling books mainly from England. Letcher had a small library, of course, he knew all the names and I would bring a book and he would open the book and hold it up to his eyeballs. He couldn’t read anything.
Eventually he asked me over to his home for drinks.
He was famous for… I forget what drink he mixed; by mixing it he would stick his finger in the glass until he felt the liquid come up to his finger. He showed me his library, he wouldn’t let me look at it, he had other things to look at, I’m sorry I didn’t know him much earlier. I don’t know how he started fishing, how he became interested, I don’t know any of that. He was one of the big names in the Northwest; he knew some of the big names in the East and around the Northwest like Roddy Haig-Brown and Tommy Brayshaw.
At that time when they had the Wednesday luncheons this was in the Camlin Hotel; not the top floor, the top floor was a restaurant and bar, it was a floor below and the club had a room which was called the Fly Caster Room. At this time, Wednesdays they would have a fashion show up there with two or three gals, one of them was a former Miss Washington. They would dress on our floor, run up there, show off, and then come down here and show it off to us! Of course, they made a big fuss over Letcher. That was good.
Also it was interesting because from time to time there would be interesting people in town who would be invited up to this Wednesday luncheon. At that time, the Seattle baseball club was playing everybody just like they do now. One manager at one of the clubs was Ted Williams, who was a big baseball star, but he also was a fisherman. He did a lot of saltwater fishing, so we had Ted Williams up for lunch one day. Another day Joe Brooks and Dan Bailey came in together; they were on their way to Canada for steelhead fishing. Another time Charles Ritz of the hotel Ritz was there, various people like that. I got to know various people, and that was before I joined the club.
It’s really a good club; it was the first club in the Northwest, formed in 1939. In 1955 they helped establish the club in Everett and one in Tacoma because they knew they couldn’t control the whole Puget Sound by themselves. Another club was established in Spokane about this time [but] they didn’t look to the Washington club as parents, they looked to the Fly Fisher’s Club of Oregon for parenting. The Fly Fisher’s Club of Oregon is basically a social club; it does not do anything environmentally. Either they or members had property on the river and it was as I say just a big social club. They weren’t close to the Washington Club at all, a few members were, but as a club they weren’t.
In 1965, the [Federation of Fly Fishermen] was formed. A couple of the people in this town who are now gone, including Lew Bell and Bill Nelson, either were asked or decided to hold a conclave here to spread the word. That conclave, the first one, was held by the McKenzie Flyfishers in Eugene in 1965 which I did not attend because I really didn’t know about it. At that time, the McKenzie club (it was a very small club, it had just been formed) decided to hold a conclave again to sort of spread the word. They brought out some big names from the East Coast, people came up from California, came down from Vancouver, B.C. Later on it was decided to hold one here, this was strictly a regional conclave because the states were divided into regions. The region here consisted of Oregon, Washington, B.C. and Alaska; California had their own region.
The conclave we had here was over at Ocean Shores and [as is] usual with our local club here, we [didn’t] get [any] help at all. There [were] like five of us who did everything; it was real sad. I took charge of the display room. At that time, the national had a traveling display of framed art (flies, etc.) and I arranged to have that sent out here. I gathered some local stuff and my own stuff; we really had a big room pretty full. That was the place where everybody gathered; either there or the bar. Anyway, so Lew Bell at that time was involved in the national Federation, later on he became president, but that’s another matter. The current president asked Lew if he had any people up here who he would suggest to do something, Lew gave them my name. I was part of a group of seven people across the country who became involved in the audio-visual aspects. At that time we had films, and slideshows, which we would mail out to various people, schools, whatever, who wanted to show [them]. I did that job for seven years or something like that.
Interruption
At one time he had a fishing shop in Seattle. He was known as a ‘BS-er.’ Can I put it that way? You could only believe half of what he said.
TB: Isn’t that true of all fly fishermen? [Laughter]
JH: No! This guy didn’t have to do that. He fished salmon; he fished everything around here. He had caught more 50-pound salmon than anybody in the club in Seattle at that time. Karl didn’t have to do that, but it was just him. I never corrected him. I should have probably, but I didn’t. We went steelheading every Sunday. He used to go to the (Kispiox) which is a river way up in B.C. which had big fish; they had spent four, maybe five years in salt water. Karl went there every year and took me up one year, mainly because I provided a rubber boat we could use to cross the river. Anyway, there were four of us that went up.
We’ll call this a bad year. There were few fish, but big fish, Karl landed two fish and I landed two fish. The whole week, only four fish. He took one on the fly, but mainly we fished spoons. You can’t fish bait up there or other things like they do here. His big fish was 29 pounds, 9 ounces, if it had been on the fly it would have been almost a world record. Karl Mausser from California maybe still has the world record which was caught on the fly (33-pound world-record steelhead, October 1962) in that river. Before that George McLeod held the record.
[End of tape one, side one]
Anyway, this was a big fish. A young kid came up in a VW with his dog all the way from southern California not knowing anything about it, he just heard about this river. Karl said you go here and here and here, later on this kid took a 20-pound fish -- there aren’t many people who can catch a 20-pound fish. I had one on, it felt like a submarine!
I took a 16-pounder earlier in the day, I looked downstream and there was no beach, so I knew I was going to have to swim after this fish because Karl’s fish took us a quarter mile down the river. Here’s Jack pulling the rubber raft, taking pictures all the way! Of course, the pictures didn’t show up because the camera was jiggling (the last one did show up). Jack looked down there and he got buck fever, what am I going to do with this monster? This fish did not know he was hooked; he was still on the spoon. He would go up slowly and turn around and come back slowly. Eventually the spoon just dropped out of his mouth because I didn’t strike him, I was still trying to figure out what I was going to do with him. I learned later on that you worry about things like that when you have to worry about them. You see, that was my big fish, that was 20-30 pounds -- this was a big fish year.
TB: What year was that?
JH: 1962, around there, early ‘60’s. Karl fished up there every year for at least ten years. When he met me he didn’t do salmon fishing anymore, he used to go over to the Peninsula. He also knew how to fish Hope Island, which is out of Conway and La Conner; this is before we had down riggers and all these other things they use now. You had to position your boat according to the marks on the river bank, you lined up one way to a house and the other way with a tree and you knew you were in the right spot because the right spot there was a little trench I think. That’s where you could catch salmon – big salmon, as big as they come. The first guy that catches a fish over I don’t know what poundage became the unofficial mayor of the town! So of course Karl had been the Mayor at one time. He taught one of the guys in Everett, Big John Martinis, Sr., how to catch those fish up there. Karl, as I say, he didn’t have to ‘BS’ anybody, he could catch fish, even as a member of the bass club. Of course, he was a member of all the clubs in Seattle.
I went into his shop one day before we really got to know each other. I had caught what at that time would have been a big bass in this state – 7 ½ pounds. I caught it out of Lake Stevens. I wanted to mount it because I knew I was never going to catch another one that size. I walked into Karl’s shop with this frozen fish. He told me who could do it in town, that’s how we got to know each other. At that time, he had a large shop and I didn’t have any fly rods, I really hadn’t gotten into fly rod fishing at that time. I always owned a fly rod because of my dad, but owning one and knowing how to use one are [very different]. This was at the time when glass rods were just coming out on the market. As it happened, one of the major people in that category, Don Green, had a manufacturing shop in Seattle. You could build your own rods, really. What we would do would be [buy] ‘blanks’, which were classified as ‘seconds’ because they were blemished (not broken, but blemished). So I built several glass rods down there, at least two fly rods and another rod for spinning and another six footer or whatever for lake spinning. I built several rods [and] we got to know each other quite well.
That continued. They had three daughters; two twins and a third. We camped together and so on. Actually his wife died suddenly and Karl remarried. At that time he had gotten a job, I guess you would call it as a swamper. He knew a lot of people around town, a big truck would come in full of boxes and he would unload the boxes. He did that until he hit 65 I guess and could retire. His second wife had lost her husband early and he had a successful business so she had some money. They bought a trailer and they used to go up to Canada and fish various places for months. One day I got a call from his daughter that Karl had just died. He was watching television and he just died in the chair, so that ended that relationship more or less.
TB: Can we back up now? When and where did you really first get interested in fly fishing?
JH: As I say, my Dad; I don’t know where he got his interest. When he lived in Oregon City he worked at the paper mill. You probably have never been to Oregon City, they have a falls there, a rather small falls, ten foot [and] there is a paper mill there. During salmon season, the salmon all stacked up below the falls. As they fish in Oregon they have what they call a “hog line” – boats are more or less tied together across the water. He was in the habit of rowing a boat to work, fishing. One day he landed this 50-pound salmon and I think he was a little late to work.
He and another guy (they were partners) and they both came up about the same time to Tumwater. I don’t know how long they stayed there. They had a boat I think they later lost it in a storm. I have a picture at home of a bass they caught, they kept every bass they caught I think, this was during the early Depression. They probably fed the whole neighborhood, you know? These two guys gained some notoriety for catching all these bass, behind the picture there is a newspaper article. I don’t know if the library would want that or not. They both were bass fisherman.
They also had fly rods. My Dad had what I call a trout rod and a heavy rod. These were cane rods; this was before any of the modern rods. A cane rod is one of those that we never like to see, we call it a ‘wet noodle’. It’s floppy, it has no backbone. These guys were fairly knowledgeable, but these were the days when there were no modern fly lines. If you had the money you could buy an English line, a tapered line. Before I knew better, I gave this rod away; I also gave away a fly book (I don’t like to think about that either). My Dad’s heavier rod, bass rod, is pretty decent; I could use it except these early rods had very bad guides (these rings that go up) with very small apertures (a modern fly line can get quite thick). It’s sort of hard to shoot any line with this bass rod. Anyway, I don’t do much bass fishing anymore.
In the’30’s, most every lake in the area had bass. We used to plug the shoreline of Storm Lake over around Snohomish; a very small lake which I guess has houses around it now. But at that time there were maybe only two or three houses, one of them rented boats. We would go there about four or five in the morning and take out a boat. You could circle the whole lake in about two hours. We would catch half a dozen fish. I think the biggest we ever took was like three pounds out of there, that was good, that was fun. We never did try fly fishing for trout. We would troll, most everybody still-fished or trolled (you would drag some spoons or whatever). As a kid, my Dad had a few flies and they interested me. It was my artistic nature I guess now that I look back on it. I tried tying a couple flies out of found materials: robins’ feathers, dog hair. I didn’t know what chenille was, but a pipe cleaner more or less looked like it except a pipe cleaner has a metal core. I had two or three of those which I tied on oddball hooks. I never have mounted them because I would like to find an early photograph of myself. I know my photographs are all packed away somewhere, but I still have those flies up to this day.
Anyway, when I got back to New York and started dreaming about fishing, a local shop opened up there - a tackle shop. I had read about this new type of reel, it was the spinning reel. I don’t know where it came from, I can’t think of the brand right now. I went into this shop and bought a reel. I didn’t know it at the time, but this couple was fairly famous (I know his name but I can’t think of it now). I have a minor book at home that he and another guy wrote. I didn’t know anything, I didn’t know about the world-famous fly shop that was three blocks away and all this other stuff! That came later.
I dreamed about tying flies and I probably saw articles in the usual sporting magazines. I started making a list of all the dry flies I would buy and all the wet flies I would buy, one of each. I don’t suppose I still have that list, but I had two lined pages full of the names of these flies. Jack, you’re going to buy one of each! And I started figuring out how much it was going to cost. When I got back to ‘God’s country’ we’ll call it here, I got a hold of a catalog; Herter’s catalog. Herter’s is one of the big companies in the country, perhaps the world outside of Abercrombie and Fitch. I bought $50 worth of stuff from Herter’s and ended up sending about half of it back. Herter’s was a big family, they were in the habit of extolling virtues which were [not true]; still, it was a great company. Unfortunately they got caught I think importing things they weren’t supposed to import, so they went out of business.
The name is still around today, but it’s probably a different family and it deals mainly with hunting gear. I bought Herter’s decoys. I only have one of each now; I gave the rest to Eric. This new company I think sells Herter’s decoys. I’m not certain about that because I have never seen a catalog. That’s how I got started. During one of my sessions when I was without a job I started tying flies and teaching myself how to tie basically, using Roy Patrick’s [Tie your own flies] book. I just progressed from there.
TB: What is your favorite way to fish? Wet or dry? Wade a river, be in a boat? Or do you like all of them?
JH: Around here if you want to fish trout, you have to fish lakes. I used to get calls down at Patrick’s, somebody in the East who was going to be in Seattle and who was wondering how the fishing was, they were talking about rivers. I would say, “Our fish here are anadromous. That is, they live in salt water and they come into fresh water. And there aren’t any trout basically, not in rivers. The only real trout you catch in rivers here would be a Sea-Run Cutthroat, which comes in to spawn and then goes back out.” I said, “Go to Oregon. Oregon has everything we do and better. They don’t have Puget Sound, but they have everything else. They have very good rivers and their high mountain lakes are as good as ours.”
If you read books, most of which came out of the Eastern US, they all talk about stream fishing, practically none about lake fishing except up in the New England area where they would troll flies for a various couple of species up there. Around here, most people would like to fish Montana where you can wade some very good streams; they have some private waters there which would cost you maybe $100 a day. You have no competition really, and you can fish dry-fly. Around here, you can fish dry-flies on our lakes but mainly we are in the habit here of fishing wet flies or nymphs. We didn’t know all that much about nymphs for quite a while, most people that fish around here would [use] wet flies instead of nymphs. I can go into more detail if you want.
TB: We might come back to that. When did you get involved in the Evergreen Fly Fishing Club?
JH: I walked into John’s Sporting Goods one day, I knew he was a member, I told him I was interested in joining the club. That’s how I got into the club. This club doesn’t ask anything of sponsors, so early on they put you to work if they find that you will work. Most of them do not work, but they overwork the guys who will work, we’ll put it that way. I was doing things that the other people weren’t; collecting angler books and making tackle and collecting tackle and things like that. There’s nobody else in the club basically that does that.
For instance, a week ago: they had a yearly kids’ fishing day out at Silver Lake. I don’t know who the main sponsor is but the Game Department helps them and several clubs including ours donate help including money. I usually am in the habit of displaying pictures and flies and things like that. We also help kids tie flies if they are interested. Most of the people are down on the beach helping these kids with their tackle; baiting the hook or casting the bait. I don’t know what the age limit is. I didn’t go this last time because I had one of my bad headache days a couple days before and I was still recuperating so I said, “Count me out.” So I didn’t go this time but the guys that went this time are the same guys that went five years ago, despite the fact that we have a hundred members in this local club. Nobody else will help. I’ve learned to not expect anything from this club anymore, its one reason why I enjoyed the Seattle club. Well, one reason was that I was working down there but another, the Washington club knows how to do things and they try to do them right.
TB: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about the Washington Fly Fishing Club; why you joined it and maybe some of the things it does? Earlier you did talk about the luncheons that they had, was that once a month?
JH: Weekly.
TB: Weekly! They had a weekly lunch [and] someone came in and spoke?
JH: No, [only] if somebody happened to be in town. The unofficial greeter would be Gordon Young; Gordy sold things like sugar around the state; you know, big bags. When Gordy got into the Federation of Fly Fishers (it used to be Fly Fishermen) he had one of those name tags. He’s got a real number, like something under 10. We used to call him ‘number so-and-so.’ Mine is I think 353 or something like that. So Gordy kept his ear to the ground so to speak and found out when people were coming around and he would invite them and sort of act as a greeter, he would introduce them. That group included Enos Bradner, Al Pratt, and Letcher Lambuth; these [were] movers and shakers in the Washington club.
TB: I’ll shift gears. Were you involved in the formation of the Federation of Fly Fishers?
JH: No.
TB: What role do you believe the Federation of Fly Fishers plays in the sport? You talked a little bit about how the Seattle club is much more involved in the ecological stuff.
JH: The Federation is not the earliest fishing group that is called Trout Unlimited.
TB: That still exists, doesn’t it?
JH: Oh yes, it was formed in the East. The only way it came out here was because they absorbed a couple of local organizations including the local steelheaders, which was Oregon, Washington and Idaho and maybe another organization, I just can’t think. ‘TU’ is Trout Unlimited. The Federation is the fly fishing only, really. Locally, these two clubs only ask that you use the fly during the regular summer trout fishing, some lakes are open already. But TU incorporates all other kinds of fisherman. Of course, since then the The Bass Organization has been organized and has very large groups all around the country. Most of the clubs in the East were private clubs and they had rights to water or even had buildings of some sort, where out here it’s more public. Some of those clubs didn’t really favor the Federation. I don’t know how many clubs are in the country now. Early on we started looking at the environment and working for things and donating. It happens that one of the national chairmen came from the East, I don’t know how he came to Seattle but he did and he’s a member down there now. He’s at the Federation national headquarters, [R.P. “Van” Gytenbeek], but still a member in Seattle.
[End tape 1, side two]
I don’t know what his business was; that probably brought him out here in the first place.
JH: While he was out here they made a few saltwater television shows with Les Johnson earlier on, he wrote a book which was published by TU called The way of a trout which later TU made into a 16 mm film.
TB: You have it?
JH: Yes, only because it wouldn’t fit into the library case.
TB: We can get that switched over to DVD.
JH: All I have to do is find it! It is probably on tape or DVD now because [the Federation] doesn’t send the 16 mm out any longer. If I can find it, you can copy it as far as I know. It’s made in the East on a small stream, it shows this man fishing the stream and I think he hooks and loses this big fish. It shows the stream, it shows the fish spawning, and otter and kingfisher chasing the fish. It shows all those things that are associated with the stream.
Later on this guy goes back to the stream and he ties a fly and catches this fish and then releases it. It’s an excellent film for kids or anybody, really. I mentioned it to somebody the other night and they had heard of it. I’ll show it again. I used to send that thing as far as Nome, Alaska would you believe it? Middle of winter, [kid] out of [a] class in junior high school, he wrote me a letter and said he needed it. We had trouble getting it across the border at first. I don’t know why. Anyway, eventually we didn’t have any problems; I used to send it by UPS. UPS started in Seattle, I don’t know if you knew that.
TB: I did not.
JH: There’s a brass dingy in the sidewalk down there, I don’t know what the side street is, and they had a small office here. That’s before they went big time, before they had planes and all this other stuff.
TB: My next question will be what other Evergreen members or local people should be included in our understanding of Northwest fly fishing?
JH: They can be deceased?
TB: They can be deceased, but if they are alive we might want to pursue their oral histories too.
JH: I mentioned Lew Bell, he was a prominent lawyer in town, he again died very suddenly. One of the sons is a member although he’s not really that active, he is a lawyer too; there are two sons. The other one would be Dr. Ryle Radke (he was my mother’s doctor), those two guys were very close to the Federation. He and Bill Nelson (who later moved to Oregon and established a club down there) were very instrumental in getting things started. They were the shakers and movers here. Unfortunately when they died a couple of the guys stopped working. I can give you the names of the younger guys who started with the club here basically in 1955, they are not all active.
TB: I’ll get a list from you later. I’ll move on to the next question which is what is your association with noted fly fishers like Al Knudson and then any other local fly fishers?
JH: Al was a well-known fly fisherman. For a long time during the late ‘40s he had either taught casting or fly tying, I’m not sure which. He was well-known although he was retiring because he was quite deaf. He wore a hearing aid but still he didn’t like meetings because he couldn’t hear. He just got a jumble of sound, you know. Do you want me to talk about him?
TB: We’re talking about Al, right? Yes, tell me about him.
JH: He came from North Dakota I guess, I can’t think of the town (I’ll speak about what he has told me about it). He at that time (we’re speaking about the ‘20’s I guess) like most fishermen [was] still-fishing. Regular fishing back there would be bass or associated fish like that with bait and maybe live bait. That didn’t interest Al; he was a loner I guess you could say. He wanted to fish with things like bass plugs and so on; that’s the way he fished back there. I don’t know when he started fly fishing.
He came out here and wanted to go to the University [of Washington] for forestry management or whatever they call it, but he found he couldn’t afford that. This was 1926 maybe; that was about the time to be looking for work. He started tying flies and selling them and that’s the way he supported himself really during the Depression. He was working hand to mouth; he did not own a car until later on. Guys asked him to go fishing and to show them how to fish.
During the late ‘30’s he decided to go down to southern Oregon, one of his acquaintances here was going to drive so Al bummed a ride with him. At that time a lot of oddball places sold fishing flies like gas stations, jewelry stores, Western Auto. Everybody was trying to make a buck any way they could. I forget how he sold flies, two for a quarter or something like that. He made enough money to pay for the gas going down. When he got down there he started asking around and talked to some guy, a hotel man, who had an empty window and Al, asked him if he couldn’t tie flies in the window. So he did that for a while.
Eventually he went to work down there for Cal-Ore (California-Oregon) Tavern on the California line. It was sort of a road house as we would call it today; it had cabins that you could rent. In fact, Al lived in one of the cabins. Al was assistant bartender there; I don’t know how long he stayed. Then he went to live with another guy who was retired military who had a pension. They took a cabin down on the Rogue River for a while.
I guess World War II came along and Al decided to move back to Everett because he knew he could walk to water here, where [down] there he couldn’t (he was close to the river but he wasn’t on the river). I don’t know when he got a regular job here. He worked for Pacific Grinding Wheel probably in town at the time; they are out in Marysville now. Al would fish trout early on, when the steelhead started coming in, Al had to be on the river. A lot of the Seattle guys owned cabins at Oso. Al couldn’t afford a cabin but he was able to buy a lot right next to Wes Drain. He would stay in the river; he fished Pass Lake earlier on. At that time Al had a camper; he would just stay there and fish the lake.
Even when Al had this job at the grinding wheel he would take a vacation during the steelhead season. He had a menial job, really, he would ask them to employ someone else for a couple of months, whatever it was. Al had a car and he would drive up to Skagit River at Burlington. He took a room at a hotel there for a weekend. He was well known, a fly fisherman on the river – that would be Al Knudson at that time. There was nobody else “dumb” enough to try and catch a steelhead on a fly, particularly during the winter. That’s basically his main claim to fame, catching winter steelhead on a fly.
People in southern Oregon said, “That’s impossible.” They called him a liar, he had to prove it to them, “Come along and watch me catch this fish.” It’s quite a story. He was known. Al had an apartment [in] one of the old houses on Riverside in Everett. Well, I wouldn’t really call it an apartment, it had two rooms basically. He never cooked! He had a woodstove, the old-time wooden stove, he burned Presto logs and he tied flies there. He looked like another guy I know. He had a sofa there I think and there were fly lines coiled up on the sofa all the way down, because he was called ‘impoverished’ really; he made his tackle, made his fly rods.
You could buy bamboo blanks at that time just like we buy graphite or glass now. Every once in a while he would find a blank that he liked. I don’t know what he paid for them. I still have my bass casting rod. I made mine out of a bamboo blank that my Dad’s partner had sent up from Portland. Al couldn’t afford a good reel for a long, long time, he made due with nothing.
Later on there was a club (it’s still around) called the Steelhead Fly Fishers’ Club; it’s very, very small. I don’t know how many members; the biggest names belong to this, Al was an honorary member. I used to take him down on occasion to their Christmas party. I remember one guy kind of teared up when he saw Al walk in the door (I’m doing it now). That happened when Al received his Letcher Lambuth Award in Seattle. I wrote the nomination for the Evergreen Fly Fishing Club to nominate him for the award. I cried there, too. I don’t know -- tears come easily to my eyes.
I have maybe 10 hours of him on these cruddy tapes which I will dig up eventually, I’m sorry I didn’t get to record more. They are around somewhere; I was trying to find somebody who had the equipment and the time to edit these tapes. As I said before, Al tends to repeat himself. Ralph Wahl from Bellingham talked to me one day and said, “I want you to bring Al up, I want to record him.” So I brought Al up to Ralph’s place and they made a half-hour tape I think. We should have a copy here and a copy in Seattle. I know Ralph was in the habit of doing that with certain people, but you would have to talk to Steve Raymond as to what happened to all of Ralph’s stuff. I think some of it went to family.
TB: Some of his stuff went to the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies.
JH: Yes, I know, probably the photographs. You go in his basement and there are photographs on that wall and that wall and the ceiling. They are 11 x 14s, all framed. I don’t know where they are now.
TB: The Center for Pacific Northwest Studies.
JH: Yes; where is it?
TB: That’s at Western; it’s in [the Regional] archives [building on campus].
JH: But you don’t know what is there?
TB: I can check the [finding aid]. There should be a [finding aid].
JH: It’s just sort of nice to know where stuff went.
TB: If you found those tapes of you and Al Knudsen I think we could transcribe them like we will these.
JH: Sure.
TB: I’m going to come back and ask you a little bit more about some other people but I want to make sure I get lots of information about you too, here. You have a large book collection, text materials and things.
JH: It’s not large, really.
TB: Well anyway, the question is how did you get interested in collecting those and how do you go about making your selections?
JH: How did I start? When I joined a club here in Everett, one guy came up to me and I don’t know if I had taken on the job of librarian at that time or not. He handed me a list from an English book dealer. I had read just enough to recognize some of those authors’ names. I probably ordered books, and then one book leads you to another book and another book and another book, you know. I don’t claim to have read all of them. In fact, I am keeping some back until I read them first! I was not poor, but I couldn’t afford to buy everything I wanted.
I moved a box on the floor the other day and found a couple of book lists, English lists. I have some upstairs in my file drawer but I didn’t know this was here. There were a couple of books listed there that came with flies. This is the text and this book has the flies. If you had $1500 (which I did not have!) you could buy the books. With those books, it wasn’t a matter of affording them it was just finding when they were available.
I think I mentioned to Marian that in one of the Federation conclaves over in Spokane, they displayed two of those books which they borrowed from the WSU library over there I believe (you can check on that). The library at the University of Washington does not have anything I believe. One of my customers in Seattle walked in with a book, I don’t remember the title or anything, but I knew it was a valuable old book; it was worth money. And that was just in the regular stacks down there, not in Special Collections or anything.
TB: Well you also collect furs and feathers. How did you get started collecting your furs and feathers?
JH: Well, [to tie] flies. We’ll call these the old days (1960’s), there wasn’t a fly shop on every street, not in every city. You learned where to order things from the good people around the country, and that includes California or New York or wherever. Some things you can acquire, various game birds you can shoot. These days some turkey feathers are quite valuable, they are expensive we’ll put it that way. I always taught the turkey hunters, there were four or five species in the state; there is only one that has good feathers. You start looking for things and because I’m sort of a crafty type of person I guess you would say, I would always go into a yarn shop or a craft shop and look for things that would be useful. Sometimes I would find things.
The local club here has a yearly fly-tying class. We held it out at the junior college for one year. That was for anybody and everybody that showed up. Now it’s more or less just for club members. It’s not held in town anymore. We used to meet at a guy’s shop but he sold that now. Arlington has a historical museum or something they just built not too long ago. They meet out there. I got into the habit of talking about various articles, showing them, talking about them. I have written papers on some of the stuff which you will get.
TB: I believe you also collect insects? How did you get into collecting insects?
JH: When I started collecting books I was interested in books on fly tying and books on entomology. Fiction doesn’t offer me a thing. Early on, most of the books on fly fishing came out of the East. The good ones also have chapters on entomology. If you go to this river at this time, you look for this bug. There was no reference book for [our] area here.
What really got me going was an English book. I guess I was subscribing to an English magazine at the time and I heard that this book was coming out. I ordered six, sight unseen from England. The author was John Goddard [and the book was called Trout fly recognition (1966)]. He had collected insects all during the year here and wrote about them, I said, “That’s something like we need here.”
I started collecting insects; well, collecting river insects, which that’s no problem. Collecting pond insects is something else, most of them are down below, and so you start picking things off the surface. I chewed off more than I could [handle].
End tape 2, side 1
I enlisted people into collecting insects for me. I got some from Steve Raymond; we used to fish up in Canada a lot. I got some from a member gal in Portland and various people. Like I said, I bit off more than I could chew. I went back to work. I ended up with about 900 vials of bugs; I couldn’t afford to buy glass vials which cost about 50 cents apiece. Instead, I discovered that I could use plastic coin cases. They come in nickel, dime, quarter, whatever; dime size is about the size I wanted. I could buy a box of a hundred for about 12 or 15 dollars. The problem is they are designed for dry storage, not liquid. What I did was to use a black electrician’s tape, which is sort of a rubbery-type thing, you can stretch it. I put a wrap around that which helped somewhat, but still, things evaporate.
You don’t store them in water, that’s for sure, in a pinch, I’d tell people, “Use beer.”
That has enough alcohol to keep them until they get back to me. Anyway, I checked all my library entomology books for formulas for solution. I looked at all these solutions and ended up with about eight different solutions. I can’t even find the sheet on the last one. All of them contain formalin, which is a weak solution of formic acid I guess which is embalming fluid. You can go to the druggist and sign a form and get formalin. I kept diluting it until I got down to about a three percent solution. Instead of adding ethyl alcohol, which you are supposed to do (you add ethyl and gradually increase it until you get about 90/90 proof). I couldn’t afford ethyl so I used rubbing alcohol. It was about 50% rubbing alcohol, 50% formalin and a little bit of glycerin because if everything dries up like it does, glycerin never dries up which means there is always a little moisture in there.
A book came out from Portland, I can’t think of [its] name, it had a formula in there (he had read somewhere), for a two-part solution which would retain color on an insect. The problem is that you have to mix it fresh every time. I tried it once and then I gave up. Later on I read about the same formula in a book and I noticed there was a discrepancy in the formula that the guy from Portland gave me. I wrote him but I don’t know if he ever changed it or not.
Most people don’t know that my backyard has recently been reclaimed, overhauled or whatever you want to call it by a nice group of people from Seattle who brought in a big shovel and just scraped everything down to the bare sand. All these fifty year old “rhodies” and everything [are] gone. My house has been renovated; new siding, new roof, new this, new that, in the kitchen. But it means I had to box up everything that was downstairs and put it outside under tarps which didn’t keep everything dry you see, including my bugs. I can’t find anyone who wants them so I might just dump them. Some of them are dry; some of them are still good. I still have paperwork on them and you’ll get the paper work.
TB: Well I know that you developed at least one fly pattern, which was the Hutchinson Damsel Fly Nymph. Did you do some others?
JH: The damsel fly nymph was a good idea. Of course, I’m a designer, I always think about doing things differently or better. A damsel fly, if you don’t know it, is a very dainty little bug which most of the time lives underwater. It swims up close to the surface, two or three feet under. These insects swim to land or to weeds or whatever and climb out, after half an hour they emerge as an adult. They have a swimming motion with the tail which means the tail must be loose for movement.
I finally got the idea that I could braid the tail. I used ostrich hurl which is very soft, three strands, of course I dyed it a different color. Basically the color that I use is a grass green we’ll call it, you’ll see a picture on a magazine cover down there. I didn’t tie that and I wouldn’t tie it in that color (I can tell the guys who know things about bugs and guys that don’t). Anyway, I braided these three strands of ostrich hurl leaving the tips loose because a damsel nymph has sort of a feathery-like tail. You can leave the rear end of the fly loose to move and then use the ostrich to wrap for an abdomen. Basically that’s the thing; the pattern was reprinted in a couple of books.
The other one I have to call a Northwest pattern (no one uses it); I’ll back up a little bit. Around here our lake waters are very acidic; it isn’t good for bugs, they like the alcoline ones in eastern Washington. We don’t have all that many bugs; we have a few mayflies, a few of this, a few of that, even the rivers. What we do have are called chironomids; it’s a two-winged fly. The common house fly is a two-winged fly, it belongs to the same order; they live underwater most of the time.
Anyway, I was fishing Pass Lake up near Anacortes a lot. I would like to go up there and fish in the evening, stay over, and fish in the morning. Up there, you’re just over the hill from the bay really. If there is no wind, there would be a nice hatch of chironomids which, to the uninitiated, look just like a mosquito. Some people can’t tell the difference but a mosquito of course has a proboscis which spears you, a chironomid is non-biting; they come to the surface. Dry flies are not all that effective in catching these fish, but an emerger, something that’s just under the water, is very susceptible. The fish are so close to the surface and it looks like a rise to a dry fly because you’ll see the ripples.
I was trying to design a fly of this insect after he emerges out of the mud on the bottom. Down there they are in the shape of a worm, a lot of them are red. That’s the way most guys these days are fishing on the bottom. I fish mid-water and those are the flies that I collected and like to fish. But when this insect gets up close to the surface, I was looking for a way to keep it near the surface without sinking. Regular fly-fishing, you would sink the leader and float the fly, but a sinking leader tends to pull the fly under.
Anyway, I noticed in an English catalog a little plastic dingy which they called “plastic bay fly bodies.” It’s just perfect for these chironomids. They are not an item ever sold around here. Ruddick, a shop up in Vancouver, carried them for a while, that was perfect for this chironomid body because it was just plastic. You could close the open end and it would help keep the fly on top.
Of course, these days there are variations, we use clothes silk a lot. When the fly first comes up it hangs in the water sort of at an angle to the surface like this -- just poking and coming through. When it is going to merge it comes up straight and the fly’s thorax splits and the adults come out. Those two flies, I’m proud of those because they serve a definite purpose, there are other damsel patterns now.
One good one that I like is tied using the rabbit strip with the hair on the hide. There is nothing to compare with the (I call it) Penultimate Chironomid. Everybody says, “What does penultimate mean?” Now it’s a common word, I don’t know if you hear it often, but then I had to look it up to find out what it meant. The penultimate stage is the stage before the final stage. When you talk about a mile-runner, ‘he’s on his penultimate lap.’ It’s a common word now but it wasn’t then. One of the guys in Seattle (I sent these sheets out to various people I thought would be interested in them), he said, “What is penultimate?” This guy, he used to edit the club newspaper and he was a very good correspondent -- another guy who died too early; I would have expected him to grab the dictionary and find out!
TB: How do you develop a fly pattern? You just study the insect?
JH: Around here, because we have Pacific waters and we don’t have many hatches, the fish can’t be all that selective. They can’t swim around and say, ‘I only want that certain mayfly.’ If it’s a bug, he’s got to eat it if he wants to stay alive, so that means you can catch them on anything, really, although we have favorites. Up here, we could use Canadian or B.C. patterns because the flies are interchangeable, some were popularized by Enos Bradner who wrote for the Seattle Times for many years and published fly patterns and so on in the Seattle guides. Some things become favorites, but I mean, basically I could throw anything out underwater and I could catch something. Eastern patterns, if you go to Montana you can use Eastern patterns because the Rockies basically divide East from West. The West Coast here, our insects are associated with the insects you’ll find in Japan, because at one time these two continents were together, see.
TB: That’s fascinating.
JH: Yes. The chironomids are two-winged flies and before they get to be this size they are called midges. We don’t fish midges here, you can tie midges. I’ve tied midges but I never fished a midge; you don’t need to. But in the East, that’s what they have to use sometimes because those things are in the water twelve months of the year. There are certain other things in the waters too, like shrimp and things like leeches. Those things are found in the water all year round. But again, in acidic water like we have, they are few and far between. Our favorite fishing grounds now is either up in B.C. or in Eastern Washington where we have two or three lakes. We try not to have them classified fly-fishing only because that eliminates a lot of people there. They are quality lakes; there are some restrictions as to what you can catch.
JH: Memorial Day [is coming up] and everybody is going to be at Chopaka Lake which is in Eastern Washington up near the border. I used to take a day off of work and stay over a day. The Washington club will have 75 people there perhaps. That’s family, you know, they have a big to-do. They have so many people a lot of clubs stay away on that weekend, but it’s very rich water. As you probably heard on television, they just had the anniversary of the St. Helens [eruption]. Well I was up there that day, we heard about it on the radio you see. You looked down in the valley and you could see what looked like black smoke coming through the valley. It finally got up to where we were and it came down like driven snow, like 45 degrees. I think that was on a Monday because they were going home the old way, having trouble, I would take the new highway.
TB: North Cascade.
JH: Cascade, yes; no problem.
In fact, the last trout I remember catching was up there. I don’t fish unless somebody takes me out because I don’t have a car anymore. The last fish I remember catching and losing was up there. This is Chopaka Lake, a big part of the lake was here, big and deep; the trolls like fly-fishing there. Then it goes into Narrow Lake way down here, that’s where we fish. I was almost back to where we put in the boats and (there are some weeds there) I noticed there was a fish working the edge of the weeds. I had on this fly, an emerger with a little plastic head which sort of imitates the white antennae some species have but it also helps float it. I tossed it out there in front of this fish and he took it. Talk about a surprise fish! He immediately turned and swam out toward the middle of the lake like 12 feet or so in one or two seconds and turned and he swam toward me. All this happened so quickly, I had loose fly line all over, I couldn’t catch up to him. We use barbless hooks up there [and] he just flipped the hook out. That’s my last trout I remember, but it was a nice one to lose.
TB: Can we go back to Roy Patrick? Do you know what led him to start his store?
JH: He came up from California after the war. I don’t know but I assume that he was working in the ship yard or something down there. They came up and I don’t know anything about his association down there so I can’t speak to that, but they opened up this shop in Seattle. Their house was behind the store, maybe he heard they had a fly club up here, I don’t know. Mrs. Patrick may have sold the whole shebang now. After I stopped going down there because I had to stay with my mother, she found a buyer and rented out the store to him. She still lived in the house, she has a son who lives south of Seattle and she lives out that way now so she may have sold the whole shebang. Anyway, Roy joined the fly club and held fly-tying classes at the Seattle [YMCA] for about 20 years.
TB: Wow. How did he get the idea for starting his fly pattern books?
JH: He got a call or maybe a letter from some guy in prison I think. He wanted information, so Roy wrote or typed up a sheet. After he had a few of these sheets, he decided maybe he should put them all together sometime.
I’m giving you one catalog here for patterns. I may have a hard copy, this has a comb binding and he uses cheap paper. He had two presses in the basement, everything for the shop he printed himself. I know that anything with comb bindings or spiral bindings, especially that cheap paper, it will wear. I said, “Why don’t you hard copy some of this stuff?”
I walked in there one day and he says, “Guess what?” He had 21 copies, hardcover. He said, “I can’t give you one but I’ll sell you one, forty dollars.” I said, “Well, I can either give you $40 or I can give it to you in books.” He knew I was buying books from England. He said, “Ok, buy me books.” Every once in a while I would go in there with a handful of books. There were only 21 copies and he offered these to his good customers or whatever. Mrs. Patrick still had a couple when I worked there so I eventually got a copy for the Seattle club. I believe I put a hardcover copy in the Evergreen Club too. My book list shows I have two copies, I don’t know, I probably still have one. He died in 1970 or 1971, just after that thing came out. I have early revisions; I tend to collect all that stuff.
TB: How do you think fly-fishing has changed since you first got involved?
JH: Well of course we have more fly shops around and more fishermen. You have to spread the word, you know. We work a lot with the game department here. Their old policy was to put the fish in so that the fishermen could take it out on opening day. The fly fisherman is interested in fewer but larger fish. That’s basically it. Of course, the tackle has changed too as more people got into the sport. Don Green, who was making the glass blanks I told you about… anyway, he ended up making the blanks which Fenwick, a company in California, used for their fly rods during the ‘60s. It was the first good glass fly rod; lightweight. Shakespeare came out with glass fly rods which were white, heavy, good for saltwater and are used even now.
TB: Did you say Fenwick?
JH: Yes, I did. [They] were hollow blanks; they had a simple [design] which is now called ‘tip-over-butt’, its like male-female. Most companies couldn’t do that so they would cement a solid piece of glass and that’s the way it would fit together. Fenwick had these real light rods, and Jack does not own a one!
I didn’t need one. I don’t know what started me on bamboo rods. I had one as a kid; I still have it. It was mass-produced like most all the rods in this [country]. There were certain small shops around the country who [were] classics in rod building.
End of tape 2, side 2
Some of the shops have been sold now but they still exist. Basically, all the good cane that is used these days is Tonkin cane. It comes from Indo-China, during the War, of course that cane didn’t come anymore. The big companies like Shakespeare and all the others couldn’t make cane rods anymore because they didn’t have bamboo. Most of them sold whatever stocks they had to these little shop operators. We had one Washington club member, Dawn Holbrook, who during the ‘30s had a small shop up on Broadway. He started building rods and held rod-building classes during the ‘50s and ‘60s. In fact, I took the class one year. I didn’t have the room to build the rod, I didn’t have the time but I wanted to know the process. I still have the cane at home, although maybe I gave it away. Anyway, Dawn held this yearly class which was attended over the years by quite a few people although it was quite a small class. He sold the cane that he had obtained when it was still available. Of course, it’s available now once more which is why the bamboo rod business has sprung up again because everybody can buy the cane.
TB: Any other thoughts on the future of fly fishing?
JH: It will get bigger I suppose, I don’t know. What we are trying to do now is maintain the fishery that we have. Of course, everybody wants to fish Montana. Over there water is worth gold really. If you’ve got a river through your property, you can just say ‘no trespassing.’ In Montana boat fishing has sprung up. With boat fishing you can cover more water than you can on foot, so every fly shop over there also offers [guided boat] fishing for $150 a day or so. I don’t know what happens on the East Coast now. The original fish in the East were not the rainbow trout, it was brook trout. Brook is very easy to catch, so they caught all of them. Somewhere along the line they imported brown trout. There are a few ‘brownies’ around here now. The Game Department here is sort of wary about brown trout, they don’t plant browns in rivers because they don’t want them to get established because it’s a voracious fish. They do plant a few in our lakes, special lakes. I’ve never caught one. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a live brown trout. It’s only been in the last twenty years really that they’ve been available. There are some in Pass Lake.
The ‘brownie’ is a different fish than the rainbow. I think they spawn at different times. They’ve also tried importing a strain of fish that grows larger from Canada. The basic problem here is that the Game Department’s hatcheries were designed to hatch the fish, grow it to a catchable size and plant it somewhere. They don’t care how long it lives. Sometimes it doesn’t live very long. The Canadian fish usually live seven or eight years. We got some new waters in Eastern Washington when they put the dam in, the water went underground and it popped up in little areas, [and] we got a lot of new lakes. Whenever we heard of a lake that was growing fish over there we would try to get special regulations on it.
On one lake, what the Washington club did was to try to import some of these special fish from Canada, it’s the Lardeau strain (or Gerrard strain Kamloops trout), I guess there was a [Lardeau River] there; these are considered very special fish. We were not able to import first generation or second, I think we got third generation Lardeau strain [and] they put them into the lake. Did I give you the name of the lake? Lenice Lake.
Anyway, the Seattle club offered to pay a student probably from the fisheries department to go over and count fish and everything. We paid the expenses for about five years. I don’t remember how it went [but] that’s what they did. This was Lenice Lake! There was a chain: Lenice, Merry and Nunnually were the three chains that were there not too far from Vantage. You can run over there in two hours and fish. What else?
TB: I want you to be honest and I want you to brag about yourself. What are some of the things that you are most proud of in regards to your fly fishing and your contributions?
JH: I’ve always taught fly-tying because it interests me and because of my knowledge of materials and so on. Most of the papers I [presented] have been about materials, either showing them like I did at Western -- only I would take certain ones and pass them around. That was one thing I didn’t do up there because I knew it would take some time to show, to talk about something and then pass it around.
I should have mentioned I was wearing gloves, not because there is anything ‘icky’ about these things but because I don’t know if I have acquired an allergy or what, but my eyes are weeping quite a bit so I’ve stopped rubbing there. I did that once up there but I used my knuckle.
Down in a fly shop one day I used my fingers and I got some stuff in my eye. Actually what I did, there is a local guy there who is (to digress) of Filipino origin. He came in one day, I don’t know what he was asking me about, but we talked about feathers. In his business I guess he went to the Philippines every so often. Cock fights are legal in the Philippines and the losers are just taken home and eaten or whatever. He says, “Would you buy some feathers if I can get them for you?” I said, “Sure.”
It’s not an easy process. I spent time telling him how to do it and what to do. When the feathers reach this country, they have to be fumigated, we’ll put it that way, and they do that by dipping them into a solution like that two percent formalin solution I told you about. They have to be washed and dried -- it’s a process, really. This guy didn’t wash them thoroughly enough. He didn’t dry them correctly, so they weren’t quite right. He didn’t make much money and he stopped. He brought in all browns (brown is a very common color, but these are dark brown like coachman brown). It’s hard to find a good coachman brown. I showed you one. These are all second or maybe third grades. Anyway, since they weren’t washed well enough, when formalin dries it’s sort of a white powder because it is made with powder. I rubbed my eyes so I spent two hours washing my eyes out with water! That’s the only time I’ve ever had any problem. Because I was having all these different things with no down time to wash or do anything, I just figured I’d wear a pair of gloves, I should have explained that to everybody.
TB: Well we can add that; when they edit the tape they can add that in.
JH: It would have spent a lot of time to pass those things around. Unfortunately most people there I knew weren’t that much interested in the quality I was talking about and all of that, that’s why I didn’t talk about it.
TB: Well we wouldn’t pick it up that quickly. Are there any other things that you are really proud of?
JH: I got more involved in more things that most other people don’t, possibly because of my background in art, I’m that sort of crafty person, it fit all together. I just have interests that don’t appeal to [most people]. Most people don’t even fish the way I recommend to do at Pass Lake, they do it their own way [and] it’s more like fishing with an angle worm on the bottom.
TB: They use a wet fly that goes way down to the bottom?
JH: It wouldn’t even be a wet fly; it might be a little worm in the fish. They have a little bobber on top so they watch the bobber.
TB: And they call that fly fishing?
JH: That’s what they call it!
TB: I wouldn’t even call that fly fishing! That’s amazing.
JH: Well, that’s one way to catch fish.
I started fishing Pass Lake in the mid- to late’40’s. I should mention that the Seattle club, one thing they did when they got formed was they wanted fly fishing [only] water so they asked for one river and one lake. The lake was Pass Lake and the river was the North Fork of the Stilly. At Pass Lake they had cutthroat; it grew very well, but it was hard to catch. In those days the only fly lines available were floating fly lines. Nowadays they go from floating to sinking with everything in between - half-floating, half-sinking or the tip floats. People entering the sport these days don’t know how lucky they are with regards to anything and everything.
Anyway, this friend and I went up to Pass Lake and it was foggy, we heard these voices. It turned out to be Enos Bradner talking to Dawn Holbrook. We couldn’t see them but we knew who it was because we read the Seattle Times, you see. We weren’t catching any fish. Later on we found out how these guys fish, and that was on the bottom, they were catching cutthroat. You probably have a copy of Bradner’s Northwest Fly Fishing book.
TB: Yes.
JH: On the front he’s holding [a fish]. That’s Pass Lake and they are good fish. If you look behind there are more fish, these fish are on the bottom! How do you fish a floating line on the bottom?
TB: With a weight?
JH: No, you can’t put weight on it.
TB: A heavy fly?
JH: Well, it would take a long time to get down there. Well, possibly. What they did, there’s two ways you can do it. These are braided silk fly lines, very nice fly lines. They are smaller in diameter than the plastic lines we use today and much heavier. You soak this fly line in water and get it all wet and then it will sink. Either that or you rub it with graphite and get black hands; those are two methods. I don’t know which one they used.
TB: What other things do you think are important to fly fishing that I haven’t asked you?
JH: Well, it’s nice that more people are getting into it. You even see in national ads now, not about fly fishing but they might show a person in the river or whatever. Things like that are seen by the man in the street who may think about it. Like the contractor at my house, a local man, he’s used to fishing, he bought a fly rod outfit at Jerry’s Surplus on Broadway not knowing anything about it. They sold him one; he told them that he wanted to catch salmon on a fly rod. Well, it’s possible, so they sold him a rod which is really more that you need for trout. It’s about an 8-weight rod. I tried to get him to buy a trout outfit which is much lighter. I even [got] him to come to some of our meetings. He didn’t tell me he didn’t want to go, but he wanted to fish for salmon during the summer and if you’re a fly fisherman you can sneak out there and do something else but they would like it to try to catch a salmon on a fly if possible, too. Anyway, he didn’t really show me enough interest so I stopped inviting him. But I am willing to help anybody and everybody.
I’ll always tell people they don’t know how lucky they are, there are a lot of fly shops around. I’ve heard one bad episode where a little old lady came in and she wants to buy a fly rod outfit for her grandson. A lot of these shops employ several people and these people are working on commission, they would rather sell you a $700 outfit than one that costs less. These days you can buy a whole outfit for $50 that I will use. Anyway, this little old lady came in and she bought her grandson [an outfit] and she got soaked.
We’re still selling Chinese stuff you know; I am able to buy stuff for our club at a lower price than retail. We were buying what we used to call pack rods, they are short; they have about six or seven lengths for like $37, an excellent rod. You can buy a reel for like $50. Most English reels, the Hardy reels that I have are cast and then hand finished. Expensive reels are not cast; they are machined out of a hunk of metal. You can buy these Chinese reels machined for like $50. You get a catalog from a shop and they are all selling everything now; [even] clothing. They are selling rods that go from $200 to $600 or $700; it’s really turning into a big business now.
Early on Patrick’s did put out a catalog and they did a good bit, it’s surprising that Patrick’s did so long without a catalog. That’s because there are a lot of fly fishermen in town and it’s partially because of the club there and the fact that Roy taught so many people to tie flies. Most fly shops couldn’t exist that way; they had to have a catalog. When I got there I started telling Faye to start working on the catalog. She started making a catalog the way their old catalog was cut. I said, “You don’t have to do that because the big boys will have nice glossy pages showing all this stuff. All you have to do is identify the article and the price.” We never got around to it unfortunately.
There was one company in Oregon, two partners I believe; one of them was a New Yorker, well-known. They were located in Eugene I think. They had a catalog and had very good prices but something happened and the shop closed. I think when that shop went out, it’s my theory that this kid (I call him a kid) in Portland took up the slack, Kaufmann. He’s very big now; they have a shop in Seattle. There’s one here, one there. He has one of the better catalogs around here, I think because he either bought the mailing list from this other place or he came into the business just at the right time to pick up the slack in Oregon. There’s all this good gear, all you need is a few dollars really.
The most expensive fly rods cost $500-600 dollars now, but they require little care. But like the silk lines, after you are through fishing you just strip the line off onto a line dryer and wipe the line off, you have to get the moisture out. People weren’t used to doing that, some people just leave it on the reel; they get gummy. The silk line was finished with an oil coating which was linseed oil, several coats which were left to dry. These days the classic lines require very little upkeep really and they come in two or three grades. You can buy fly line for maybe under $20 now. It doesn’t have quite the good coating the other one does or whatever but they are decent.
As I said, rods are not really handmade anymore but they have what’s called a mandrill, its steel, it goes from one diameter down to a very tiny diameter. Graphite comes in a fabric really and its cut to fit and this fabric is wrapped around the steel mandrill and it’s held on with cellophane tape wound all the way up, then it’s baked. They pull the mandrel out and they have a blank. They can make 50,000 blanks using this one mandrel. It didn’t use to be that way.
Cane rods used to be (and they still are) handmade with hand planes. Of course, the big manufacturers used machines to plane them. When they did that they went across grain; they didn’t follow the grain of the cane. The rods were like $10 or whatever.
They sell all sorts of clothing.
Everything you want is on the market. The latest boats are pontoon boats. I gave mine way. They are a big inner tube with a cover on it. You sit in there. You put flippers on your feet. But now these pontoons, there are two rubber pontoons with metal seats. They run from $500 to $800 I suppose. It’s that way with all the tackle.
Flies, if you don’t tie your fly you can buy them. Each shop will carry local patterns as well as national patterns I suppose; they are not cheap. Some of the commercial fly tiers, if you live in Montana with the snow this deep, what else is there to do but tie flies? That’s what those guys do during the winter; they tie dozens, maybe hundreds of dozens of flies maybe for their own shop, maybe for others. Some flies come from the Orient because some of the big shops have sent people over to teach these people how to tie flies correctly and what patterns to tie. But they aren’t cheap, they run from maybe $1.50 up.
Bigger flies would cost more. They may not be harder to tie, but they cost more. I have a friend up in Vancouver, well he lives over on the island now, but he used to tie salmon trolling flies out here. I don’t know if you know what they look like, they are pulled behind the boat. You have seen the deer tail hair, long, that’s what he tied. He can tie one in like ten minutes. The ties are coarse, the hook is big and they sell for $5, $6, $7, $8 apiece now. He could make good money. If you want to tie flies, tie those.
TB: Is there anything else you want to say right now? It’s getting to be kind of late. I will say thank you very much for now. I do appreciate this and then I do have some stuff for you to sign.