Mike Ormsby

Usually these are favourite spots that we keep going back to. The places where we might have first come to. Somewhere that's not so far from home as to prevent frequent visits but far enough as to almost be a different world -- something out of the ordinary almost magical or mystical yet in its own way just the place you regularly fish. Not that it isn't some place special. Just that it's your place. Usually the place you cut your teeth on fly fishing.

This is easily proven by the number of your flies that end up in the local foliage. Greater here than any other fishing spot you've cast a line. Especially that one tree that seems adorned with so many of your flies that you could almost refer to it as the "tree of knowledge", where you come to realize that the nice open lawn (or nice open pond) that you learned to cast on didn't take into consideration any trees getting in the way of your backcast. My tree is a white cedar overhanging the edge of a pool. That cedar certainly could be a magnet for my flies. But then losing so many flies does teach one a lot about casting. Not to mention a lot about tying knots as you replace fly after fly, and more than occasionally even leaders. As well, it served as a good reason to learn how to tie my own flies from scratch since I was losing enough to that tree to finance a small Third World country.

The Credit River, especially the upper sections, is such a place for me. This is where my fly fishing for trout began -- but then is there any other type of fishing besides fishing for trout on a fly -- and where I learned my most important lessons about not only fly fishing, but life itself.

I caught my first wild trout not far from these waters I now feel most at home on. It was a big enough brown trout that a six year old would make his father turn around the family car and return back to his grandparents' home to retrieve his fish, which had been left cleaned and wrapped in their refrigerator, just waiting to be eaten by a proud fisherman at home. This fish had been largely forgotten until the family was about half way home (a considerable distance as the drive home was over a hour long).

I got my first real taste of trout fishing (not to mention of that trout once we did get home) in the Hockley Valley close to the home in Orangeville where my mother's parents lived. I learned to fish there, using a kid's rod and reel outfit with a worm on a hook, accompanying my grandfather as we cruised the backroads from likely fishing spot to likely fishing spot. One such spot was on a stream, passing under a rural bridge, that seemed to hold multitudes of fish -- all of which were trout to a starry-eyed kid, especially when he watched his grandfather mentor catch such pretty fish on a bunch of feathers and fur on a hook.

I graduated to an adult rod and reel after we lost my junior package bouncing down the sideroad with a trunkload of manure bound for my grandmother's gardens in town. When my grandfather and I got to one of our favourite fishing holes, we discovered that my prized rod and reel was missing. Apparently it had been bounced out of the open trunk of my grandfather's car as it was jarred by the many ruts of the gravel roads we travelled on. The trunk had been left open to accomodate the baskets of manure for my grandmother's garden. Needless to say, my grandfather went up and down those roads fruitlessly searching for that rod and reel, desperately trying to appease a teary child, while cursing to himself (or so he thought), "Because of that 'blank-blank' manure, we've lost that 'blank-blank' fishing rod". Imagine the stunned look (not to mention surprise) on my grandmother's face when her rosy cheeked grandson pronounced, "Because of your 'blank-blank' manure, I lost my "blank-blank' fishing pole". She recovered her composure enough to "discuss" this matter in more detail with my grandfather. Shortly afterwards, I got my new rod and reel. And was forever sworn to remember from then on that whatever was said or seen on a fishing trip should be our little secret. Well at least if I had to "swear" to anything, it wasn't to ever be about manure again to my grandmother.

As I grew older, I came to broaden my fishing horizons. Not that much further afield from my first real trout fishing experience. And I started to fish using the bunch of feathers and fur on a hook that I saw my grandfather use years before. I became a fly fisherman. And I owe all that to the Credit River. I've fished other rivers such as the Grand, the Saugeen, the Ganaraska, and the Nottawasaga in southern Ontario, as well as other North American rivers such as the Bow, the Moise, the Miramichi, the Ausable, the Housatonic, and the Deleware. I've even been to Scotland and Ireland to fish rivers there. But always I return home to the Credit.

Years before, my family had taken a trip to the Forks of the Credit to sight see. I was amazed by the overall beauty of the spot (or maybe it was the ice cream from the nearby store). The roadway seemed to twist and turn every which way (especially around the ess bend, past the railway tracks before coming down along side the river itself). But more than anything else there was trout in these waters. The pretty fish of my grandfather's.

So it was inevitable that I came to fly fish the upper Credit River, particularly around the Forks. The memories of the past blend into those of today. Parking on the side of the river, I sought out browns there. Or I'd tramp along the Bruce Trail extension into the Forks of the Credit Provincial Park where the meandering river flows through meadows, equally full of good sized browns waiting for just the right fly.

This is where I learned how to better read the river. To be able to think more like a trout. I remember a time when I came to a pool that (through polarized fishing glasses) seemed to literally teem with trout, just off the trail that skirted the river. Good sized trout at that. But try as I might (even creeping on bended knees), I could not budge one. Yet I never spooked one of them. No matter what presentation or pattern I attempted, not one trout moved from that spot. It appeared this was like a super highway of a ready food source, like a drive through fast food outlet. Except the food was being "driven through" past the waiting trout by the current. No waiting, all will be served. And the trout were obviously well fed and content. Fat and content.

Or there is another section where you go through a canopy of cedars overhanging above a section of moving water. Where I met a "floating log" that turned out to be a beaver. Or you can look over the side of the bridge to the river below, watching good sized trout in the rippling waters underneath. Or walk upstream past the small drop-off into a deep, deep pool. Or around the bend where small bright brookies rise to a fly lazily drifting past the logs up next to the bank. Near the pool in front of my "tree of knowledge".

I believe that this one river has made a very big impression on my fly fishing and my life. But then many rivers have run through my life. But this one, the Credit River, especially the upper section, has had more of an impact on me than any others. More than just where I learned to fish for those pretty trout on a fly rod. My best memories are there. And many more memories yet to be had.

As this is the place I started my fly fishing career, this is where I would love to be able to end it. Fishing familiar waters, in favourite pools and moving sections of the Credit. This is definitely the place that most reminds me of the feeling of the book or the film "A River Runs Through It". Almost a microcosm of life itself. If I could possibly ever pass onto the next world while fishing, I'd hope it would be with a fly rod in my hand standing in the running waters of my favourite section of the Credit River. Or at least have my ashes spread over them.

The late Greg Clark was a Canadian humourist and storyteller, besides being a very dedicated fly fisherman. Greg spent many pleasurable hours with a fly rod. He once wrote: "I know nothing as instantly pleasurable as the bulge and boil of a trout rising to a fly, with the immediate consequence of the curiously senuous tug on the rod tip." As well, Greg originated the deer-hair nymph and even named the Mickey Finn streamer, created by John Alden Knight (who originated the solunar tables used by fishermen all over North America). Greg described his wish to be buried in a favourite fishing hole in a story "Everybody Happy" (co-authored by Charles Vining):

" I want to be dressed in my fishing clothes, waders, and jacket. Then I want them to lay me out with a rod in my hand and all my other rods and flies and reels spread around me. Then I want them to cremate me and all my things and put the ashes in the centre of a great big concrete boulder. The boulder will be dumped in the Hawthorn pool on The Mad River (Greg's favourite spot to fly fish). My fishing friends will come along and see the boulder and say, 'There's Greg out there -- let's try a cast there.' "

I'd put my boulder in that nameless pool on the Credit where I learned so much about fly fishing (and losing flies). The plaque would read, "Here lies a fly fisherman. Tight lines to you hopefully. But if not, try not to get your line tangled up on this boulder (like the one who lies here would have). And watch out for that tree over there too."