THE BEST OF THE BEST
Ruben Leonard Ford, my father-in-law, was a wizard when it came to reading trout waters. He would let you fish ahead of him and take all the time you wanted. Then here he comes announcing as he goes just where all the trout in the stream are holding. Those pronouncements were followed by drifting (gasp!) bait into the lair of each and every trout in the entire section of stream he was able to reach with his brand of flipping and “high sticking.” The bait was typically a long fat night crawler or a kernel or two of whole corn if the water was somewhat muddy or stained.
I preferred corn because you could always nibble on some for a snack if the fish weren’t biting. Somehow the thought of snacking on a crawler just didn’t seem to have the same appeal.
His best ever advice was to fish every bit of water no matter if it was shallow, slow, fast, muddy, or clear and especially to drift your bait into every snag, rock pile or blow down you came across.
In my early on learning phase he’d question me as to where I thought a trout most likely would be holed up while we surveyed a stretch of stream. After voicing my observations I would be treated to his interpretations of all the situations at hand.
Initially I shied away from letting my line drift into too many potential piles of debris and such fearing that another snag would break off a “rig” as he referred to our set ups. “You’ve got to go where the fish are,” he said, “and loosing several rigs is just part of a normal days outing.
Rigs were always prepared the night before an outing and were all placed individually into at least half a dozen plain white envelopes. He preferred a size 8 “Eagle Claw” hook with one split shot clamped on the leader just below the loop. In faster or deeper water the shot count reverted to two per line. When I questioned why put just one “rig” in each envelope he said because that way they wouldn’t get all tangled up and you could re-rig in a hurry after losing one. All you had to do was whip an envelope out of your shirt pocket, tear open an end and quickly tie it onto your line.
Only once was I able to out fox him and it wasn’t due to out fishing him; but, fell into the category of what might be called sleight of hand. We had parked with permission on the side of a field owned by a local farmer that my father-in-law knew. As we were finishing putting on our hip boots the state stocking truck passed by and stopped about a quarter mile up the road from us. My father-in-law said it was too bad they stopped that far from us and we’d just have to fish our way there in a little while. We were in an adjoining county about 30 miles from where my father-in-law lived and the assumption was that I didn’t know anybody thereabouts. I grandly announced that I’d be right back and proceeded up the road to talk to the hatchery truck folks. In about ten minutes the truck turned around, stopped next to our vehicle, and they promptly tossed a couple of fully loaded nets of trout into the river where we would be fishing first. After they left my father-in-law said, “What did you say to those folks? Did you know them? I assured him that I did indeed know them and one of them was a good friend of mine. He just scratched his head and wondered aloud how I would know someone from down there when I lived about 250 miles north.
At the end of the day I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer and spilled the beans at supper time. Earlier in the morning we had stopped at a burger and breakfast place and the man in front of me was holding the cutest little girl that was obviously the apple of her proud dad’s eye. Having struck up a conversation with him we chatted a little about the area and I mentioned going fishing later on in the day. He said that he was with the Fish & Game Commission and he’d be out stocking later that same day and we might see each other. Guess who I recognized driving the stocking truck when they went past us and stopped a quarter mile away that day! Sometimes it’s better to be lucky then smart.
We had some great times over the years and used to spend a whole week the first of April’s opening trout season fishing all the local streams in a couple of counties. Sometimes it would be the whole family with up to twenty folks and more often than not it consisted of my father-in-law and both brother-in-laws, Jim and Mike. We’d have a big picnic streamside and some bigger fish fries at home for the next few days. My in-laws were all accomplished fishermen and I was happy to join the ranks after a few years of seasoning. All those many years of bait fishing with a fly rod paid off later when I took up fly fishing and nymphing came pretty natural then.
Ruby also fished for bass, saugers, walleyes and anything else that swam. In the early 1950’s he caught a huge walleye weighing in at eleven pounds and eight ounces and his oldest son secretly had it mounted and entered it into a “Field & stream” magazine contest where it placed second that year. The first place fish was shorter and he jokingly said that it was probably loaded with “shot” in its belly.
Folks that fished the rivers near him hated the gars that they caught and would stick them into the riverbanks snout first and sometimes even poured gas on them and burned them. Before he would let his family go down to the river bank he’d check first to make sure there were no burned gars and if there were he’d throw them into the river. He didn’t want his family to see that horrible scene. He always released any gars he caught because he said they were sacred to the Indians. He never explained his reasoning for, nor practice of this event.
There was one potentially very dangerous situation where I thought one or all three of us would get shot and maybe even killed. I was fishing downstream from my father-in-law and brother-in-law, Mike, and had almost reached a bridge over the road. As I drifted my line into the shadows under the bridge a small rock hit the water just behind me. A glance up and around didn’t shed a clue as to where it had come from until another one followed shortly, a little closer to my head this time. Leaning just over the bridge rail was a young boy of about twelve and he proceeded to hurl yet another rock in my direction, and I yelled up at him that I was fishing and how about not throwing any more rocks my way. He said something like he could if he wanted to and then did. Suddenly I heard an older voice overhead loudly fussing and cussing as to how all them blankety-blank out of county people think they can come down here and catch all our fish. I backed upstream till I could see over the rail and there was a rusted old pickup containing an older bearded man that was obviously very intoxicated and mad. He was drinking from what looked like a half pint bottle. On the trucks dashboard was a pistol and a rifle was leaning against and sticking out of the passenger’s door side. Another rifle adorned the rack at the back window of the truck. My brother-in-law had come into hearing range by then and quietly called to me that we’d be much better off leaving quickly as the situation looked like it might escalate at any time. Never saw that truck or the occupants again in the area but also never went there unarmed either.
We always cleaned the trout shortly after finishing fishing and one day decided to perform some trout stomach autopsy’s to see what they were eating. I believe the limit then was about eight per day and we three had twenty-four trout to dissect. One cleaned, one opened the stomach contents and the last one checked the contents carefully spread out on pages of newspaper. I was sure the hatcheries fed them pretty good; but, the contents were astounding. In no particular order we found pine needles, gum wrappers, corn, cheese, a few rusted hooks, leaves, rocks, pine cone petals, seeds of various varieties, gum (regular or bubble we weren’t sure), metal, cigarette butts and several other weird things and there was also the usual suspects; worms, smaller fish and a mix of invertebrates. Sounds like the average person gobbling up everything in sight at the fast food buffet nowadays. Some is nourishing and some is not but you never know.
I miss those long ago days of fishing, family and companionship that we shared many times. And, standing in some smaller stream alone it often drifts back through the tunnel of long ago thoughts floating along the stealthy current of memories.
I hope to meet “the best of the best” again some day and wet another line.