Royal Wulff fly pattern.
DEEP CREEK–– The world of fly fishing in general and the trout streams of the Western North Carolina high country in particular, are conducive to the production of winsome characters. I have been blessed, over the course of what my late father described as a “wonderfully misspent life,” to have known many such characters. Call them “quair,” eccentric, misanthropic, strange, misguided, or what you will, to me each and every one of them has been a treasure beyond measure.
I look back fondly, for example, on heroes of my boyhood such as Claude Gossett, “Hop” Wiggins, Alvin “Little Man” Miller, Buford Messer, Raymond Mitchell, Levi Haynes, my father, and a host of others. None were men of mighty stature in the larger scheme of things, but in the eyes of a star-struck youngster who had lost a corner of his soul to the long rod and whistling line, they were genuine heroes. All shared a common trait—they loved to fish and they were good at it. As is true with me, some were consumed by it.
Levi Haynes, for example, returned home from his first trip to the fabled trout waters of Montana and told his wife: “Honey, start packing. I’ve bought a motel and café in Gardiner where we can make a living and the fishing is fantastic.”
They stayed there for a quarter of a century before the lure of the Smokies brought Haynes back to his roots in later life. I don’t know for sure that it is the case, but Buford Messer, who was a Park Ranger, may well have chosen his occupation because of the opportunities it gave him to fish. Claude Gossett, my father’s best buddy, was so enamored of fishing that even after serious heart problems had left him a virtual invalid, he still would reminisce while knotting together tapered leaders which were much longer than any available through commercial channels. They were the type of leaders he had used, and sharing them with others (including me) gave him a way of retaining a tangible connection with angling the world he had personally lost.
Yet of all the men who endowed me with a mental vault full of priceless memories, none can compare with the late Frank Young. Frank was, I assume, born and raised in Swain County, although for some reason we never discussed that particular matter.
We first became acquainted when I was just into my teens. Several times a week during the spring and summer I would meet him, rod in hand, walking the Deep Creek trail. Most of the time I would be returning home after a full day of fishing, while he generally was hurrying up the creek after work to get in a few precious hours astream.
Initially we exchanged typical fisherman’s greetings and he always politely asked how I had done. Once or twice when I had a nice limit of fish he would ask to look at them and then act quite impressed. This so pleased me that I would almost walk on air the rest of the way home.
Gradually, after many such meetings and a bit of shared time on the stream, our friendship ripened. He willingly shared his expertise, and goodness knows he possessed it in abundance. He was, without question, the most adept fly fisherman I have ever known. Mind you, at first blush you would never have suspected that he was the consummate mountain angler. His equipment was a hodgepodge of the “make do with what you’ve got” variety, and frugality might have been his middle name. Yet beneath the surface of this quiet, simple man who adopted the quintessential minimalist approach to his angling was a fascinating personality which sparkled with bright bits of pure genius.
Perhaps sharing a few examples of his extraordinary approach to the sport will convey something of the essence of the man. Frank tied his own flies, and one of his favorite dry fly patterns was an old standby, the Royal Wulff. However, one of the key materials for producing that pattern and other Wulffs (Blonde, Tennessee, White, etc.) was white calf’s tail hair (sometimes called “kip tail”). Problem was, when ordered from supplies this material was terribly pricey.
Frank, in his typical fashion, did some experimentation and came up with a quite acceptable substitute which cost absolutely nothing—fur from a road kill ‘possum’s belly. As he laughingly put it, “it’s not as stiff as calf’s tail, it is easier to work with, and if you can’t find all the ‘possum belly fur you need you ain’t driving the roads of Swain County.”
Similarly, Frank found the leaders offered by purveyors of outdoor goods unsatisfactory. For one thing, they weren’t nearly long enough to suit his needs. He like to cast anywhere from 15-18 feet of tapered leader, and the longest ones available commercially were only 12 feet. Also, Frank did not like the way they handled or turned over a fly. So, once again, he piddled around until he came up with what he wanted.
This involved buying spools of various sizes of monofilament and then creating formulas for each section of the tapered leader until he got what he wanted. But he took matters one step further. Somehow he decided that it might be possible to add a bit of stiffness to monofilament by applying heat, and he began “baking” his leaders at temperatures of about 180 degrees in his wife’s oven. It may sound crazy, but it worked.
Indeed, most everything Frank did when it came to catching trout seemed to work. He was constantly trying new techniques and new tackle, although the gear he used would have seemed an abomination to those anglers who insist on having everything that is new and noteworthy in the sport. His rods were often cobbled together from pieces he had picked up in yard sales or flea markets, and at first glance you would have thought that with some of them he could not have made a cast of 30 feet to save his soul.
All it took to change one’s mind was to watch him in action on the lower Nantahala or in a big pool on Deep Creek. He could put a fly precisely where it needed to be with a deft touch, and the occasional situation requiring a long cast didn’t seem to trouble him at all. If he needed to snuggle a fly up underneath a low-hanging rhododendron limb at 70 feet, he just did it. The motion wasn’t pretty but the end result was invariably a thing of beauty.
While Frank’s equipment was the essence of simplicity—inexpensive, often homemade, patched together, and in some cases just flat-out ugly—with it he was supremely functional. Moreover, he owned really fine equipment. It was just that he chose not to use it.
In fact, it was in connection with two exquisite rods, both of them first-rate examples of craftsmanship in cane, that our already well-established friendship moved to a higher level. Sometime when I was in my late 30s (in the early 1980s) I happened to notice a tiny classified ad in the “Smoky Mountain Times,” the little weekly newspaper which serves Bryson City and Swain County. It offered two classic bamboo fly rods for sale, saying only that they were a one-piece Hardy and a three-piece F. E. Thomas with an extra tip. No price was listed; just a telephone number. Intrigued and knowing that these were true collector rods, I made a long-distance call. Imagine my surprise when Maisie, Frank’s wife, answered the phone. We chatted a bit and then I said I was interested in the rods.
She put Frank on the phone and he explained that he was selling them to raise some money in support of Camp Living Water, a Christian outreach group with facilities on lower Deep Creek (Frank was a great fisher of men and boys as well as for trout). He then explained that both of what he described as “rods too fancy for a fellow like me” had been given to him by visiting anglers whom he had helped by sharing his wisdom of mountain waters.
We came to an agreement and I still own both rods and consider them prizes both as examples of superb rod making and because of the manner in which they expanded and enriched my connection with Frank Young. Next week we will look at how that came about as I share additional insights on a fishing career which still, years after Frank’s death and two decades or more since we last fished together, leave me awestruck whenever I think of the man and what he did as an angler.
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