Latest / The Long Haul with The Articulate Fly / S6, Ep 34: Stories of Lee Wulff with Jack Dennis - The Articulate Fly

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S6, Ep 34: Stories of Lee Wulff with Jack Dennis - The Articulate Fly · The Long Haul with The Articulate Fly

0:03
Intro: Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly.
0:08
Intro: On this episode, I'm joined by my friend Jack Dennis. I've been fortunate to
0:12
Intro: get to know and spend time with Jack.
0:14
Intro: He not only makes you a better fisherman, but a better person.
0:18
Intro: On this episode, he generously shares his stories of his friendship with Lee Wolf.
0:23
Intro: Jack is quite the storyteller, and I think you're really going to enjoy this
0:26
Intro: one. It's a great peek inside a special time in American fly fishing.
0:31
Intro: But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items.
0:35
Intro: If you like the podcast, please tell a friend, and please subscribe and leave
0:40
Intro: us a rating or review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out.
0:45
Intro: And we're excited to partner with our friends at Jesse Brown's to bring the
0:48
Intro: Chocolate Factory to Charlotte on May 4th.
0:52
Intro: Blaine will be teaching private tying classes, discussing predator and prey,
0:55
Intro: and sharing his favorite rod, reel, and line combos.
0:58
Intro: Stay tuned on social media for more details.
1:03
Intro: Now, on to our interview.
1:05
Marvin: Well, Jack, welcome to the Articulate Fly.
1:09
Jack: Like the name.
1:11
Marvin: Thanks. I'm looking forward to our conversation. I really enjoy the fact we've
1:14
Marvin: sort of become friends over the phone and kind of met through some fly fishing friends.
1:20
Marvin: And, you know, we've kind of kicked around this idea, you know,
1:22
Marvin: you have so much knowledge of the sport and the history of the sport that it'd
1:26
Marvin: be kind of interesting to bring you on periodically to kind of talk about,
1:30
Marvin: you know, fly fishing legends.
1:32
Marvin: And we thought we would start with Lee Wolfe. And, you know,
1:35
Marvin: I guess, Jack, the first question is, when did you first meet Lee?
1:39
Jack: Well, it was interesting. I met him kind of by accident. The first time I feel
1:44
Jack: like I really met him was my father, who never went to any games that I played, never went.
1:52
Jack: The only thing he liked to do was go occasionally to the movies.
1:57
Jack: And all of a sudden, he said, look, we're going to go see The Longest Day.
2:02
Jack: And it did very few. I went fishing with him and all the things that dads do.
2:06
Jack: Do, but he was a test pilot before the war and then went through pretty rough flying during the war,
2:19
Jack: and he never talked about it, so I got no idea until he died that he had been
2:26
Jack: shot down during D-Day, and he was able to fly the plane back to England,
2:34
Jack: and And so he wanted to see what it was like, as near as I could tell,
2:41
Jack: to see The Longest Day. Now, what that means is they had shorts.
2:45
Jack: They had the cartoon, then they had shorts. There were all different kinds of
2:49
Jack: shorts. But all of a sudden, there we were in a stream. We walked.
2:54
Jack: And it was the short, and it was beautifully filmed, and he had a six-foot rod,
2:59
Jack: and he caught this beautiful, probably close to 30 pounds, if you told me, Atlantic salmon.
3:06
Jack: And he released it. Now, you've got to realize that was in the 50s.
3:11
Jack: And, you know, releasing fish just wasn't in the—I mean, you caught it unless it was too small.
3:19
Jack: And, I mean, I was just fascinated. I said, right then, you know,
3:24
Jack: my father said nothing about it, and he was more interested in,
3:28
Jack: you know, the military part, what he flew over to see.
3:32
Jack: So I had that in the back of the mind. This is what I want to do.
3:36
Jack: I don't want to fly airplanes like my father. I mean, I had a chance to go to
3:40
Jack: the Air Academy, and he went to the very first Air Academy, and he pushed me
3:45
Jack: on that vision of Lee Wolf landing that fish.
3:48
Jack: Well, as it turned out, I had to get in the military one way or another with
3:55
Jack: the Vietnam War going on in 66.
3:58
Jack: I'm in college, and I wanted to keep on. They said, oh, join the reserves.
4:02
Jack: You'll be able to finish college, and then you can go and do your military service.
4:08
Jack: Well, I joined, and six months later, they called the unit up for duty.
4:14
Jack: And i had made the friendship of
4:17
Jack: randall kaufman who was a
4:20
Jack: young kid that uh we kind
4:23
Jack: of got to know each other we went in the
4:26
Jack: wind rivers together anyway when i got out of the military i called him i said
4:30
Jack: you know i i tried to work in california i was an artist uh in the military
4:36
Jack: which was kind of an interesting fun job instead of going to the jungles of vietnam but uh,
4:44
Jack: You know, I did my duty, then I went into reserve.
4:49
Jack: But I said to Randall, go to Wyoming to see if we can start a business.
4:54
Jack: He was 18, and I was 19, and we went to Jackson Hole in 1967,
5:01
Jack: and the generation of fly fishing was having one of their first conclaves,
5:06
Jack: their first really big conclave.
5:09
Jack: And we decided, gosh, what do you got to do to learn?
5:13
Jack: And he was in Southern California, and that was where the hotbed of these clubs
5:18
Jack: started. It spread through Oregon, actually started in Oregon,
5:21
Jack: but California had the Jews.
5:23
Jack: So all of a sudden, Jackson was a really small town there.
5:30
Jack: This guy stopped me, and it was Bob Lewis who was given the task of getting
5:36
Jack: the guides for the Federation because they needed guys to take the celebrities fishing.
5:42
Jack: And I said, look, I don't have a boat. And he said, oh, I got a boat,
5:46
Jack: will you? Old military ramp, that's what everybody used, or no drip boat.
5:51
Jack: And he said, I'll just show up. And so I told my friends I'm going to row the boat.
5:55
Jack: So we all went to the big banquet barbecue they had, and the next day was taking fishing.
6:01
Jack: And we got a chance to meet a guy in the shop.
6:05
Jack: His name was Dennis Black, which would be one of the most influential fly fishermen ever.
6:13
Jack: And nobody knew who he was and
6:16
Jack: only a few people did but he changed fly
6:19
Jack: fishing forever because he started umpqua feather merchants in 1972 which randall
6:26
Jack: and i helped him when he came to friends now okay what does this tie into lee
6:31
Jack: wolf well the next day who do i get i don't know how they They picked him,
6:38
Jack: but I got Lee Wolfe and,
6:41
Jack: oh, gosh, terrible, but I remember the guy that was Arnold Gingrich,
6:47
Jack: who was the publisher of Esquire magazine,
6:53
Jack: which was a huge magazine back then. And.
6:57
Jack: Here was Lee Wolf. And all they did was needle each other.
7:02
Jack: I thought, why don't they care about the fishing? They told jokes.
7:06
Jack: They needled each other. Lee wasn't particularly a – he was a pretty serious guy.
7:10
Jack: But he did like Arnold Schumer. And it was pretty sharp.
7:16
Jack: And he just took it. And I thought, man, this guy's a cool dude.
7:19
Jack: You know, being in the – at that time, everything was rad and cool.
7:26
Jack: And we love the baseball boys.
7:29
Jack: I just hit it off with him.
7:32
Jack: And what I liked is he was thought outside of the box, which I did too.
7:42
Jack: We just hit it off. And he said, look, what are you doing?
7:47
Jack: He says, I don't know. We're going to start a fly tying operation.
7:50
Jack: He said, well, there's no money in that.
7:52
Jack: He said, you're going to be guiding? I said, oh, yes, I'm going to guide.
7:55
Jack: And I told him I just got out of the military. And he loved flying.
8:00
Jack: And, of course, we're in a flying family.
8:02
Jack: We got into lots of conversations about flying.
8:06
Jack: And he said, look, I'm going to be doing a show in Los Angeles.
8:09
Jack: And I want you to come and do a little booth and see if you can drum up some business.
8:14
Jack: And I'll get you introduced into the fly fishing world. It was in Los Angeles.
8:20
Jack: And I went. And I got a chance. He was building us. He was working for Garcia at the time.
8:27
Jack: The fin fishing world had the money.
8:31
Jack: And they were trying to get into the fly fishing business, using him as a way
8:36
Jack: to do it. He was designing reels.
8:38
Jack: And he designed a pretty good saltwater reel. I'd never gone saltwater fly fishing.
8:43
Jack: And we set up a trip, got a chance to catch Bonita. And it kind of started right there.
8:51
Jack: From that time, he had just married Joan, and she was absolutely wonderful.
8:57
Jack: And they just kind of took me under their wing.
9:00
Jack: And I kind of thought that sports shows seemed to be the way.
9:04
Jack: There was no fly fishing shows in those days.
9:07
Jack: They would have fly fishing companies at the shows. They were big sports shows
9:11
Jack: with boats and all the stuff. And, you know, I learned from him about how you do presentations.
9:20
Jack: And it kind of right there, we just kind of started keeping in touch.
9:29
Jack: One of the key things was Kurt Gowden.
9:33
Jack: And I met Kurt at a TU.
9:39
Jack: I have to admit, I was really, I loved the American sport. And Kirk was from Wyoming.
9:45
Jack: He was like a legendary sportscaster.
9:48
Jack: And, you know, being from my part of the world, you couldn't help but love his love of fly fishing.
9:54
Jack: And I thought, God, he needs to do a show in Jackson. That's where the beauty of Wyoming is.
10:01
Jack: And I said, I'm going to go down there and meet him and talk him into an American
10:05
Jack: sportsman show. I went, nobody.
10:08
Jack: You know, I just started flying flies, had a little shot.
10:12
Jack: Randall had figured that Jackson was too cold. He left after four months when
10:17
Jack: it got down to 40 below zero. He was back to California.
10:20
Jack: But he ended up in Oregon meeting up with Dennis Black, and that friendship
10:27
Jack: went on until Dennis died.
10:29
Jack: But what happened there is I had to borrow all the money.
10:34
Jack: It was like $150 to fly to Denver. I didn't know anybody, but I got an invitation
10:39
Jack: to go to the first Colorado Trout Unlimited meeting.
10:45
Jack: They had all the board members except for Bing Crosby there.
10:48
Jack: Kurt was there, all the people that started it.
10:53
Jack: And I didn't know anybody in there. You couldn't even get near Kurt.
10:56
Jack: There were so many people talking to him.
10:58
Jack: This one guy grabbed me and said, look, you need to meet Kurt Gowdy.
11:02
Jack: He pushed to the crowd. He was an old friend of Kurt and said,
11:06
Jack: I said, this is Jack Dennis. He's a guy in Jackson, Wyoming.
11:10
Jack: Jack Dennis. Jack Dennis. Never heard of you.
11:13
Jack: I said, you're a good guy? I said, I'm a good guy, and I grew up on the Snake River.
11:20
Jack: He says, well, you know, I'm thinking about doing an American sports show there.
11:25
Jack: He said, let's talk about it.
11:29
Jack: So Ernie Schwieber was giving a presentation. We were sitting down there,
11:32
Jack: and, of course, he was a big gun back in those days.
11:36
Jack: And it was funny because he said, look, I've heard enough of him.
11:41
Jack: Let's go. And he gathered up his friends, and we went to a restaurant where
11:47
Jack: Louis Armstrong was playing.
11:49
Jack: And I was with the president of Frontier and one of the cores.
11:54
Jack: It was like all the elite Denver was with him. They were supporting Trout Unlimited.
11:59
Jack: And he said, all he wanted to do was talk about fishing.
12:02
Jack: And, I mean, I'm just like way out of my element.
12:06
Jack: The good thing was that I'd been used to being around these kind of people because
12:10
Jack: my father, after the war, flew for Warner Brothers,
12:17
Jack: and he flew for the movie companies up and eventually for a baseball company.
12:22
Jack: So I was around people, and I knew how to keep my mouth shut,
12:26
Jack: which I don't know about now, but – and – and – and –.
12:33
Jack: Kurt, he just made it all happen. The governor of Wyoming, Stan Hathaway, had called.
12:38
Jack: But the nice thing is my grandfather, I'd spent every summer,
12:42
Jack: literally, of my life with my grandfather in Jackson.
12:46
Jack: And he had a big ranch there, and he was well-known to the community.
12:51
Jack: Our family had come from Philadelphia in 1916.
12:55
Jack: They didn't live in Jackson, but they had ranches, and they were from a well-to-do family.
12:59
Jack: So my grandfather had a really good reputation, as did my dad in Jackson,
13:07
Jack: and they got behind it, and we did this show.
13:11
Jack: And it turned out to be the most viewed and most popular show in the American sports business.
13:20
Jack: Very few of those shows ever would
13:23
Jack: qualify for a rerun. It was rerun three times, one after a Super Bowl.
13:29
Jack: And it was just a pleasure working with Curt.
13:34
Jack: And we had Phil Harris, who at that time was one of the neatest guys,
13:38
Jack: part of the Rat Pack, and just funny.
13:41
Jack: And it was an amazing time.
13:44
Jack: So where does Lee fit into this? Well, all he would talk about is stories about Lee.
13:49
Jack: And, of course, knowing that, and, you know, we didn't have cell phones in the
13:53
Jack: day, and long distance was really expensive.
13:56
Jack: But Curt, you know, he was doing well.
13:59
Jack: We'd get on the phone, and we'd have the double line and talk with Lee.
14:05
Jack: And I get to see Lee during the sports shows. And, of course...
14:15
Jack: Our friendship kept going, and when he was doing one of his books,
14:20
Jack: Lee Wolf on Flies, he called me and said, look, would you mind if I take your
14:24
Jack: concept for your book where you're holding the fly in front of your face?
14:28
Jack: I thought, why in the world would the best-known fly station in the world call
14:31
Jack: me to ask permission to do that?
14:35
Jack: I was, like, dumbfounded. and so it actually.
14:42
Jack: We were we were in Jackson when Kurt came every year he became like a second
14:48
Jack: father to me I went to the funerals rode into the hearse with the body with Kurt and you know,
14:58
Jack: but he was originally Lee had come to us I'll never forget this he called us
15:05
Jack: and my wife knew where I was fishing and we were having cocktails,
15:11
Jack: at this ranch that
15:14
Jack: nobody could fish and Kurt was a bit
15:17
Jack: of a Lee and Kurt were both they kind
15:20
Jack: of stretched it and like this lady's rules
15:24
Jack: were that you had to use dry flies and
15:27
Jack: Kurt loved mudflat minnow and so
15:30
Jack: did Lee and so we were fishing there and
15:33
Jack: we came in for cocktails tails were sitting there in this lady's house
15:36
Jack: that she had uh charlie russell uh uh bronzes you know in a room look at there
15:45
Jack: here's a two hundred thousand dollar bronze next to you and we call as you get
15:51
Jack: old you gotta call some glee wolf.
15:55
Jack: And he was telling Kurt about, you need instant decision about what fly would
16:04
Jack: you pick if you only had one fly.
16:06
Jack: He said he was doing an article for Outdoor Live on if you only had one fly.
16:14
Jack: And so Kurt immediately said, hey, I'll pick the muddler middle.
16:20
Jack: Because I just caught three great big cutthroats on it.
16:25
Jack: And this lady's listening to and I thought, boy,
16:32
Jack: I better not I couldn't remember whether I had enough guts to say I was using,
16:37
Jack: because she looked at me and she looked at him and he was on the board of the.
16:46
Jack: Buffalo Bill Museum and she was in awe of Kirk and I thought,
16:54
Jack: man, is this guy going to get away with it?
16:57
Jack: And so when I got on the phone, she had said nothing to him.
17:02
Jack: And I said, mother mental.
17:05
Jack: At that time, it was because she'd used it as a dryer or wet.
17:08
Jack: And I don't know what he said to her, but he got away with it.
17:14
Jack: And so they're kind of where their lead was real interested And he always believed
17:23
Jack: that man was a competitive animal,
17:26
Jack: and he wrote a wonderful piece about the one-fly after he had a chance to experience it.
17:34
Jack: And that was probably the thing.
17:37
Jack: All of a sudden, and this would have been in the late 80s, we started the one-fly.
17:45
Jack: It took, you know, I mean, that's a whole program on how that started.
17:50
Jack: But we made it happen.
17:54
Jack: Thanks to Kurt. Kurt wanted to have a one-fly.
17:57
Jack: After hearing that, he had gone to the Lander one-shot antelope hunt,
18:05
Jack: which was a contest where you had one shell.
18:09
Jack: And there were teams, and the teams would consist sometimes of astronauts.
18:14
Jack: Ray Rogers, all kinds of people that like to hunt, go out and do this,
18:19
Jack: and it was ran by the Shoshone Indians,
18:22
Jack: and a lot of gala to it, and Kurt said, you know, why don't we have a one-fly
18:28
Jack: like that for fly fishing?
18:31
Jack: Well, you got to realize, this was like 1972 or three, and...
18:37
Jack: You know, that fly fishing gig honestly wasn't that big. That was the starting
18:42
Jack: of the Fly Fisherman magazine.
18:44
Jack: And they said, well, you know, I don't care. We're starting it and we're doing it.
18:49
Jack: And we would go out and I would hire one of our guides.
18:54
Jack: And we'd go out and have our one fly. His first one was in Dillon, Montana.
19:01
Jack: And we kind of made up, Kurt made up the rules. And he would announce it like
19:05
Jack: he was doing the Super Bowl.
19:07
Jack: And he could imitate anybody's voice. And he had a pretty good Lee Wolf voice, too.
19:12
Jack: He would go back to Lee and say, Lee, what do you think of this?
19:15
Jack: And, hey, Howard Cosell, he had a perfect Howard Cosell.
19:19
Jack: And he would mimic him.
19:23
Jack: And people would go down the river and they'd hear that voice, which they knew.
19:27
Jack: And they'd turn around and look at this. And it was great fun.
19:32
Jack: And so one of the ones we were doing, and we do it every year.
19:36
Jack: And I want to say this about 1976 and, uh, Kurt was saying, I'm going to beat you this time.
19:45
Jack: And I said, he'd never beat me. And I was competitive. He was competitive.
19:49
Jack: And we went right down and we're getting to the landing and I'm up by one point.
19:55
Jack: I need to catch a fish over 10 inches to beat him.
19:58
Jack: And we're the guy do work for me to make sure I got it. He went down the right-hand
20:05
Jack: bank where the takeout was as far as he could go. Nothing.
20:10
Jack: And I'm reeling in and going across in the middle of the river.
20:14
Jack: The Snake River doesn't have fish in the middle of the river.
20:17
Jack: They're along the banks. All of a sudden, I have a fish on.
20:21
Jack: Trolling a fly. God, he just said, that's it. That's it.
20:25
Jack: He was so mad. He said, look, you've got to do a contest so I can fish against somebody besides you.
20:33
Jack: Well, we made it happen. It only took another 10 to 1986.
20:39
Jack: Now, what this brings in talking about Lee Wolf.
20:42
Jack: During that time, I'm going all over the country to lecture, do programs.
20:47
Jack: I did 40-something years of sports shows and TV shows and all kinds of things.
20:54
Jack: And I would visit Lee and Joan up on their place on the Beaverkill.
21:05
Jack: And it was really wonderful spending the time.
21:10
Jack: And he and I would talk about the one fly and he said, man, I'd love to fish
21:15
Jack: it. Joan said, so would I.
21:17
Jack: So in 1990, he was sent it up. Now that's four years into it. And Lee was so excited.
21:25
Jack: And we remember sitting there with him on the porch, and his Piper Cub was on
21:33
Jack: his little landing strip at his house.
21:36
Jack: And he was right bumped up against Mike Rockefeller, who was the son of Lawrence,
21:44
Jack: who really didn't spend much time in Jackson.
21:46
Jack: And the Rockefeller family, my grandfather was a banker with Chase Manhattan
21:52
Jack: and close friends with the Rockefellers.
21:55
Jack: So we kind of had a chance to be around them.
21:58
Jack: And Lee was saying, you know, talking about it, he says, you know,
22:03
Jack: I really would like to take you. I know you can fly, right?
22:06
Jack: I said, yeah, but I'm way out of the license stage. That's all right.
22:10
Jack: I'm going to go get my license. And you and I, in the spring,
22:15
Jack: we're going to both fly, and we're going to go to my old lodge.
22:18
Jack: And I said, I think it would be a fun thing to do with you.
22:23
Jack: And during that time, we started talking about, I'd come up with an idea of
22:29
Jack: a fly, which I call the Parallel.
22:35
Jack: We had been experimenting. We both thought, what a wonderful fly the wolf pattern
22:40
Jack: is, but they just don't ride low enough on the surface to match mayflies.
22:45
Jack: He had tied the original wolf, which was a white wolf, to imitate big mayflies of Canada. And...
22:56
Jack: He had changed, actually, the Royal Whelp, as we know it, really got popularized by Dan Bailey.
23:03
Jack: And his next fly was the Gray Wolf. But we started talking about it,
23:07
Jack: and I said, you know, I've been working on trying to get a parachute double wing.
23:14
Jack: It would be more stable in the water. It would float close to the surface.
23:19
Jack: It would be really good in slow-moving water. And that's where he said he used
23:24
Jack: to cut the hackle off of a lot of his flies.
23:27
Jack: He would tie the flies on the bank with his hands. He'd have a little packet
23:32
Jack: with him if he wanted to change flies.
23:36
Jack: Lee would never say that he was an accomplished tier, but he knew how to tie
23:42
Jack: what he needed, and he had enough fly tying friends he never lacked for flies.
23:47
Jack: So we we discussed this
23:50
Jack: and he was working on plastic things pretty interesting
23:53
Jack: he was taking plastic and taking like a
23:56
Jack: squirrel stacked squirrel and sticking it in the plastic it would dry it would
24:01
Jack: be permanent he'd wrap brown hackle around the uh the post he'd make a plastic
24:06
Jack: post and he was working on trying to get a post up that would be a y if you can envision a y.
24:15
Jack: And I said, the problem is I can't go, the threads just, you have to use so
24:20
Jack: much thread to do this. You've got to build posts, then you've got to divide the wing.
24:24
Jack: The threads were just too big. A 6-0 thread just wouldn't do it, even to a 10 or a 12.
24:31
Jack: But it took the development of the threads from deep boy down to an 8-0 thread
24:37
Jack: that we could take it smaller. That changed everything. thing.
24:40
Jack: Unfortunately, you know, Lee didn't get to see the completed fly, but he knew about it.
24:48
Jack: And he was so excited. I ended up writing several articles for books on the whole process.
24:56
Jack: And it was really funny because when Joan read it, she called me on the phone
25:00
Jack: and said, you know, I learned things about Lee that I didn't know.
25:04
Jack: Because he would tell me things about his life life that he,
25:09
Jack: I don't think he would discuss with his wife. He said he was a terrible husband.
25:14
Jack: Joan teamed him and all kinds of interesting things, but he was a thinker.
25:20
Jack: And as Joan put it, he was a visionary. He was an idealist.
25:27
Jack: He was not a teacher. I'm the teacher. What he did was was inspire people.
25:32
Jack: He inspired me to be a guide. He inspired me to get better at fly tying.
25:37
Jack: He inspired me to learn to listen, to listen to his stories.
25:42
Jack: And you know, at seven, almost 77, they come to me and then they go away.
25:48
Jack: They come to me and go away.
25:53
Jack: I remember him telling me about how he invented the fly vest.
25:57
Jack: And I have this actually on film.
26:01
Jack: I have all kinds of archives of film on tape that are really interesting. But I have this one.
26:08
Jack: He's talking about, Kurt Gowdy asked him, he said.
26:15
Jack: Didn't you invent the fly vest? He says, oh, yeah. He says, it made sense. in.
26:19
Jack: Pockets to hold your flies and everything. He said, well, how'd you do it?
26:24
Jack: He says, well, I sewed it myself.
26:27
Jack: I went to Macy's and bought a sewing machine. He said, the directions were on it.
26:33
Jack: He said, I just did it. It just made sense. And of course, that vest is in the museum, the Catskills.
26:43
Jack: He was such an inspirer. He jumped in the river to prove that you could swim with waders on.
26:50
Jack: If you knew what you were doing, you were safe in waders if you prepared them right.
26:56
Jack: And he wasn't really, he told me, I wasn't really sure I was right, but I had to prove it.
27:02
Jack: And this was, I mean, he's the only fly fisherman, sorry Lefty Craig,
27:07
Jack: but he was the only fly fisherman who had a whole page in Newsweek magazine of his death.
27:15
Jack: I have a fabulous us and you write as the new york times wrote in one page the
27:23
Jack: life of woody and and so let's go back because there's so much to this one flight
27:27
Jack: so we're at the one flight.
27:29
Jack: And this is his first one. And we make sure, gosh, we've got to get some.
27:33
Jack: So we make sure it gets filmed. And that, of course, is in the film that I posted on my YouTube channel.
27:40
Jack: And I'm surprised how few people even were interested in it.
27:44
Jack: I go back and forth and wonder how many people are really interested in history.
27:49
Jack: But I look at the group Classic Twyfishers, and they've got over 25,000 people
27:56
Jack: that are interested, at least the history of the equipment and the flies and everything.
28:02
Jack: But I often wonder, is this generation going to look back like we did?
28:09
Jack: I look back on Lee, and my favorite book was a book called Flies by J.
28:16
Jack: Edson Leonard, which had letters
28:18
Jack: from Dan Bailey and every one of the fly tires from the 20s and before.
28:27
Jack: He published it in 1950 and it had fabulous letters about, he would ask them
28:37
Jack: to explain this pattern.
28:38
Jack: If you haven't seen this book, you really need to see it. There's a history
28:42
Jack: of fly fishing in this book.
28:44
Jack: Steelhead fishlings on the west coast, names that are embraced and blazed in
28:50
Jack: fly fishing history right there.
28:52
Jack: And I really was lucky to have got to meet him at a speaking engagement and
28:59
Jack: I asked him which was the best letter that was in there he said by far Bob Carmichael
29:05
Jack: from your Jackson home and it's just beautiful rewritten.
29:11
Jack: So we go back to Lee and the one he's fishing with Kurt Gowdy how could you
29:17
Jack: not do it little as they would know although I,
29:21
Jack: And they just had great dialogue. We got as much as we could on it.
29:26
Jack: And Chuck Yeager was there.
29:29
Jack: And Lee was telling me about his 80th birthday, being on a carrier, how he loved flying.
29:38
Jack: By the way, we were sitting there in his place, and he told me he wanted to
29:42
Jack: fly with the plane, and he was going to get qualified in the spring so we could do this trip.
29:49
Jack: We were sitting there and Joan served us some strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar.
30:00
Jack: And she brought in a glass of wine and we're sitting there looking down there.
30:04
Jack: And he says, you know, the greatest things in life start with F.
30:08
Jack: I said, yeah. He says, yeah, food, flying, fishing, and you can figure out what the other one is.
30:19
Jack: Because we're keeping this a family program.
30:25
Jack: I'll never forget that. And Joan goes, Lee, you're just, because she heard the
30:28
Jack: last word. She said, you're awful.
30:30
Jack: And she says, well, can you do better? And she hugged him and said, no.
30:35
Jack: Why do you think I married?
30:41
Jack: It was just, going back to the one fly, I went through all the things he did.
30:47
Jack: He sat down and talked with Chuck Yeager.
30:52
Jack: And he was his hero. And he had talked about being able to have his birthday
30:57
Jack: on the carrier and all the broke out with the MC.
31:04
Jack: And he just told me he couldn't have had a better life.
31:11
Jack: At that point, Joan's wife, or mother, who lived to a long age like Joan has, had gotten sick.
31:17
Jack: And she said, look, I've got to go back to New Jersey.
31:21
Jack: Lee's going to the fly tackle dealer. I know you're going.
31:24
Jack: And he said, can you take care of Lee's until I get back?
31:28
Jack: And then take him, if I don't get back, I'm taking him to Denver to the tackle show.
31:36
Jack: And so I spent two magical weeks with Lee fishing and talking that,
31:43
Jack: you know, I treasure to this day.
31:47
Jack: And the funny thing, this is Oliver owned this fabulous spring creek.
31:54
Jack: Actually, she had bought one of my family's properties.
31:57
Jack: She found out that I was from the Nears family, which all of a sudden I could
32:02
Jack: fish anytime on her property.
32:04
Jack: And I bought Lee Wolf. And I remember she's at now, you got to realize she's
32:07
Jack: in her eighties, he's 86 and she's watching him fish and he says, yeah, what a stud he is.
32:18
Jack: Yeah. It's just gal probably worth half a million. I mean, 500 million or more.
32:24
Jack: He said, I said, I'm sorry, Emily, but he's taken. He says, I know,
32:29
Jack: but by must be by a much younger woman.
32:34
Jack: So and by the way he got away with putting a nymph under his fly and she didn't say a word,
32:44
Jack: and uh i put a nymph under the fly and one of her workmen told her and i got
32:50
Jack: i got read the riot act for using a nymph on her property,
32:56
Jack: just depends on who you are that's the way life is in the world indeed.
33:00
Marvin: Do you have any other kind of particularly memorable fishing trips you took with Lee?
33:07
Jack: Well, you know, we did one on the South Fork.
33:12
Jack: And when I had the chance with Lee and Kurt, I was not going to let this go by.
33:22
Jack: Because Kurt said, I just got a feeling this is the last time Lee and I are going to see each other.
33:29
Jack: And they both were anxious to film. And we just went filming.
33:33
Jack: And I remember, you know, I'm in the building, I'm watching the whole thing.
33:39
Jack: And so a lot of mine was, oh, we'll get back to a memorable one.
33:45
Jack: Sorry, at this age, they come to me and they flash fly.
33:48
Jack: But anyway, he wanted to catch this one fish. And what he wanted to do,
33:52
Jack: we sat there and the camera was going, how much of this do I film?
33:56
Jack: I said, you know, just keep filming. We can always erase it.
34:00
Jack: Thank God for video. and this fish is rising over there and he refused to change the fly.
34:10
Jack: He turned around to the guide, Gary Wilman, who was probably one of the best
34:15
Jack: fishing guides I've ever had.
34:17
Jack: We called him the predator.
34:23
Jack: He was that kind of guy. And,
34:29
Jack: Wayne tried all these different techniques. Finally, he pushed the fly and the
34:35
Jack: fish took it. And this is after half an hour.
34:38
Jack: And the guy who was just dumbfounded, the guy, he said, yes,
34:43
Jack: all I had to do was figure it out. Because you can make fish.
34:50
Jack: And it was a good point. It was really a good point.
34:54
Jack: And it changed this guy's life. line he learned how to be more disciplined and
35:01
Jack: he said i would have never done that well the rest of his life he did that and
35:08
Jack: in the other situation we're fishing a spring creek and uh jones there,
35:13
Jack: and uh she notices i'm i'm fishing a two-way because you really like those light
35:19
Jack: rods and i I said, gentlemen, they just land so soft on the water.
35:24
Jack: And casting is everything. And if you're going to spook fish,
35:27
Jack: I learned that from starting out as a kid all by myself, fishing the hard water.
35:33
Jack: Everybody said, why don't you go to the snake? You can catch all the fish you
35:36
Jack: want on that. Why do you want to catch the hard fish?
35:38
Jack: I'd go on my hands and knees. I'd get defeated.
35:41
Jack: But I knew exactly what you had to do. The lighter you could present the fly,
35:49
Jack: presentation was everything, but in the casting makes the presentation.
35:54
Jack: And I learned about that. And so she was talking about, I was telling her how
35:59
Jack: the three weights were, you know, you can use a three weight anywhere in the world for trout,
36:04
Jack: you know, unless you got to throw great big streamers, but for normal trout
36:08
Jack: fishing. And she says, I really like that.
36:11
Jack: And Lee said, look, tell me how you both understand this. And tell me how you cast.
36:18
Jack: A two or three-way i was like what i'm going to show you how to cast it she says yeah,
36:26
Jack: you can always learn you don't have to be eight and five to stop learning and
36:32
Jack: i i told them the attributes of it and and they said well he said i want your
36:37
Jack: rod and he first the rest of the day with me.
36:41
Jack: I think that was a two-weight at that time. Two-weight Scott.
36:48
Jack: That was memorable. Then we had the cameras and interviewing Joan and Lee about this.
36:59
Jack: The most important thing I think I learned from him was the value of fly fishing
37:07
Jack: and your wife to handle the other things that don't go right.
37:12
Jack: And he talked about his divorces and how fishing may have caused that.
37:19
Jack: And he said, every time I would have something that upset me,
37:23
Jack: I could go away and fish and come back like it never happened.
37:27
Jack: And I think if your listeners there pretty much understand that.
37:32
Jack: All it takes is, and Lee, like myself, liked to fish alone.
37:38
Jack: And not that, you know, I do lots of boat fishing. I still row down the river.
37:42
Jack: But nothing beats getting out on your own.
37:46
Jack: I spent a bunch of time in New Zealand as a consultant.
37:51
Jack: And by the way, Lee really wanted to go to New Zealand.
37:56
Jack: And the one flight kind of helped that way because, you know,
38:00
Jack: he ended up passing away. And I feel so much responsible because he was qualifying for our trip.
38:11
Jack: But we had his license since I didn't have one.
38:15
Jack: I grew up in a family and knew how to fly. And he ended up having,
38:24
Jack: John thought he made a mistake, but the instructor lived.
38:28
Jack: What happened when he was coming in to land on final, the aorta bust and flooded
38:36
Jack: his cavity and he died instantly.
38:37
Jack: He fell on the stick in the front of the plane.
38:42
Jack: And he was six foot three or four,
38:48
Jack: six three or something like that and he played basketball for Stanford and baseball
38:54
Jack: for Stanford he was an incredibly good athlete.
38:58
Jack: So he still weighed enough where the guy could pull it up and they had a dead stick landing,
39:05
Jack: and luckily the guy survived and told Joan Joan, that he had passed his test,
39:13
Jack: which made her feel good that he didn't make a mistake.
39:17
Jack: And that was very touching when Joan called.
39:22
Jack: And I went back several times to help her try to figure out what to do with everything.
39:28
Jack: It was a tough time for her.
39:30
Jack: And I just think we have a very special relationship, Joan and I.
39:36
Jack: And it doesn't mean you have to talk all the time. you just feel it every time
39:41
Jack: we'd be at a show together she'd stop and we'd go talk and she would let anybody
39:45
Jack: interrupt us until we were done but.
39:50
Jack: She said Lee mellowed a lot in his early age and I you know I remember him from
39:58
Jack: the time I first met him to the time he died and there was a man in that 20 years,
40:05
Jack: yeah a little over 20 years that really understood how life was.
40:11
Jack: And he let Kurt Gowdy, let a few people in to his life. Very similar to Ted Williams.
40:22
Jack: Kurt compared the two of them as both legends in their sport.
40:27
Jack: And not because of what they accomplished, accomplish, but how they felt and
40:33
Jack: how they gained as close to perfection as you can.
40:40
Jack: I remember Ted telling me, he says, think of baseball.
40:44
Jack: You fail six times out of 10, and you're the greatest hitter that ever lived. You fail seven out of 10.
40:54
Jack: You're in the major leagues. You fail eight out of ten, you don't play.
41:01
Jack: He says, life is about overcoming failures.
41:06
Jack: And I think every time you lose a fish, every time you go, you learn something.
41:12
Jack: And then eventually, you don't lose fish.
41:16
Jack: And, you know, one thing, Marvin, that I see nowadays, days and I don't know
41:23
Jack: Lee how he would take it you know he would hold up,
41:30
Jack: the Atlantic salmon and always release them in the early days of the camp they
41:35
Jack: would keep the brook trout because they were so good eating in the lakes of Canada,
41:40
Jack: you know his gift to the world you know his famous statement is a game fish
41:49
Jack: is too valuable to catch only once,
41:52
Jack: and there's all kinds of different quotes from him that really,
41:58
Jack: truly, the father of catch and release.
42:00
Jack: And I have one of the articles that he did for Fly It, Run, Reel.
42:04
Jack: He wrote for them when they first came out about he and a friend of mine both
42:10
Jack: wrote articles together on the value of catch and release.
42:15
Jack: And it had a profound effect.
42:18
Jack: And i think i i look uh
42:21
Jack: now and and i think what what really
42:24
Jack: happened with lee is he gave us the energy to make the one fly work he he gave
42:29
Jack: valid he wrote the article giving it praise and it wasn't popular i got a lot
42:35
Jack: of hate letters um about i was going to ruin fly fishing it become mike golf when you paid for it.
42:43
Jack: And I just, I ended up coaching the world fly fishing team and being a part
42:49
Jack: of it just so I could learn from a real contest.
42:54
Jack: And they don't kill fish and they have very strict regulations.
42:59
Jack: And, you know, there's a competitive edge. But so far in the U.S.,
43:05
Jack: what I want is a wonder of these contests to raise money.
43:11
Jack: We've raised over $20 million in stream improvement projects,
43:17
Jack: all stream improvement projects.
43:20
Jack: And you can go to the streams and see what the work has done.
43:24
Jack: But what we've done is inspired other clubs. I would say there's close to 200
43:28
Jack: contests throughout here in Canada, and none of them have cash prizes.
43:34
Jack: They're there for fun.
43:36
Jack: And I think I look back on that, And I wish more people would understand that.
43:42
Jack: And it's about the flies.
43:44
Jack: My God, what would you ever...
43:47
Jack: The Chernobyl came from the guides of the Green River. I was there when it was designed and made.
43:53
Jack: And it was a fly that was pounded. And then you had the double bunny.
43:57
Jack: And then you had the church tarantula.
43:59
Jack: You had a whole series of flies that are in the fly fisheries repart. apart.
44:05
Jack: And so there's so many advantages to what this has been to highlight flies and
44:13
Jack: highlight becoming a better fisherman.
44:17
Jack: And it's fun.
44:22
Jack: I couldn't tell you who even won last year or who won because I don't care.
44:28
Jack: I don't care who wins. Everybody having a good time.
44:31
Jack: We raised a lot of money with our bank and I think it was about $600,000 last
44:38
Jack: year and I sit back and look at all these people and what fun they're having in fly fishing,
44:45
Jack: when Kurt and I envision just
44:48
Jack: a simple little contest has become honored now
44:51
Jack: by the American Museum of Fly Fishing we're
44:54
Jack: receiving their Heritage Award
44:58
Jack: award um and on april 18th
45:01
Jack: we get a preliminary award where we go to
45:05
Jack: the new york english club and to their in the american fly fishing museum fundraiser
45:10
Jack: and we we do this wonderful film it's on the ifa for a film tour called tension
45:18
Jack: and we've been allowed to show that at at the event,
45:22
Jack: And so it's really fun to see, you know, getting the recognition.
45:31
Jack: And you can't be any prouder. I feel like I've done about everything I could
45:35
Jack: to try to, you know, I've touched a lot of things, Mark.
45:41
Jack: It's been a wonderful float.
45:45
Marvin: Yeah, and it's amazing, too, because I've been, we were talking before we started
45:48
Marvin: recording, Jack, you know, You've been incredibly busy putting some of your
45:52
Marvin: kind of older, more original content on your YouTube channel.
45:58
Jack: Yeah, it, you know, I just, I got into it too late.
46:03
Jack: I didn't really understand. I didn't, you know, we were moving to North Carolina,
46:08
Jack: and ended up having to start over after I went up to 5,000.
46:12
Jack: Didn't understand, you know, YouTube had kind of led all the people to believe
46:20
Jack: that, especially in the fly fishing film, that they monitor what was copyrighted or not.
46:27
Jack: And everybody threw in whatever they could find, you know, from old stuff.
46:33
Jack: And all of a sudden, you know, DVD market had fell and all this stuff was out there.
46:40
Jack: Everybody's putting my stuff on. I didn't, I'll tell you, I couldn't afford
46:44
Jack: to copyright and they cost so much.
46:46
Jack: And the market was so small. I mean, you had a bestseller at 5,000 DVDs,
46:53
Jack: Although I did the Cabela's and they sold,
46:58
Jack: I mean, we sold 50,000 or more learning to fly fish.
47:03
Jack: I think the whole total was about 200,000.
47:08
Jack: You know, we also made them priced reasonably. And, you know,
47:12
Jack: to pay for a DVD for $30, just, I mean, what's happened is YouTube has made it really good now.
47:21
Jack: But it takes a lot of time. And, you know, I'm trying.
47:24
Jack: People find I saved a bunch of live
47:28
Jack: fly time from seminars when I was the producer of the Fly Time Theater.
47:35
Jack: And, you know, I show those. those. I've got a lot of stuff back there.
47:39
Jack: It's just how much time do I devote to it for so little return other than the
47:44
Jack: satisfaction at this age that somebody liked it.
47:48
Marvin: Yeah. And I'll drop a link to your channel in the show notes,
47:51
Marvin: Jack, so people can check it out.
47:52
Marvin: And I guess before I let you go, do you have, you know, maybe one thing you
47:57
Marvin: can share about Lee that, you know, maybe folks generally don't know that got
48:01
Marvin: to spend some time with him or kind of, you know, remember his public life.
48:06
Jack: Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I watched him when he was older years when he was
48:13
Jack: pushing these flexible flies at the sports shows.
48:17
Jack: And I thought to myself, God, here he is at this age pushing there in a booth,
48:24
Jack: where he should be, you know, with a room talking about his life and everything.
48:30
Jack: But he was trying to promote, you know, uh well product joan really was the
48:37
Jack: one joan had her fly casting school which is still going and she's still a part
48:42
Jack: of and but they had the fly line and let me tell you his taper,
48:47
Jack: his triangle taper has been matched and copied he sort of trademarked it but
48:53
Jack: you know like a lot of things you shouldn't have done you know and i look back
49:01
Jack: a hundred times and says boy i I should have done this or that.
49:07
Jack: But Lee was, you know, I thought, man, I'm not going to, I don't want to get to that.
49:11
Jack: I don't want to be at a booth promoting something in my 80s.
49:16
Jack: You know, I thought about, well, one of the things I can really do is go talk
49:21
Jack: about creating a sports show. And they don't seem to be interested in it.
49:24
Jack: I mean, I've never really, I've done it. I ran a sports show in Salt Lake City,
49:29
Jack: a fly fishing show with another guy and I for about seven years.
49:36
Jack: And after the pandemic, I moved and it went on to other people.
49:42
Jack: But I know how hard it is to produce that.
49:44
Jack: But I just saw the mood that nobody seemed to care about it.
49:49
Jack: And yet, you know, I find a few people that are still interested in it.
49:54
Jack: But there was a time, I think, how important I had the picture of Lee time at a 28.
50:02
Jack: I got it in my drawer right here. A 28 gray hackle peacock.
50:09
Jack: And in his hand, and I'm looking at it, and Yvon Chouinard is looking at it. I invited Yvon.
50:17
Jack: I thought he could learn a lot from Lee.
50:22
Jack: I've known Yvon since he was a climber in the Tetons.
50:28
Jack: He was living in his car when he first got there, and I was a young guy moving
50:35
Jack: the climbers back and forth after hours. Nobody wanted to stay there because
50:39
Jack: the climbers' time frame was their own.
50:41
Jack: And so I'd just go over there, park the boat, and fish.
50:44
Jack: And Yvonne would always ask me what I was doing. And he caught the fishing bug.
50:49
Jack: And we've gone through our lives with watching Yvonne grow into what he is today.
50:58
Jack: But he was so impressed. So he tied one for me and tied one for Yvonne.
51:04
Jack: And I'm sure he has that. But his abilities, oh boy,
51:10
Jack: I wish I could, you know, the way to put it in the man is a deep thinker who's always thinking.
51:20
Jack: And his personality went to the person that he was, he would show what he wanted
51:30
Jack: to to the person asking the question.
51:32
Jack: He had great respect that anybody that had risen in his field.
51:39
Jack: And he would give them more time or anybody that's coming up.
51:46
Jack: My guides loved it. He went out during that two weeks. He went out more with the guides.
51:53
Jack: I was wrapping up one fly during that time. And the guides just loved him.
51:59
Jack: And he would give them a fly. I mean, each one of those guys had the flies. flies.
52:05
Jack: And I think after he died, Joan sent me a fly, which is not to stay in my family.
52:15
Jack: And it was his fly from the book, The Art of the Fly.
52:20
Jack: And he said, this was Lee's most treasured fly.
52:24
Jack: So I always felt that he kind of passed. Oh, and he loved my Royal Humpy.
52:29
Jack: Oh, geez, he just loved it. He loved the Humpy, couldn't see it.
52:32
Jack: He was very abysmal. type of guy. He liked his drive slides so he could see them.
52:37
Jack: That's why he put the when he started out, of course, I don't know how many
52:41
Jack: people know, but he started out with Bucktail.
52:44
Jack: And Lee had this wonderful friendship with Dan Bailey.
52:48
Jack: And Dan Bailey said, look, you got the wrong material. And well,
52:53
Jack: that's not how you start off with Lee.
52:55
Jack: But Dan convinced him.
52:59
Jack: That he could show him how. And And he took care of Lee. I mean,
53:04
Jack: they didn't have any kind of program like they have now.
53:06
Jack: That was developed by Umpqua, where you got paid for a pattern.
53:11
Jack: A man I can't imagine, but he never had to worry about anything.
53:15
Jack: Dan Bailey just took wonderful care. And I'm sure at the end of each year, he sent him a check.
53:23
Jack: But he's the one that really developed the Wolf pattern into what they are,
53:28
Jack: changing them over to what they called in those days, Kip-Tails.
53:31
Jack: Nobody wanted to call it a cast tail impala tail that was always the best one in power like.
53:40
Jack: You know, and, uh, but he, uh, what, you know, that's amazing what you can gather
53:47
Jack: from, uh, from people. Uh, he was simple.
53:51
Jack: He didn't want to, I mean, he was more interested in the approach and fly fishing, what the fly was.
53:57
Jack: He was interested in, in figuring out the situation. He liked to go one-on-one with the fish.
54:04
Jack: I was able to film his last fish he caught in Wyoming. I thought for a long
54:11
Jack: time it was the last fish he ever caught.
54:13
Jack: But he did do a piece just like three months before he died.
54:18
Jack: So when he was in the one fly, that was about four years or four months,
54:24
Jack: I mean, before he died. He died in February.
54:27
Jack: But he did a deal on his home river, which is wonderful. But you could tell
54:32
Jack: he had lost his energy since the one fall. It's just like you're looking at two different people.
54:38
Jack: For whatever time, you could just see that, the difference in the two people in a few months.
54:46
Jack: But he did it. He only caught some fish. But it was real fishing adventure when we had him.
54:53
Jack: And we just let him go out on his own.
54:56
Jack: And we filmed it. And we just watched everything. And I got this all on film.
55:00
Jack: And eventually, I will get to where we put it on YouTube.
55:07
Jack: I just...
55:11
Jack: Kurt interviewed him about his life. And it was very...
55:21
Jack: I don't know how to put the word, but not melodramatic, but sad in some ways,
55:29
Jack: the way he viewed himself.
55:31
Jack: He viewed Kurt as a much bigger, you're famous and everything,
55:37
Jack: you're better at your job than I was.
55:40
Jack: And Kurt's trying to tell him, no, you're not.
55:44
Jack: You rose to the top of the field.
55:48
Jack: But you know i could see the reluctance and
55:51
Jack: lee said you know you just there is no such thing as
55:54
Jack: a professional fly fishing and they can make any money he
55:57
Jack: says the lucky i had a career in advertising and they had people that were very
56:02
Jack: good to they did he said i i couldn't have lived on this and and i think he
56:09
Jack: had a lot of the skepticism about where fly fishing was going to go and.
56:17
Jack: You know it has gotten bigger and I'm sure you you know if you look at all the
56:23
Jack: rod companies are all owned by except for St.
56:27
Jack: Croix they're owned by well-to-do people that can afford to be in it you know
56:31
Jack: you look at Orvis the Orvis family and you know the rod guarantees I always
56:36
Jack: saw it when they put those lifetime warranties that was going to drive up the price,
56:40
Jack: and it made the company virtually unsellable,
56:45
Jack: And, you know, the same people pretty much still own it.
56:50
Jack: Thomas and Thomas went to several owners and everything, but it's kind of where
56:56
Jack: things are. And I see Lee saw that.
56:59
Jack: And he talked, you know, and I looked at his boxes,
57:06
Jack: and I have to laugh because three of the best fishermen I know have old boxes
57:14
Jack: and they just throw all the flies in.
57:17
Jack: Randall Coffin is the most organized writer I've ever been around.
57:21
Jack: And I open up his fly box. I say, hey, get out of catter.
57:25
Jack: He goes through about three boxes to find it. It's not even separated out.
57:30
Jack: And I realized, you know, I'm that way too, but I have to do it to make it look good.
57:36
Jack: People see that, they'll look at me and say, what are you doing?
57:40
Jack: But Lee was that way too.
57:45
Jack: He wasn't super organized, except for his thinking.
57:50
Jack: I know, here's the thing, as Joan said, he was the ultimate predator,
57:57
Jack: especially in the ocean fishing.
58:00
Jack: And he says, look, ocean fishing is easy, you just got to find,
58:04
Jack: once you find them, they're not hard to catch, but you got to find them and that's hard.
58:09
Jack: And I asked him what kind of fishing you like the best.
58:14
Jack: This is a great answer. He said, whatever I'm fishing for, it's the best right then.
58:20
Jack: And I thought, man, is that ever true?
58:23
Jack: Wherever I'm at, whether it's bone fishing or in South America or where,
58:29
Jack: in New Zealand especially.
58:30
Jack: New Zealand was where I learned the most about fly fishing.
58:35
Jack: And Australia, wherever it may depend, it's great.
58:40
Jack: And one of the things he said, you know, you can build any number of golf courses.
58:46
Jack: You know, golf will get it, but you can't build new trout streams.
58:52
Jack: And the only thing we've got is to protect them is catching release.
58:56
Jack: That's on this tape. And that just really hit. And that made me,
59:02
Jack: now that was filmed in 1990.
59:04
Jack: And he died in 91. And that has stuck with me and stuck with me when we turned
59:09
Jack: the OneFly into an organization to rebuild strings. It hit.
59:16
Jack: I can tell you right now, fishing is better on the Snake River and pretty much
59:21
Jack: all the rivers I fish than when I was a guide in the 60s.
59:28
Jack: Fishing is better. Better on the green. It's better. I mean,
59:31
Jack: go on South Fork, Lake River.
59:36
Jack: I can't speak for Montana because I didn't fish it when I was really young. Yellowstone is better.
59:41
Jack: The Yellowstone Lake's coming back with great big cutthroats that can survive the Mackinac.
59:48
Jack: They learn to evolve into big fish.
59:52
Jack: You do believe 11-pound cutthroats caught last year on a fly.
59:57
Jack: And Yellowstone Lake, the lake that the Mackinac run.
1:00:03
Marvin: Yeah, it's one of my favorite places to fish. I love fishing the fire hole.
1:00:09
Jack: Yeah, but think of Yellowstone Lake. There were hardly any fish left in the river.
1:00:17
Jack: And they evolved. Of course, they reduced the mackerel population, which helped.
1:00:25
Jack: But the spawning is limited. But it'll come back.
1:00:29
Jack: Nature has a way of doing this. And the nice thing about Yellowstone,
1:00:32
Jack: just the way it is. But, you know, the big problem I see, and the fire hole
1:00:39
Jack: hasn't changed one darn bit.
1:00:41
Jack: You have a little bit of, the rivers do have a little bit of a problem with the buffalo.
1:00:47
Jack: There's far more buffalo than historically there.
1:00:50
Jack: And they have beaten down the bank, but, you know, that's part of nature.
1:00:54
Jack: You know, the fish will survive.
1:00:58
Jack: No stream improvement in Nashville Park.
1:01:02
Marvin: It's interesting though I know the stream banks have recovered since they reintroduced
1:01:07
Marvin: the wolves too that's kind of helped kind of move the elk and the bison kind of off a little bit.
1:01:15
Jack: I don't even want to get into that there's some hard feelings on that that's
1:01:19
Jack: one thing in Jackson that I've learned my wife was an ER nurse there so she's
1:01:24
Jack: got plenty of bear incidents I just,
1:01:30
Jack: And it is so much like everything, a political move.
1:01:39
Jack: I just don't really get an opinion on it, other than there's too many buffalo in Yellowstone Park.
1:01:46
Jack: But, you know, the tourists like them. The park tries to do the best they can with it.
1:01:52
Jack: But there is negative effects. effects, you know, none of those streams flowing
1:01:58
Jack: into the Yellowstone can reproduce fish like they used to because they've been all trampled down.
1:02:04
Jack: And the buffalo wouldn't have been there if a white man hadn't run them in there.
1:02:09
Jack: So you know, where do you go?
1:02:12
Jack: But, you know, I, you know, getting back with Lee is that he saw like a lot
1:02:17
Jack: of people don't remember, you know, trap fishing was really threatened in the 1890s in New York.
1:02:22
Jack: They had pretty much killed all the, the fish that ran up into the rivers and,
1:02:27
Jack: you know, so that it came real, you know, their answer was to have a private
1:02:32
Jack: club, redo the streams, you know, and monitor the fishing.
1:02:35
Jack: And Lee was a product of that, understanding that not only catch and release,
1:02:44
Jack: but trying to undo the damage that was done in the sake of ignorance.
1:02:52
Jack: You know, how much do you value fly fishing?
1:02:56
Jack: You know, what do you put as a value when you look at the people that have done it?
1:03:02
Jack: You know, from the Bush family, you know, really, really got to be interested
1:03:09
Jack: in fly fishing to Dick Cheney, who would rather do anything.
1:03:14
Jack: I asked him, what would his last trip be? He only had one trip. He says, I got it.
1:03:19
Jack: Go to Canada on a steelhead stream all by myself.
1:03:24
Jack: I want it snowing. I don't care if I catch a fish.
1:03:28
Jack: That's my last trip of my life. And he said, now you've got to do your last trip of life.
1:03:35
Jack: And that was going out at 6.30 at night and spending all night fishing a crane fly hatch.
1:03:42
Jack: That was my last trip. Both said we had to do our last trip before we knew we were going to die.
1:03:50
Jack: And that was kind of Lee. I mean...
1:03:54
Jack: The best time we talked with Lee was when we were eating lunch.
1:04:00
Jack: And he did Kurt and I. And they'd start talking about their old days filming and laughing.
1:04:07
Jack: And he told one story. This is a good one.
1:04:12
Jack: They were filming in Canada. And Lee had this idea of how he was going to do this segment.
1:04:21
Jack: And he wanted to have it. and during the American Sportsman they would let independent
1:04:26
Jack: people Kurt would become the producer, Lee would become the producer,
1:04:30
Jack: and they would, you know, they would set it up hire the cameramen and deliver
1:04:34
Jack: the final product to ABC to be on the show,
1:04:38
Jack: and so they were filming and he said, what I want is to have you Kurt with the
1:04:43
Jack: rod underneath your hand, flies
1:04:46
Jack: out in the water and you're lighting the cigar back then, that was okay.
1:04:53
Jack: And this was during the time of the day when there was no fishing, middle of the day,
1:05:00
Jack: and so what Lee would do and he always looked to cut money, Kirk didn't cut,
1:05:08
Jack: he just paid the best to get the best photographers, but Lee was a cheapskate
1:05:12
Jack: and he would hire a French Canadian cameraman, which he could get for,
1:05:17
Jack: very cheap, now realize you're using and 35-millimeter film,
1:05:22
Jack: which is when edited back then was $1,000 a minute.
1:05:28
Jack: So if you had a 23-minute show, just in that fee is going to be $46,000.
1:05:35
Jack: That's a lot of money back then.
1:05:38
Jack: And so you didn't waste it.
1:05:42
Jack: So Lee's idea was to get a big daredevil without the hook on it,
1:05:50
Jack: cast it out, and get the big brook trout to chase it in.
1:05:55
Jack: And they would take flies on the surface real easily.
1:05:59
Jack: So we'd do that. The fish would come in and send it up. The fish wouldn't take the fly.
1:06:05
Jack: It just went on and on. And Lee was very devoted on doing this.
1:06:09
Jack: He'd look up and see the camera, and they're standing there.
1:06:14
Jack: What they needed to do is once they brought the daredevil in,
1:06:19
Jack: they would then hit the camera and film that.
1:06:23
Jack: Then you'd build it afterwards. And how you did the old shows with film is you
1:06:28
Jack: caught the fish, then you acted out everything before it.
1:06:31
Jack: Now, of course, you can film everything because video doesn't cost anything.
1:06:35
Jack: So he's doing that and doing that. Finally, the fish takes a flight.
1:06:42
Jack: Kurt throws a rod in the air.
1:06:45
Jack: The cigar goes everywhere. He goes, oh, we got it. I've been trying for years to get that.
1:06:52
Jack: He turns around, and there's no cameraman there.
1:06:56
Jack: He yells, did you get it? There's one guy standing there. I said, get what?
1:07:01
Jack: Lee went right up there and just decked the guy.
1:07:07
Jack: So that was another part of it he had a quick temper,
1:07:11
Jack: you gotta take the good with the bad here always said this is how you evaluate
1:07:16
Jack: a friend somebody you want to have a friendship with like a sports game you
1:07:22
Jack: add up all the good things,
1:07:25
Jack: and you got your score then you add up all the bad things and you got your score
1:07:30
Jack: the good things outweigh the bad things you got a friend And.
1:07:36
Marvin: Yeah, that's a novel concept in this day and age, right?
1:07:41
Jack: Yeah, that's the way Kurt really helped me understand what it was to stay in your lane.
1:07:51
Jack: You know, the saddest part of all of these guys, and I know what they mean now
1:07:57
Jack: that I'm 77, is that nobody remembers you after a time.
1:08:02
Jack: When you're in the middle of the battle and everybody knows you,
1:08:07
Jack: then all of a sudden you start on a – I look at life like an airplane.
1:08:12
Jack: You take off. My family was involved in aviation.
1:08:17
Jack: You take off, and I got to be able to fly Boeing jets and simulators and all
1:08:24
Jack: kinds of planes on my adventures, but not wanting to do it as a profession.
1:08:30
Jack: But if you take off, that's what you do.
1:08:33
Jack: You work your way through school, you're doing the college, you're doing everything.
1:08:36
Jack: All of a sudden, you get married, you have kids, and the plane is in what we call cruisimatic.
1:08:44
Jack: Going down, you back off the power, and you enjoy the ride.
1:08:49
Jack: When you get down, all of a sudden, you're going to have to land.
1:08:54
Jack: You've got to bring back the power more, and you start to descend.
1:08:58
Jack: And as you descend, it's each part of your life that all of a sudden you're on final.
1:09:05
Jack: Out comes the gear, and you hope you make a nice off-landing die in bed.
1:09:11
Jack: Anywhere along that climb, that plane can crash. But that was my idea how life was.
1:09:19
Jack: And, you know, everybody says live every day like your last.
1:09:24
Jack: I mean, that's great. I just live every day like it's a day.
1:09:29
Jack: And try to do as many things with friends as you can.
1:09:34
Jack: And that's why people ask me, why did you still row the river at almost 77?
1:09:40
Jack: I said, because that's what you do.
1:09:44
Jack: If I can do it, I'm going to do it as long as I can. Because I get to see beautiful
1:09:48
Jack: skies and be away from people.
1:09:50
Jack: Many times I'd float down and never see a person all day. Think about that.
1:09:54
Jack: Never see a human all day. And you're in a boat. Can't beat it.
1:10:01
Marvin: It's certainly one of the reasons why I like fishing the Rocky Mountain West,
1:10:05
Marvin: although it's gotten a little harder and harder to find that solitude.
1:10:09
Marvin: But I always think, you know, floating in Montana, that, you know,
1:10:12
Marvin: when you kind of get out a little bit and you don't see anybody,
1:10:15
Marvin: that you're literally looking at the landscape exactly the way it was when Lewis and Clark came through.
1:10:21
Jack: Well, that's what I love about Yellowstone. When you go to Yellowstone,
1:10:24
Jack: that was the way it was all the way back.
1:10:28
Jack: Forget the roads to it. Just look out there where there's no roads or trails
1:10:32
Jack: and say, and that's the way it was.
1:10:34
Jack: And of course the wilderness areas, but you have to hike into the older you
1:10:38
Jack: get. You just can't do that. You know, you can't do that.
1:10:41
Jack: So what I like is you just learn to be create.
1:10:45
Jack: The guides have to be there. My grandson's a guide at this, in the shop where
1:10:50
Jack: I guide and where he guides.
1:10:54
Jack: I mean, I don't get where he got and they have to go out at seven 30 and They
1:10:59
Jack: expect it to be back at 530 because all the restaurants close at nine o'clock,
1:11:03
Jack: except for a brew pub closes at 10.
1:11:07
Jack: So you go out at 10 or 11 and you fish dark and you don't see anybody.
1:11:14
Jack: You have to be inventive to not see people. Now, that may not happen on a man
1:11:19
Jack: or something like that, but you'll run into privates, but people want to be
1:11:25
Jack: off the river. They're afraid of the dark.
1:11:29
Jack: They don't feel comfortable rowing, and they don't really.
1:11:32
Jack: The rivers are long. Some of them are 24-mile stretch in one day.
1:11:37
Jack: You have a motor, but if it gets too low, you don't have the motor.
1:11:41
Jack: You know it's it's being inventive I think you know that's what Lee would say
1:11:46
Jack: that he he would just figure a way so he could be alone,
1:11:51
Jack: but meant getting on private property he'd go to private property I don't like
1:11:56
Jack: the deal with private property I had to get on about any private property but
1:12:00
Jack: it comes with a price you the call up I need you to come out and get my buddy
1:12:05
Jack: a casting lesson or take him fishing it always happened when it was on your daughter's birthday
1:12:10
Jack: thing and so i learned
1:12:13
Jack: there's plenty of water out there and and
1:12:17
Jack: uh it just private lamb came with there you know you know if you did it you're
1:12:23
Jack: gonna and then that's rightly so nothing wrong with it just something i don't
1:12:28
Jack: particularly want to do so i i think it's wonderful you know lee has gotten the,
1:12:36
Jack: notoriety of being such an.
1:12:43
Jack: Adventurer. But you think about it right now.
1:12:46
Jack: What is a building now which is so wonderful for the country is that we have
1:12:51
Jack: the fishermen that has the money to travel to,
1:12:56
Jack: Argentina and all over the world now, all these places and bring them money.
1:13:03
Jack: Get people jobs. You know, when I started helping on the travel,
1:13:07
Jack: there were just so few people.
1:13:09
Jack: We were working in New Zealand on trying to figure out how I only had a 38% return rate.
1:13:16
Jack: And I got hired by the government near New Zealand and the tourist commission
1:13:20
Jack: in Frontiers to try to figure out why. Well, it was really simple.
1:13:25
Jack: They were bringing people from Alaska. Right.
1:13:29
Jack: Were used to catching, you know, 50 fish a day, and they just didn't have the skill level.
1:13:34
Jack: So what we did is we brought over, we worked an intricate plan over 10 years
1:13:39
Jack: of bringing fly shop owners for free over there so they could see how difficult the fishing was.
1:13:46
Jack: And so when they booked a person, they knew they were sending them, they were qualified.
1:13:51
Jack: And they targeted at places like Pennsylvania and California and Colorado,
1:13:56
Jack: where they had conditions that were similar to New Zealand.
1:14:03
Jack: And it was just wonderful to watch that grow from one lodge.
1:14:07
Jack: When I started, there was one lodge. It really wasn't a lodge.
1:14:10
Jack: It was called Hookah Lodge.
1:14:11
Jack: And then it built up to where the government helped build lodges up to about six.
1:14:17
Jack: And now I think there's over 60.
1:14:20
Jack: And the fishing has remained really good and it's mainly because the enlightened
1:14:29
Jack: fly fishermen there they're locals,
1:14:31
Jack: they have to be good to catch fish and they have ingrained the catch and release
1:14:36
Jack: and it has become a very important industry for this small country of New Zealand
1:14:42
Jack: and I see that all around the world, I see people,
1:14:45
Jack: I get my texts from my friends in Tasmania.
1:14:47
Jack: I've worked with them, and they're all just saying, boy, we've got to get more cats in the leaves.
1:14:52
Jack: We've got to look at the water levels. They're doing all the stuff that we're
1:14:56
Jack: doing, and now they've got a problem.
1:14:58
Jack: The mainland Australia is protecting the native fares.
1:15:01
Jack: The conservation-minded people want the trout out of Australia.
1:15:06
Jack: Yeah, that's a battle. When you
1:15:07
Jack: consider about every prime minister of Australia has been a fly fisher.
1:15:13
Marvin: Yeah that's uh it's an interesting thing i mean the whole you know native wild
1:15:17
Marvin: thing is an interesting discussion and you know jack i appreciate you spending
1:15:22
Marvin: so much time and you know sharing a perspective on lee that you know most people
1:15:27
Marvin: don't have and you know certainly look forward to you coming back and uh sharing
1:15:32
Marvin: some more stories with us whatever.
1:15:33
Jack: You want to do it and i'm happy to talk about techniques and stuff too not just
1:15:38
Jack: Just the things I've learned out of boats and things.
1:15:42
Jack: Whatever you want. Just try to be relevant.
1:15:48
Marvin: I appreciate that.
1:15:50
Jack: I have a lot more stories.
1:15:52
Marvin: Oh, I know you do. I'm excited to record them and bring them to the listeners.
1:15:58
Intro: Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.
1:16:02
Intro: And don't forget to check out The Chocolate Factory on May 4th at Jesse Brown's
1:16:06
Intro: Outdoors. Tight lines, everybody.