Buggsy, I think I got ya beat w/this one:
This occurred alittle over then years ago. I was in the
'transportation' business w/my father at the time. He had a one ton
pickup and would deliver trailer campers, utilities trailers, boats,
anything you would normally pull behind a pickup. We had picked up a
repaired bass boat out of Mississippi and was returning it to its
owner in Oaklahoma. As it is when you're spending all your time
traveling cross country, we had the trucker CB radio installed and
used it for all the 'normal' things. At the time, I wasn't into fly
fishing, but big time bass fishing. I happened to be driving when
one poor fool HAD to ask me where I was taking my bass boat. WHOOPS,
wrong question dude -- BOY did that yarn start and it was all
downhill from there. I even woke up my dad. The next thing you
know, Dad and I are Pro-Bass Fisherman, Buddy Series. Yup, and we
had just picked up our boat up in Mississippi from the manufacturer
and were on our way to another tourney. Seems dear ole Dad had
driven the boat into a submerged log, knocked ME out into the drink
for a swim and [EMAIL PROTECTED] near swamped the boat. That old boy on the radio
bought our story -- HOOK, LINE and STINKER!!!! He played into our
hands the whole way. We kept the bands entertained for almost an
hour. He kept asking questions and Dad and I kept making up the
answers, we couldn't believe it. Nah, we couldn't leave this guy
hanging, Dad finally took him to a different channel and told the
truth. That trucker was sooo embarassed. We told him that we did
the same thing he did, just on a different scale. Some schmo in
Oaklahoma was getting his boat back from a manufacturer defect and we
were the schlups that delivered it. We apologized for leading him
on, but he made it tooo easy to not stop. He couldn't believe it, I
hope he chuckled to himself for the rest of the day for falling for
biggest line down south. I know Dad and I did for a week and still
will laugh about it to this day. There's just something about
pulling one over on a someone that just seems to feed right into the
story -- kill is too easy and the look on their faces tooo
shocked. DonO I wished I could've been there to see the look on his face!!
Fishing Content - I went to Lake Erie yesterday chasing
Steel. Report to follow - I have a mini-report on the fisherie.com's website.
Garry
At 08:24 PM 10/17/2005, you wrote:
Since the list is so slow, I thought I'd post a little 'story' that I
perpetrated on a restaurant owner near Green River Wyoming. I may have
posted this in the past, but there are a lot of new listers who might
benefit from such well-told lies, as that is part of the art of flyfishing.
(See JimmyD's, Jester's, and Jimi's last stories)
I was traveling home from a seminar in Green River, and stopped in at this
restaurant on the way home, one I'd been to many times. It's an upscale
steak-place with a bar up front. The restaurant was full, so I waited at
the bar for a table. After a little while the owner came in (I recognized
him from other visits) and he commented loudly about this absolutely huge
Royal Wulff hanging from someone's rear-view mirror out in the parking lot.
I fessed up and claimed it (one of my 14/0 RW's). He asked "What in
heaven's name would you use a giant fly like that for?"
Well, I had some time to kill, so I spun up a little yarn for him. I had
noticed a couple of halibut tails mounted behind the drink bottles behind
the bar, so I figured he'd been halibut fishing in Alaska. So I
non-chalantly answered him "That's for halibut dry-fly fishing in Alaska."
He stopped in his tracks. "For what?" he asked. I repeated. He said "No
way! I never heard of anything like that, and I've been to Alaska many
times." I said "You just don't have the right guide- or else you're not
with the 'in-crowd' up there in Alaska." He said "What am I missing here?"
So I told him if he got the right guide who would take him out on the
darkest moonless night of the shortest day of the year, there is a special
species of aquatic stone-fly that is 10" long which surfaces to hatch into
these giant winged adults, to breed, and to fall back into the water. When
the halibut sense this, they rise to the surface and start feeding on these
giant dry flies, even the 'barn-door' size halibut. That is what that fly
is for- this special 'halibut-hatch'." Well, his jaw dropped to his chest
as he vapor-locked like a '58 Rambler. His first words were "No freakin'
way, man!"
So I got up and went out to get the fly for his inspection. It even had a
short piece of 200# test mono leader attached for hanging it. He said it
looked real, as he was a flyfisher, but he wanted to make sure. So he
brought it back into the kitchen for one of his chef's (a flytier) to
inspect, and lo and behold, he told him that it was a real fly. Fancy that.
So he returned with this puzzled look on his face, saying " Well, the cook
says it's real. So you really dry-fly fish for halibut with this?" The
hook had been set, and it wasn't barbless. Let's see how much backing he
can take out, now.
Well, by then he had drawn a little crowd of his cronies, two of whom, I
learned later, were his fishing buddies. So now he needed to know how to
fish this fly. So of course I made up a casting technique, which I dubbed
the 'heave and pitch' method, on a 14wt rod. Sounded good at the time. I
was making all this up on the spot. He said "I'm gonna call Henry, my guide
up there! What time is it? Why didn't he tell me about this? I tip him
real good! This isn't fair!" I had all I could do to keep from busting out
laughing. So I tightened the drag some and told him my record dry-fly
halibut to date was 276.5 pounds, but it wasn't in the G&F records because
it was caught after dark and after hours. Now he was grayhounding across
the surface, running all over the restaurant, showing it to all of the
customers he knew, telling them what his next fishing trip was going to be.
I almost couldn't take it any longer, but I did.
I let him play out for about a half hour, and then told him that I practiced
Catch and Release fishing, and it was time to let him go. You should have
seen the look on his face. "I been had- haven't I." He dryly said. One
waitress who witnessed the whole charade cracked up and exclaimed "At last!
At last! Someone has caught the jokester!" The owner slumped into a
barstool and just silently stared at the fly. He finally said "You got me.
You really got me. I was believing every word of it."
So I showed him a big box full of the giant flies I was going to put in the
Green River Fly Shop, and he bought 7 of the 9 that I had (various ties),
saying he was going to give them away as gifts. I found out next trip that
he had kept them all and decorated his den and office with them. They also
got a showing of the residents of the "Baits Hotel", which they loved.
The account you have just read is true, although the story is pack of lies.
That's why it's called "Fantasy Fly Co."
Buggs McAuthor
