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Try a water-boatman, water strider, or backswimmer,
one of which is probably what the poet had in mind.
They run from brindle to dark grayish brown. Getting
the legs right is what counts. Because they are always
about on ponds, fish them instead of the hatch. Fish
them for a full day, trying to mimic their movement on
the water, which might require lessons from an entomologist
or a dance instructor. Then post again and tell me how you
did.

I've never fished them myself and likely never will. But on
slack days I do sometimes watch them at water's edge for
entertainment. They put on quite a show.

You've already made it better, Dirk. Do you
use "spiders" for bass in Louisiana? Long ago in
Alabama, I fished bream and bass with what might
be called "water spiders," although we just called
them "bugs" (nothing more than a few rubber strands
for legs and a foam body, with infinite color variations
possible). And what a treat that was. I've caught some
pretty good trout on foam ants, beetles, and cicadas,
too, the cicada "hatch" being renowned on the Green
River below Flaming Gorge. Mike Lawson has said the
foam beetle is a favorite go-to attractor fly for him at
Henry's Fork. And I used to carry a whole box of
balsa-wood ants, lady bugs, and such. So I'm not averse
to trying odd things that find their way onto the water.
Maybe--who knows?--one of them looked something
like a backswimmer to the fish, and I was fishing a "water
spider" without realizing it.

Maybe the Parachute Adams will finally catch on.

Bob, me? Technical? More like nostalgic. It was in 1965
I caught those "Bama bream. And that I can still remember
on what passes from the nostalgic over into the miraculous.
In fact, I don't know which makes me prouder: catching them
or remembering how I did it. But orange marshmellows?
Cheeeee. Where's your shame?

Thank heaven you didn't try to worm your way out, Bob.

Neither is in danger of of being displaced as an all-time
favorite. But for the fishing I do most often, I prefer the
parachute version. Maybe Bob can be persuaded to tie
a Parachute Orange Marshmellow as his signature fly so
that I could borrow a few whenever I'm way past desperate..

In 1974 Joseph Heller published Something Happened. Many readers who were
hoping to get another book of hilarious satire, of the same sort as his great WW2
novel Catch-22, were disappointed. In this book, the protagonist has discovered
time passing him by, friends have gone missing, his marriage and his job are in ruins,
and the American Dream seems entirely to have passed him by. The transitions are all
going badly. I mention this because during the 1970's fly fishing was undergoing
important transitions, too, several of which would not be easy.

One person who wrote about them and who headed a magazine which chronicled
these changes was the late Don Zahner, editor-publisher of Fly Fisherman. He knew
how to do all the essential things very well--fly fish, write, edit, and publish. The
January 1978 Pre-Season issue of the magazine is a minor masterpiece. Changes
during a transitional period are not always dramatic, certainly never as abrupt as
reaching the end of the plank. Instead they form a blurred rather than sharp line of
demarcation. But they are there--all the important ones--if one reads this issue of the
magazine carefully. And it's well worth the time if you can find a copy in your library.

The cover features a fine black-and-white photo of a troutstream, snow on the surrounding
trees, ice still on the water, but with a large fissure forming in the middle of the current.
Change is in the air. On the one hand is an excellent article by Mark Sosin on "Fiberglass
Fly Rods." On the other is one of the best things in print about what many of us are still
engrossed by: Tom Maxwell on "Collectible Cane," with dazzling illustrations. The ads
on the inside and outside covers continue to juxtapose the changes: The outside back cover
has Orvis touting its 9-foot Graphite Shooting Star Rod. The inside front cover has H. L.
Leonard showing a brand new bamboo rod as an evocation of "painstaking dedication that
Leonard artisans still employ" (with background taken up by old fishing books and an old
Leonard rod). At the very bottom of the ad, however, in much smaller type, one finds
"A Johnson Wax associate." Lee Wulff writes about "The Fly Vest." It's announced that
Ernest Schwiebert has become a contributing editor. And in the "Pre-Season Tackle Roundup,"
there's even notice of a new T&T bamboo rod, available at $195. But it's the Special
Trouter, the one made from imported blanks, and T&T is also talking about its 15 graphite
models, with their "graphite-to-graphite ferruling system." In a classifieds section, there is
"The Bamboozler's Corner," with ads from individual readers only and treating only
one-of-a-kind items. Elsewhere Martin Keane advertises a Classic Rods sale. So there's plenty
of life still in the bamboo tradition. And yet . . .



Don Zahner's editorial in "Anglish Spoken Here" is about the closing of Abercrombie &
Fitch and the accompanying close-out sale:

Abercrombie & Fitch was the store for the man who had everything--and
he went there with some regularity just to make certain.
. . . . .

But as the doors opened, the scene was nearer to the bargain basement at
Gimbel's. Bronx matrons, bewhiskered and aging flower children, and
Madison Avenue slicks already late for their commuter trains seemed all to be
engaged in a single and consummate act of looting. I did recognize a rather
distinguished older gentleman with whom I had met briefly a decade ago while
he was pricing a Payne rod there. We nodded our mutual recognition almost
funereally, then passed on to find our bearings.

Bare bulbs glared obscenely overhead. The glass counters were stripped, and
merchandise, such as it was, was spread out over folding tables, convenient for
pawing and clawing. I finally located the remnants of what was once one of the
country's finest tackle emporiums. On the display wall was a Martin automatic
reel with a broken spring and a classic Medalist reel with a bent spool. The same
wall from which I had selected my first Hardy fly reel some 15 years before. . . .

I asked where the fly rods were, and the clerk pointed across the floor to a sprawling
construction of pine 2X4's which resembled an elephantine complex of umbrella
racks. Sticking out of each segment were fishing rods of various persuasions.

"You find the fly rods" the clerk added knowledgeably, "in bin #118."



Zahner thinks that, "in a last grasp for roots," he will stop at the old Biltmore Men's Bar, but then
notices the sign is flashy and new: "Fanny's."

I looked in and saw all the pretty ladies sitting on theirs.

Too much culture shock for one day. I would never again drop in to the Biltmore
Men's Bar for a short one, occasionally to hear the reverberations cum fisticuffs
between Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald still bouncing off the framed, well-
lighted nudes on the wall.

Nor would we all, ever again, go down, as they used to say, "to Abercrombie and
Fish."



Something had happened in January of 1978. The modern marketplace was gaining control.
And we were going to have to make of that whatever we could.