New Seniors

I grew up in Los Angeles, California. As a child, I was fortunate to have a father, who’s best friend operated a fishing concession at the Sportsman’s Lodge in Studio City, a short bike ride from our house. It was there that I learned how to fasten bread dough to a # 14 Eagle Claw hook and drop it into the trout pond using a long bamboo pole .It was there that my lifelong obsession with the pursuit of that particular, piscatorial species began.

In the early 1950’s my Mother, an actress, worked in a number of Western films that required both desert and mountain locations . That location was at the base of Mt. Whitney in the Owens Valley in a small town named Lone Pine. I remember driving up there with my twin brother and Dad in a 1952, powder blue Buick convertible to visit my Mom. In those days, it was a six and a half hour, two hundred and twenty mile trek through the desert to that destination.

On one of Mom’s rare days off, all of us piled into the Buick and journeyed up to Shepherd’s Creek, one of a number of small streams that flows Eastward out of the majestic Sierra Nevada Mountains towards the valley floor. Minutes after arriving, my Dad caught a feisty and colorful Rainbow Trout on red salmon eggs. Shortly thereafter, I watched him dispatch a three foot rattlesnake that Mom had almost stepped on…I was (ahem) hooked.

Later that week, we visited June Lake and I saw, for the first time, a fly fisherman gracefully casting a brace of wet flies into that gem of an alpine lake. It was cloudy and raining. The smell of wet sage was overpowering and thunder boomed in the distance, echoing through the mountains –there was the crackle of electricity in the air. I felt alive and connected with nature. When we returned to Los Angeles, that gentleman I had watched casting on June Lake, visited our home and presented nine foot, custom built fiberglass fly rods to my brother and me. It would be years before I finally learned how to properly use this instrument.

Divorce, relocation, boarding school in the East, college, a war in Southeast Asia and entrance into the entertainment business filled the intervening years. In the fall of 1973 I purchased a copy of Ray Bergman’s epic fly-fishing tome “ Trout”. I began reading it on a business trip to Dublin, Ireland. Upon my return to LA, I visited a fishing shop in the San Fernando Valley that operated a tiny fly fishing section in a corner of the store, I was interested in learning how to tie some of the fly patterns featured in Bergman’s book. When I walked to the counter to request assistance, I recognized a short dark man engaged in conversation with the owner – it was the same man who handed me my first ball of bread dough at that pond in Studio City.  He helped me purchase my first tying vise, hooks and materials. Instead of learning how to cast (and look good in the process), my initial foray into the sport consisted of creating the business end – the fly.

I have now been tying flies and fly fishing for almost thirty-five years. It is a pastime that given me a wealth of knowledge and respect for our fragile environment. It has brought me close to my children. And finally, it has taught me I will never know it all but has melded me to one who is the all knowing…

Planettrout / Timothy Barker

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