The Northern California Fly Fishing Board

A close friend told me a story about Walton Powell when they were at a fly-fishing show some years back. A competitor of Powell's was showing and letting people try out his cane fly-rods. Walton walked over and picked up one of the strung up demo rods and on the third or fourth cast broke the rod. My friend said old Walton just shook his head and walked away.

I guess if I had to break a rod I think I'd most prefer to do it on a big fish, a really big fish - always makes for a good story. Or how about fighting off a brown bear - now that would make for a pretty good story - although I doubt I'd be around to tell it. I did have to fight off a donkey on the Warm Springs stretch of the Deschutes once. And come think of it a cow once on the Teton River at a place I now call Mad Cow Meadow. Both the donkey and the cow were after my leashed dog at the time.

Fly rods just don't make very good weapons. And I guess that's probably a good thing or people would be out there killing each other fighting over rocks on a given run or honey buckets at a given lake. I don't carry a weapon while I'm out fishing although I can think of times when I would have liked to have had one but it was probably a good thing I didn't.

So I guess I'll just continue to use it for fish and the occasional hornet or wasp and leave the bigger game for those who are more suitably armed.

Pete