Charlie Fox

[jeff]

Ran into an old timer 83years old the other day who used to fish the Letort.... He told me he bumped into a guy fishing 40 + years ago on top of the cress beds with snow shoes on catching fish left and right... Anyone ever try this??? Oh by the way if you hadn"t guessed the mystery man would be the great Charlie Fox.

 

[pete41]

Iknew Mr.Fox-use to park in the field next his house-helped him make gravel beds-he was the one who turned me on to nite fishing-never saw the snowshoe bit-inclined to believe legends tend to grow-
use bear paws if you try it
good way to drown-
by the way if you have never snowshoed on snow be prepared for the ultimate sore crotch until you get use to it.lol

 

[pete41]

I think I figured it out
one branch had commercial cress beds
with wood dividers
he was straddling between the dividers
I have never seen them in person but in one of the Carlisle school-books they had them pictured
Maybe a florida 10 foot lily pad but others?

 

[jeff]

The guy I talked to is an outdoor legend himself 70+ years of angling and hunting. As to where this occured on the Letort I think he mentioned he fished a lot up towards the headwaters maybe the bonny brook rd area.. I myself only fished the creek once and that was around Marinaro"s meadow... Anyway he said he saw a guy walking along the creek bank in snow shoes in May and asked him what the heck he was doing with them on. The man introduced himself as Charlie Fox and proceeded to fish on top of the cress beds so the legend goes. I am going back sometime late spring sans snow shoes any suggestions?????

 

[sundrunk]

Interesting for sure,

I just wonder if the cress was thicker in those days. I fish the Letort often and can't imagen it working as well today. I could be wrong. Maybe someone remembers what the Letort looked like thirty years ago and can shed some light on this matter..?

 

[greenghost]

Snowshoes on cress beds? That's awesome... what you call thinking outside of the box... errr, shoe... it's a creative idea. Those early South Central PA fly fishers -- Fox, Marinaro, etc -- were true innovators. They had to be. There were no other footsteps to follow in when fly fishing those boggy spring creeks. You don't see as much of that today. Or maybe it's still there, but it's just not as visible to me. There's so many tried and true traditions and techniques, it really doesn't inspire the typical angler to be creative. I love to see things that break tradition and stereotypes, like the time I saw a guy absolutely hammering trout on the Yough below Ohiopyle in a hard-to-fish white water slough that was fast and very deep. He was using a spinning rod. I asked him what bait he was using. He said he was throwing #18 caddis nymph that he tied himself. He must of had three shot on the line. But he was able to reach places no fly fisherman could ever think of getting to. Love it.

 

[littlejuniata]

I have a picture of Charlie somewhere, what a great guy, they don't make Charlies any more. Now Vince was a little cantankerous, I have a great Brown Trout picture in chalk, that I won at Vinces "roast" in Carisle.

 

[pete41]

I am betting either the older gent was pulling Jeff's leg or forgetful-10 to 1 it was at the cress farms up on the head of one branch-I remember reading in Shenks[sp?] book about them fishing up there.
I saw pictures and they had boards.
I REALLY had to laugh about the three split shot
I was going to start a post tonite about"the bad old days"
Logy glass rods
and how before good sinking lines and sink tips we had to use heavily weighted flies and heavy split shot to get down in bigger water and how I damned near knocked my self out a couple of times.No joke and it hurt

But we were state of the art-for the times-and C&R was so rad-people thought you should be arrested for cruelty to animals-bring them in and put them out of their misery-Sure hope they don't get to thinking that about old timers
I agree,we lost something in the sport
About like bass fishing with electronics-

 

[Fishidiot]

I had the pleasure of chatting with Charlie many times and I'll never forget his kindness and willingness to talk (in one case for hours) with an inquisitive teenager. He was a wonderful fellow. In all the times I saw him, he was never fishing the Letort - just watching. Charlie was actually an avid muskie fishermen and it seemed like every time I talked to him he had just returned from fishing Conodoguinet or Opossum Lake for muskies.
As for the snowshoe thing, he never mentioned this in any of our conversations (that I can remember) but he was certainly an innovator. My guess would be that what he was actually doing was using ths snowshoes to walk on the flooded grass meadows along the stream. These meadows, esp during summer, can become very soft and it's a slog to get through them. I'd wager that that is what he actually had the snow shoes for rather than walking on cress - but I suppose the latter is possible.
I miss Charlie. It is always with a heavy heart that I walk past his house and benches....It's just not the same.

 

[greenghost]

Read the book, "Limestone Legends" There's a nice piece in there about Charlie Fox. Gene Macri wrote it. In an email exchange I had with Gene, I learned Charlie didn't even fish the Letort in his later years. He had seen the stream deteriorate so much over the years, it broke his heart. The stream today is a mere shadow of what it once was. Mr. Fox was a master muskie lure craftsman and actually preferred to spend his time angling for Essox. Can't blame him one bit.

 

[Fishidiot]

Charlie was the driving force behind the state's expansion of its muskie program in the mid 1960s. He advocated stocking muskies in the Susky drainage and other areas outside their native range and he was proud of what he believed was a superb fishery by the 1970s. He was always a muskie guy and didn't just fish for 'em as a result of the Letort's decline. Charlie was a lifelong muskie nut but they took up a lot of his fishing time later in life, partly because he himself had had so much to do with increasing muskie fishing opportunities in center state. Charlie will always be remembered for his role in the history of trout fishing (and probably justifiably) but he was a fishermen of many stripes who used all forms of tackle and fished for a lot of fish other than trout. He was certainly no fly fishing trout snob.

 

[pete41]

He was an old school gentle-man
Married later-did the country squire bit
With me anyway-he never suggested or recommended anything-he would just mention and allow me to pick up on it if I chose
example"" a lot of nice trout have been caught after dark using[forgot] type flies". Don't think he tolerated pushy types-he was respectful and expected the same in return.

 

[Fishidiot]

pete41,
Wow, neat stuff. It was a real privilege spending time with CF (just wish I had had a tape recorder ). We talked about fishing, and baseball, and WW2, and the Depression, and the forestry school at Mont Alto and all sorts of stuff while sitting on those rickety old benches. When I look back on this, I really feel blessed that I bumped into such a nice fellow. I was 18-20 years old at the time and maybe didn't know any better. Sometimes I think now, I'm not sure I'd have the confidence to walk up and talk to someone of his stature - I'd be more inclined to give him his space.
Did you ever meet Marinaro? Vince was still alive when I started fishing Letort in the early 80s but he was in apparently poor health and didn't frequent the streams as much (I think Marinaro died in 1985) so I never met him. Maybe, in hindsight, it's better I didn't as he was not evidently the nicest fellow. I'd imagine if I had met him he'd likely have said, "buzz off kid, I'm busy." Maybe I'm jumping to unfair conclusions but some of the old Letort hands around here have described him as being like that.
Not so Charlie. He always had time to talk to a kid and, as I've grown older, I respect him even more for that.

 

[pete41]

I knew Shenk and Koch when they had a flyshop in Kochs backyard-right at the beginning of the terrestial boom-met a lot of others -they would stop and talk-but never met Vince.
I did steal one thing from him``tallyho and farewell " when I had a really good fight from a fish.