Family line of fly fishermen

[roosters977]

If this is in the wrong section for posting it sorry.haha.
So I wrote my grandma a few weeks ago telling her about how much i love fly fishing (my grandpa and his grandpa and his grandpa fly fished) and she loves that , My grandpa has passed away a few years ago. So in the mail today i revived a package from her. I opened it up and there was 3 of my grandpas fly fishing hats (from the 50s) and 3 fly boxes FULL of flies !!! i was so exited about that.There are very old steelie flies for the Sacramento River (my familys river that they live on in CA) I just wanted to share this.Pretty cool. Next summer im heading out to Redding to fish all the rivers my dad and his family has.Cant wait.

Clayton

 

[jdaddy]

That's awesome.

 

[whheff]

Thanks for sharing your story. Do you think you could post some pictures of those old flies?

 

[roosters977]

Sure thing. let me get some

 

[troutbert]

Let's see the old hats too.

 

[Acristickid]

Neat. Redding is an awesome "basecamp" for fly fishing- tons of awesome waters there.

 

[roosters977]

Photobucket.com

Hope this works.I Couldn't upload this to the site so i did this haha

 

[gfen]

troutbert wrote:
Let's see the old hats too.

Check the mirror.

;-)

 

[roosters977]

acristickid wrote:
Neat. Redding is an awesome "basecamp" for fly fishing- tons of awesome waters there.

Thats were my dad was raised.I was raised in fort lewis on the sadsap river. First fish i ever caught was a 15 pound king !

 

[Fishidiot]

Roosters,
Neat story - guess FFing is in your blood. I've got an old fly reel that belonged to my great grandfather and I still take it out fishing from time to time.

 

[roosters977]

Yeah. It is. I can tell already , at the age of 13 , I will be ffing for my whole life. I'm also very into conservation of the streams.

 

[MKern]

Not my style of hat but I would definately wear it if it was my granfather's. Definately some history/heritage in that hat.

 

[roosters977]

haha yeah i know. Ill wear it for good luck though ;-)

 

[skibo5]

Gotta be a hard decision if to use those flies or not. Idk what i would do. Maybe just copy your grandfathers patterns and save his. Or use only a few? IDK

 

[ant]

Very awesome story. I'd be torn between wanting to fish with my ganddad's flys and being afraid of loosing them for sentimental reasons.

 

[albatross]

nice story, thanks for sharing!

 

[CathyG]

15 pound king for a first fish?!

I don't remember my first fish but it was probably a 2" sunny or something like that. I may have still been in diapers because I don't remember taking up fishing. I just always fished.

My older brother taught me and over 50 years later we might fish once a year together.

The last time I saw my father alive we were fishing together. The last time I had contact with him was a letter from him while he was in a VA hospital. He told me he was going to take me out on a charter boat to fish. That was a Saturday. The following Monday morning he died of cancer. I was 12.


I've always enjoyed teaching kids to fish. Its a family thing I guess.

 

[roosters977]

My dad would hook a king and hand me the rod. So MY first real fish was a flounder. In VA me and dad were big time flounder and striper fishers

 

[JackM]

I would definitely set aside a few of the flies for a shadowbox. This one, if old at all, was surely ahead of its time:

By the way, great stories all around. I fished with my Dad and brothers throughout childhood. I remember before taking up FFing, my brother Jim came to PSU to visit on opening day weekend. Bunch of buddies and he went out the night before and camped somewhere near either Penns or Spring. Wandered around in the stream with a spinning rod and got skunked. Finally did get one at Penns later in the day, probably on a worm.

So far, I am the only one that has gotten addicted to FFing, haven't fished with spin equipment since. Jim and I still get together occasionally for steelhead. He snags them in the mouth with Rebel Crawdads.

 

[osprey]

roosters............i'd put your grandads flies into some kind of display , shadowbox or something and i'd copy the patterns as close as i could and fish with the copies. The hat is probably as good a display place for those flies as a shadowbox. I think i'd wear the hat out fishing at least once though. Kind of like a retirement ceremony. Then again it may be a good luck charm for you , in that case i'd wear it till it was unwearable , then retire it and the flies in some kind of tribute display to your grandpa. I have a leader wallet that was my paps , it has a pocket in it marked as soaking pocket for gut leaders , which should tell you how old it is. I still use it and it has held up under some pretty steady use of probably close to 100 years.