An original John Lanchester ‘Tom Jones’ and a commercial bastardised version. Commercial versions are rarely anything like the original.
Tom Jones and the Imposter Peter Hayes reveals the real Tom Jones.
I
learnt to fly fish in my early teenage years while I was living in Melbourne. At that time I was mentored by Jack Joyner who was a fly fisherman of note and also a past accuracy fly casting champion. Jack had previously competed against the American casting champion Jon Tarantino and easily beaten him and set a new world record at the same time. In those days it was widely accepted that Jon Tarantino was the greatest caster in the world. As an aside, at about this time the English Hardy company named a range of their fibreglass rods that Jon E Tarantino had designed for them after him. They were called the ‘Hardy JET’ series. Sadly, Tarantino died at an early age at the peak of his tournament casting and rod designing career with the ‘Fisher’ company when he was shot dead by a burglar at his father’s San Francisco warehouse. But this story is about another tournament caster, John Lanchester, and a fly he developed — the Tom Jones.
Jack Joyner had some experience as a fly fishing mentor. Some decade or so earlier he had taken under his wing a new arrival to Australia – John Lanchester aka ‘The Yank’. Jack taught the yank to fly fish and to tournament cast. I remember Jack telling me that The Yank was somewhat of a natural and whilst I only remember seeing him cast on a handful of occasions I can tell you that he was poetry in motion and his name is engraved on many trophies from that era. The Yank always seemed to be a man of some mystery to me, and to many others. The stories of his fishing prowess were legendary. Because of his accent everyone assumed he was from the USA – hence his name, but I remember Jack telling me that he was a Canadian that jumped ship in Melbourne and decided to stay. That’s probably close to the mark. In those days the Yank was a fishing machine and also a fishing machine bent on catching huge trout. If you were good enough, and The Yank was, in
those days 10 pound fish could be caught in Bullen Merri, Purrumbete, Lake Fyans, The Nhill Swamp, Lake Ettrick, Lake Burrumbeet, Hepburn Lagoon and Tullaroop which are just the spots that come immediately to mind. I remember also the Yank as being a very innovative and thinking angler too. Some examples. He was one of the first people that I knew to make up his own fly lines. Old lines would be ‘cut and shut’ with scarfed razorblade and superglue joins to suit his needs. Mostly shooting head type lines to achieve longer casts. These were in some ways forerunners to Lee Wulff’s Triangle Taper lines. The Yank would also soak the running line section of these lines overnight in radiator fluid. This would help to remove the plasticiser and stiffen this section of the line – giving better shootability. I also remember The Yank as always using made up leaders of 20 feet. This was a huge and unheard of length for a leader in those days (I’m talking about 40
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Fishing News - Page 29
