Debarbing whoppers

It is a tradition as old as the sport. At dusk, when the stream no longer boils with surface-feeding trout, fly fishermen retire to a creekside campsite to remove their waders, climb into fleece jackets, enjoy a swig from the ubiquitous flask of Irish whiskey, fire up the propane stove to cook dinner and finally circle the campfire to warm themselves and talk of the day’s successes on the water.

It is no different with the members of the Rattlesnake Butte Fly Casters. The term “liar” is widely regarded as a synonym for “fishing.” And these tossers of insect imitations fashioned of fur and feathers wound around a thin piece of sharpened steel wire live up to the reputation. But these fly fishers are more subtle. They don’t tell stories as ridiculous as bragging of catching a brook trout so large it needed to be gaffed, spotting the mythical Bigfoot while exploring a backcountry stream, or fishing for peacock bass or bonefish from a belly boat, but their campfire braggadocio does raise eyebrows, triggers snarls of disbelief and most often induces gales of laughter.

The club shares the same characteristics of Colorado’s Grumpy Old Farts Club. Both are populated by old, white males who choose to fish obscure streams and enjoy the camaraderie of friends. But the two clubs do not share the same political ideologies.

A half dozen of the Wyoming fly tossers club circle the glowing fire on the bank of the Grey’s River as the sun dipped over the forested horizon. The club was situated about 50 yards from the road. A gap in the cluster of Douglas firs allowed vehicles to enter a natural secluded amphitheatre, shielded by the wind but receiving plenty of sunshine to dry out tents and wading gear. The club has held anAugust reunion in this spot for over 20 years.

Picket Fence, the titular head of the club, was the first to spit in the fire.

A retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, he has a martinet personality — a quality barely tolerated by the club. He earned his nickname from his wide, gap-toothed smile. His Napoleonic frame appears mismatched to his booming cartoon-like voice. He moved to Wyoming upon leaving the military and, needing something to occupy his time when he was not writing his memoirs of the Rhodesian Bush War, he took up fly fishing.

He was elected as the club’s president because it served two purposes. First, one one else wanted the job. Secondly, it gave Picket Fence the opportunity to again wield the mantle of command, although it was largely a symbolic title.

Picket leans back in his campchair and starts a long-winded account of one of his often-told stale war stories, when he is interrupted by Windy Bill. No one can finish a sentence when Bill is around. He rudely breaks into any conversation and interjects his opinion.

Bill brusquely dismisses Picket’s tale of his heroics and instead steers the conversion to one about the day’s fishing. He asks questions, but no one has an opportunity to complete an answer because Bill answers for them.

Chef Ptomaine is silently listening from behind the propane cook stove. Ptomaine has been the club’s volunteer cook for years, a job he relishes. He does fish, but he quits early enough to get a head start on cooking dinner. When the club members return home, they are not surprised to learn they weigh a few pounds heavier than when they left.

Ptomaine is preparing ribeye steaks with baked potatoes and all the fixin’s.

His kitchen is situated in an old canvas tent. It has the odor of smoke and mildew, acquired through decades of use.

Ptomaine doesn’t tie his own flies. He uses a 30-year-old Fenwick fiberglass fly rod, a yellowed Pflueger Medalist reel, and an old, weathered, cracked fly line which barely floats. He doesn’t have the close-up vision to pass a tippet through the eye of any hook larger than a size 16, even with the help of his cheaters.

While the evening meal is simmering on the grill, a bottle of Irish cream is passed around, with each swig preceded by a toast –or boast.

Clyde accepts the bottle with a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt attached to arms long enough to substitute for oars on his driftboat. A mountain of a man, Clyde has spent the bulk of his life in the Wyoming oil patch. Injury forced him to abandon the rigs, so he now runs a hot-shot service. He manages to get enough time off to enjoy the monthly outings of the club.

He raises the bottle and boasts that he caught over 30 cutthroats

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WHOPPERS continued from page 16 on his size 28 extended body clipped deer hair hopper

“Here’s to the cutthroat trout,” he toasts, raising the bottle to his lips. “May tomorrow be even better than today. My two weight bamboo really got a workout today. Those small-spotted trout really put a stretch on my 8X tippet.”

While most of the club members choose to sleep in tents, Q tows his small bumper-pull camper behind his pickup. Q is a retired aerospace electronic engineer who used a chunk of his NASA pension to buy a slice of Wyoming paradise south of Glenrock.

As the dean of Boxelder Creek, Q has the opportunity each spring to step outside his back deck and test the designs of microdrones he fabricated during the winter. A bespeckled man with a face masked by an ungroomed grey beard, Q uses the Irish cream to toast the success of his newest creation.

Q designed and built an micro-electronic prototype PMD mayfly, size 16, which would be hard to tell from the natural insect other than the tiny horizontal blades which give the imitation its lift and thrust. He does not cast the fly; instead, he delivers the contraption with a small radio controller attached above the cork grip of his 4 weight bamboo fly rod. His next idea is develop a nymph, complete with camera lens.

The reason he was late in returning to camp is because he wanted to catch one particular fish -- the one which broke his 5X tippet and escaped with the electronic imitation embedded in the side of its mouth. The ribbing he would take from his fellow club members would be relentless and vicious, so he remains silent. He would try again tomorrow.

Listening to the bloviating toasts of his buddies, Q looks over the bifocal glasses resting on the end of his nose with a condescending expression not unlike that of a gourmet chef who has just been asked by a customer for a bottle of ketchup to slather a plate-sized slab of prime rib.

“I was using a pattern designed to imitate the instar pupal stage of the fibberus frequens mayfly genus,” he says simply as he passes the bottle.

After a few more rounds of toasts, the campfire chatter turns to an argument.

With a thrusted pointer finger, Picket, an applause junkie, was confronting Flat Earth Dave, a whisper of a man. A confessed conspiracy theorist, Dave lives off the grid in a single room cabin far from civilization and the intrusive nose of government.

Dave was known for his paradoxical or malapropic quips. “I always fish dry flies, except when I’m nymphing.” “The towels in that fishing lodge were so thick I almost couldn’t zip my duffle.” “I found good fishing on the upstream side of the gullavert under the highway.” “If you think that sporting good store is big, on a top of it they have a bargain basement.”

The two were debating the differences and subjective superiorities of two handgun cartridges; the semi-automatic .490 Patton and the rimmed .560 Eastwood Magnum. The two were boasting about bullet weights, muzzle velocities, downrange energy and 50 yard accuracy.

Picket, as a military vet, favored the Patton. Dave preferred the wheel gun cartridge.

Picket said he could have used the pistol to dispatch rogue elephants in Rhodesia during his assignment there. But instead he used an English double rifle in .505 Webley-Churchill. As a vestige of his many African safaris, he still fits his size 7-1/2 head into the

40-year old pith helmet. He carries all his fishing gear in a drab olive Alice backpack. He wears the oak leafs of his former rank on the pocket flaps of his wading vest.

After dinner, serious bragging gets underway. Each fisher attempts to top the preceding story with boasts of larger and bigger fish caught. Inevitably, the campfire swagger becomes ridiculously exaggerated or downright fictional.

“Windy has a 40 percent markup on every fish he catches,” quipped Q.

“Oh yeah? Well you cut the first ten inches off your slide rule,” Windy countered.

But the club has a remedy to instill more honesty in the campfire chatter. The club appoints someone — preferably a preacher who also practices the art of fly fishing — to act as a referee and officiate the grandiose campfire claims.

At times during the marathon stories, the club’s bailiff acts like an NFL official and reaches for an orange penalty flag or blows a whistle to point out a flagrant transgression of any reasonable standard of honesty.

A penalty is meted on the “players” for these fouls. But the judgment could be appealed to a “jury.” Those around the campfire can vote whether to convict the accused based on the voracity of his “testimony” against their personal experiences.

The jurors most often acquit the “defendant” because they, too, could be tried for departures from the truth.

So when another club member, Semaphore, a nickname gleaned from his habit of waving his arms excessively like a Navy signalman when expounding on one of his adventures, boasts about catching a monster cutty from the Grey’s on a size 18 articulated streamer, the others nod their heads in disbelief but no one contests the claim.

Semaphore goes on.

“I crossed the footbridge and ventured upsteam, fighting my way through the brush and willows and cast my fly to that large rock on the bank. It drifted down and across, and suddenly a flash of yellow splashed the surface and the fly disappeared in the foam of the seam. The fish bolted for the cover of a submerged log. I was able to coax it to my net. Geez … it must have been a five pounder.”

“Five pounds? Is that all?” insulted Gerber. He gained his nickname because he retained his baby looks even through he’s now in his late 60s. “I caught one larger than that, but I didn’t have the opportunity to get a photo of it.”

Gerber said the “monster” he snagged ripped off his line into the backing until it snapped.

The bailiff with a Bible contested his claim. A jury was about to render a verdict and issue a sentence (washing the dinner dishes) when a red-shirted figure emerged from the shadows. A glint of light reflected from the badge pinned to his shirt. A sidearm was holstered to his belt.

After checking the licenses and conservation stamps of those huddled around the fire, the game warden engaged in small talk with the group about the fishing successes on the Grey’s during the weekend outing.

“I was watching one guy through my 10 power Colorado fish finders,” he began. “I saw one guy tie into a real impressive native.

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