My Turn – Page 3 – Santa Cruz Fly Fishing Club

In 1992 I was at the Ed Rice Fly Fishing Show with Mona. We were still practically newly-weds and had recently seen A River Runs Through It, in the movie theatre. As new comers to fly-fishing I was on overdrive soaking in everything as a guy who by today’s standards had virtually nothing in my collection of all things fly-fishing. We were taking in everything from fly-tying, gear, waders, flys, vests, hats, how I came to get my Filson cap, and guys and gals casting fly rods, like I’d just seen Brad Pitt do in the movie.

Mona and I befriended a guy at the Sage booth. At that time, I didn’t know Sage from Orvis, from R.L. Winston, Thomas & Thomas,… They were all just really expensive and really beautiful. This guy was super nice. He grabbed a couple of rods and we went outside to do some casting. It was evening, but the casting pool was lit up. Fly lines shimmering and floating in the night sky against the bright lights. We were having a blast and learning a lot, watching the line, practicing and practicing. When we asked his name, he said it was Randy Swisher. I commented, ‘Swisher?! You mean like, Doug Swisher?’

Yeah, That’s my dad.

Wow – I was hooked. When we went back inside, I asked him about the rod I was casting. It was a beautiful deep bluegreen graphite Sage SP. Mona said I did have a birthday coming up soon, and Randy offered up his employee discount and threw in the rod tube.

I’ve loved that rod and at the price you pay for a rod like that, even 28 years ago – you take care of it.

Well I broke it last summer and was crushed. I was worried that part of the rod wasn’t even available anymore. But the long and the short of it, is they did. Sage treated me like it was one of my kids. They repaired the rod and had it back to me in a few weeks.

“Social Distance”. Two words none of us have ever though of putting together before. In an unprecedented health crisis, none of us saw any of this coming. Although I did hear a 2015 TED talk with Bill Gates who warned us of just such a disaster. Wow. Anyhow, I am, like all of us, at home, working to be responsible so as to mitigate this health crisis. We are certainly going to be a different world in the future, and preparing our “kit bags” for many different things we never really thought of before, will become the new norm. Teachers will now have to prepare for their classes each year, with an online curriculum, just in case. Hospitals, government, manufacturing, finance, business in general will have to have a disaster plan that now may include some sort of crisis unforeseen. Probably all good ideas, but hard to manage now -unless you’re Walmart, Clorox, Charmin or Amazon.

It was really hard canceling the April meeting and equally hard having to cancel the board meeting.

As we are at home, I do recall one of the instructions is to “get outside”! I’ve seen more people walking their dogs, or just walking together than I’ve ever seen before. I painted the laundry room and have been fixing some fences. Went for a bike ride. I took inventory of all my fly-fishing gear. I cleaned my fly lines and rigged up some two fly leaders for surf perch/Striper fishing in the near future. I organized my fly-tying and spun up a couple of bugs for the summer I’m very much looking forward to. My rod came back! Get Outside! Okay – that’s where you can practice Social Distance Casting! The grass is green at the parks, and it’s legal/okay to go to the park. You had time to clean your line and maybe even clean up your favorite stick. A good time to get out and practice your line control, with a little dab of yarn, and do something different. If you’re in the park waving a nine foot long stick with a long colorful string on the end of it, chances are, people are gonna stay way clear of you. Much more than six feet.

Stay well my friends. Hang in there and all of us at SCFF are wishing everyone good health so we get through this together and get back to having fun together. We are going to appreciate that more than ever before.

Cast away – everything! Tom

Posted on March 22nd, 2020

Yawn! It’s 3:15 a.m. and I’m up getting ready to head to the airport. I like getting up early. Especially if I’m getting on a plane or into my truck to head out on an adventure. There’s just something about that special excitement that comes from discon-necting from the normal work flow of life, planning to get into the great outdoors and fish.

My favorite time to be driving is so early that even in the Bay Area, no one is on the road. Your only concern the potential of a deer, coyote, mountain lion, raccoon, or pos-sum crossing the road. Coffee! Always on the road long enough for that break from black to navy, to dark blue as the sun is long from the horizon, but letting us know that it will soon be first light.

When my brother and I first drove across the country more than 37 years ago, I still distinctly remember when that first light started to occur and where. The most stunning is when we were driving through Cheyenne, Wyoming. That one I’ll never forget. In Albu-querque when my dad and I drove across again and it had snowed on our way into Flagstaff, Arizona.I can’t really explain it, but maybe it’s this weird sense of being ahead of everyone else, being the first to see what no one else was seeing, and to see it all pure, quiet, no traffic, no one else. It’s kind of like those winter days in Ohio when it snowed a foot, was still snowing heavily, and the bunch of us ventured out to the Metro Parks in the hills, and how almost unnaturally, crazy quiet it was. Or the time Mona and I were at eleven thousand feet on the Bear Tooth Mountain pass in Mon-tana hiking a couple miles back into the wilderness to fish for Brookies. We stopped and just looked at each other, marveling at how we could hear nothing. Nothing at all but for a bird, a bug, or the sound of the breeze.

Last year, I was up early and passing through the foothills in Roseville, on my way to my first Pyramid fishout, when that first light occurred again. Could not have been a bet-ter morning, capped off by seeing my good friends of SCFF by First LightBy President Tom Hogye10:30 a.m., then landing my first Lahontan Cutthroat by 12:30. This would be where they do that “mic drop” thing – boom. One and done, baby!

Or there was that morning, freezing cold, ice on the guides, can’t really see the river you’re entering. How light makes you rub your early morning eyes as if they need help adjusting, then that grab hours later and you’re off and running with a steelhead on the other end.Even though this morning means sitting in the airport on a Sunday morning heading for a conference in Florida, where it’s all about “how much more can you bring in the door, Hogye”, I am looking forward to those other mornings, those mornings I might not have a chance to do if it weren’t for my work, family, friends and SCFF. Makes everything worth it.

Over the next couple of months, watch for the new SCFF website! Thanks to PatSteele, Bob Peterson, and your board, we willbe fast moving into the 21st century with some really exciting, intuitive and vibrant changesto the Santa Cruz Fly Fishing website. We’re really excited. And if you’d like to lend yourexpertise and be on the cutting edge of this work, helping us withour monthly newsletter, content, email lists, and other resources we are working on, please reach out and we’d love to have your help.

If you need a good book to read, look for “Feather Thief”. It’s a very interesting look at what happened to the fly-tying industry and one particular person. I’ve listened to the podcast twice and then met Bill Keogh from Keogh Hackles at this year’s Fly-Fishing Expo in Pleasanton, where so many of us met for what you could rightly call our second “Christmas.” It’s such an awesome place to meet so many people who love the out-doors, fly fishing, and all that it encompasses. Was another really great year.

At this moment, sitting on the plane for yet another work trip, I’m looking forward to trips with SCFF, my family and friends. See you soon!

Posted on March 22nd, 2020