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Glimpses
Here's some special
moments submitted by our readers
March, 2008
A Perfect
Afternoon
By Larry Offner
Recently I took a trip to Franklin, Louisiana to visit my
dear friend Roger Emile Stouff. Roger
and I met via Internet after I sent an email telling him how much I
enjoyed reading his first book. We’ve
been close friends ever since. Roger
has been a journalist for 25 years and author of the award-winning
column "From the Other Side" in the St. Mary and Franklin
Banner-Tribune. He is also an accomplished author who has written
two terrific books; “Native Waters: A Few Moments in a Small Wooden
Boat” and “Chasing Thunderbirds.” Roger is a member of the
Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana and lives in his family’s 160-year-old
home on the Chitimacha reservation. He has a rich and wonderful
heritage of which is he very proud.
I met Roger at his
home and when I walked in the door I felt like I had walked into a small
lodge or a cabin. It had a  wonderful
atmosphere and charm, and I immediately felt right at home. Roger
gave me a tour and showed me his museum of family artifacts and history.
It was awesome.
Then it was lunch time. We had a delicious fried catfish
and shrimp platter at Cypress Bayou Casino. If you’re ever in
the neighborhood you just have to sample the cuisine! Later, we
went back to Roger’s place to cast a few rods. His backyard is
Bayou Teche. Incredible! I got to cast several bamboo rods
that Roger had refurbished. Did I mention that he is also a
talented carpenter, woodworker and rod builder? When we got to the
last of his rods, he handed me a banty bamboo that he had recently
crafted. A banty is made from the mid section and tips of a three-piece,
nine-foot rod to create a six-footer.
As I was casting, he
asked how I liked the action. My response was that I liked it
better than the banty I had purchased on Ebay.
He replied;
“That’s good, I built it for you!” I was speechless!
The day ended with a good cup of Joe and Roger had a cigar. It was
indeed the perfect afternoon!
So what makes the
perfect afternoon? Well, for me it amounts to:
Fellowshipping,
laughing and exchanging fishing stories with a good friend
A delicious Cajun
seafood lunch
Casting bamboo rods
on the bayou right in your own backyard
A great cup of Joe
and a cigar and good
conversation.
Larry Offner is a
native of Southeast Louisiana. He was raised fishing the saltwater
bayous in St. Bernard Parish. He has a passion for photographing
the Louisiana images of his home state. His photographs have been
displayed in several galleries in the New Orleans and Baton Rouge areas.
In 2002 Larry discovered fly fishing. Fly fishing is now his
passion and mental escape. He is the Founder and Owner of www.warmfly.com.
Larry now resides in Denham Springs, Louisiana.
Memory Pictures
By Marcello Calviello
The last day of our recent trip holds one of the best “memory
pictures” that I own in my collection.
It was late evening, and. Sebastian and I had been fishing
all morning along upstream from the camp. The fish were taking dries
during periods, and we caught some very nice fish on small dries, most
of them caddies. At mid day we decide to get some lunch and to take down
the camp, get it all packed into the truck. We prepared some
"mate" and before deciding where would be our last place to
fish. After a few minutes, with a great storm threatening, we walked
downstream to take a look to this part of the river that we had never
fished before.
With our rain jackets donned, we crossed the river and
began our little scouting trip. We found a new kind of river there. The
bluffs were high, with deep pools at any bend. Using a careful approach
we saw many fish, and one or two monsters.
"Dad it's your turn," Sebas said to me quietly. “I
will point that fish for you from the bank.”
I tied on my fly and carefully jumped into the river. He
pointed out fish that I took from the stream with ease, after
at a time he said, "Dad, don't move! The fish of the year is right here
under me.”
“What is he doing?” I asked. “Is he eating? Is he
alone? Is he moving?”
“No, he is still as a rock, but please be careful,
because it's really big about thirty inches or more.”
I was using my one of my own bamboo five-weights so I was
able to cast a big fly and see if the fish would attack it, trying to
protect his territory. I tied one of ou "Gaucho tarántula"
flies, and put it nearly a yard past the trout’s lair.
The cast was great and the fly floated dead-straight into
the monster’s territory. Sebas shouted, “He is looking…he is
moving…oh... he left it!”
 I
thought that if the fish made a move he was interested, but my fly
floated with the current and was not a threat to him.
I decided to make another approach. I cast again, this time about twenty
feet upstream from the fish. The fly floated with the current and when
it was near, I became to skate it over the surface.
"Dad, he is moving, he is going up..." Sebas
said, and then: "He took it!"
The water was broken into million of pieces – my rod and
I felt the most magic moment of fishing…the take!
We connected for a moment, perhaps two minutes, that
monster trout and I, but that was enough to know each other. What a
wonderful fish I thought, we two, the fish and I will have a
wonderful story to tell and to keep into our memory. I will become a
better fisherman and he a smarter and more difficult fish to catch.
This little story doesn't have a photograph as it deserves,
for the fish is gone. And trust me this is one of the
best, beautiful pictures to keep, because it will be always there, in my
mind, closest to my favorite fishing memories.
But you can certainly imagine Sebas’ frustration:
"Dad, I did all the work... I pointed out a great fish for you, and
you let it go... shit!”
“Don't worry my big son,” I said. “I got him. I
got him deep into my memories.”
 Marcelo
Calviello is a bamboo rodmaker in Bella Vista, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
He started fishing some 38 years ago at age16 in rivers around the
world, but primarily in Argentina, where he usually fishes for trout and
salmon, but never disdains other freshwater species such as dorado and
bass. He builds his bamboo rods with native cane and with an unique
ferrule designs he calls BOBFS (bamboo on bamboo ferrule system). His
own tapers and the BOBFS give his rods an increased power transfer,
since the action is uninterrupted from the grip to the tip.
Volume 1 Issue 2
February, 2008
A Sunfisher’s Dairy
By Mark (Tiger) Hollier
It’s
interesting how some of us can remember selective things from long ago
in our lives almost like it happened yesterday. Good memories reside in
the soul so you can reach them when you need them. That’s how I
remember my first fishing trip. It’s the very first thing I can
remember in my life.
I
guess I was about three or four years old. It was early spring in
southern Louisiana, probably late March. The redbud trees were blooming,
creating a pink, lacy web of flowers scattered throughout the other
leafless trees in the woods. My dad Warren and I walked down a dirt path
to the bank of Bayou Cortableau, flowing lazily behind my
grandparent’s house in Washington, Louisiana. Here my young
perceptions first found the sights and smells of nature’s rebirth from
the cold dormancy of winter: the perfume of spring flowers; musty odor
of the damp, brown leaves on the ground leftover from fall; chartreuse
green sprigs of small, new buds were on the tip of each tree branch just
yearning to pop open into leaves. The birds were singing with that
clarity of song that only happens in those cool, fresh days of early
spring. Maybe it’s the crispness of the air or maybe they are just
glad winter is over that makes it different, but it is a beautiful
sound. As I grow older, when I am in the spring woods, those same sights
and scents continue to stir me with amazement, joy and a little
melancholy. As I walk under a redbud tree, the humming noise the
honeybee’s wings made as they search each flower for that taste of new
honey is one of the unforgettable sounds of spring. I can still feel the
cool spring, breeze on my face as I walked hand in hand with my father
down the path to the bayou.
My
dad carried two bamboo-fishing poles. We also had a tin can filled with
earthworms that we unearthed from my grandmother’s compost pile. There
were lots of worms in that compost pile and it supplied fishing bait to
many grandchildren for their fishing adventures throughout the years. We
cut the poles from a bamboo patch that grew in Mr. Seb’s yard. They
were about twelve feet long and had about twelve feet of fishing line
tied to the tip, complete with bobber two feet from the end. When I
started fly fishing, I would come to know a similar bobber referred to
as a strike indicator. At the end of the line was a long-shank fishhook.
We would impale the worms and slide them up the hook shank, then swing
the bobber and worm out and plop them in the water.
That
was my fishing rig for several years to come. My father and I laid our
poles on an old wooden picnic table near the edge of the bayou while we
rigged up. It was the last of several tables in a long abandoned picnic
area. My dad picked me up to show me the dark, shiny green leaves on a
hackberry tree growing next to the table. Hackberry trees were kind of
rare in that area. We looked at the back of one of the leaves where a
caterpillar was spinning a silky web. Dad said it would turn into a
butterfly soon. I thought that was pretty neat.
After
the hooks were baited, we walked down the red clay bank to the edge of
the water. Both small and large trees grew at the edge of the bank.
Their branches were covered with the green lacework of tiny leaves just
budding out. I later came to know they were cypress trees. They are the
harbinger of spring in the south Louisiana swamps. The water was a
reddish-brown, muddy color, normal for many bayous that flow through
south Louisiana. Small, gray-colored minnows swam in schools close to
the bank. The warm sun felt good after weeks of cool weather. We sat
together holding our bamboo rods and watching our “strike
indicators” waiting for a fish to bite.
The
rest of my memory of that day is kind of fuzzy. Dad must have shown me
how to bait the hook with a worm and told me that the bobber would move
if a fish took the worm. We probably caught some of the small sunfish
that cruised the shallow water of the bayou’s edge. I don’t even
remember the walk home or how many fish we caught.
Maybe
that’s the way it should be. Maybe we should always remember the
experience and not the details. I have thought about that day many times
over the years. My dad is gone now but I’ll always feel the grip of
his strong hand as he led me carefully down the path that spring of long
ago. I don’t remember what we talked about except at the hackberry
tree. I went back to try to find that tree many years later without my
dad but I never could find it. I guess he needed to be there. That was
my first fishing trip. Simple and quiet as that, but I wonder how many
kids miss out on such a trip. Too many I suppose.
It’s too bad
that all dads and grandpas don’t realize how important these simple
things and special times mean to their children. Dad and I did lots of
things together over the years but this is the memory most fresh in my
mind. Of all the fishing trips I have taken these many years, that was
the best.
Two
Searchers in Murfreesboro
By Dale Seffens
It was early March and I had business in
Marshall, Texas on Wednesday. I planned an early
departure, complete my work and head north to Arkansas. I
would meet my wife in Eureka Springs on Thursday evening, so planning a
little side trip to a new area to fly fish was definitely in the works.
It was Wednesday noon and I was actually on my way
to Murfreesboro. I had heard about some very good
fishing experiences from fellow club members over the past two years and
I was finally getting my chance.
So many thoughts whirl when I head towards a new
trout stream dreaming about what flies I would try. I wonder if the
water would be shallow enough to wade. How would I
find the good fishing spots? Would it be busy?
As I drove into Arkansas my anticipation of a new place to fish
was getting me so excited I could hardly wait to get there.
I rolled into Murfreesboro not knowing the way to
the stream. I saw a sign that pointed to the diamond
mine. I laughed, thinking it was a joke, until later I found out it is
real and is rated the eighth largest in the world. Up
ahead on the left was the Queen of Diamonds Motel. That
was where I stopped for directions and told them if the fishing were
good I would return to get a room for the night.
The closest place to the road to fish was only three miles
away. When I pulled into the parking lot at the
Little Missouri River, there was only one other vehicle in the parking
area. So few cars told me I needed to fish more often in the middle of
the week. (I hate it when work gets in the way).
While putting on my waders on I noticed another fisherman sitting
on the bank. He was a bait dunker not having any
luck. I put my fly rod together and as I pulled the
line through it thought I would just start out with an olive nymph that
I had tied and go from there.
I waded out into an area that was as ideal looking
as it gets. I tried a couple of casts with natural
dead drifts and got nothing. A few minutes later I
hooked my first rainbow, then another and another. The
bait dunker that was sitting on the bank had enough and left without
catching anything. I fished about three hours and
pulled in nineteen rainbows. I decided to keep five
and put them on ice for a fish fry with my wife the next evening. I only
keep fish two or three times a year. I figured I had
missed at least another twenty or so that had hit and I either missed
them or they were on for a couple of seconds and then I experienced what
is called a long distance release. Thinking back
about the ones I missed, I realized I had not used an indicator that I
normally would have. It does make a difference.
Back in town I checked into the Queen of Diamonds
Motel. I walked across the street to a local café and sat by myself
until I noticed the owner across the room eating and watching a ball
game. Another man walked in and we exchanged greetings, then he sat
across the way. He was wearing a hat and I assumed he
had been fishing also since I was wearing my fishing hat with some flies
on it.
After a couple of minutes he said, “Well, how did you do
today?” I told him I had one of the best days
I’ve ever had. He seemed excited. Then
I told him I got nineteen and his mouth dropped open. I
told him I only kept five and threw the rest back and I thought he was
having cardiac arrest. I asked him how he did and he
said he didn’t have any luck at all. He still
couldn’t believe I threw all those back.
When the confusion reached its peak, it all of a sudden hit both
of us: he had been out at the diamond mine all day, and of course I had
been fishing. We shared a good laugh that evening.
Sharing the Day
 While
on a canoe trip, M. Green had a companion for his lunch break
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