Tying at the cabin
Hexagenia fly-tying lessons in the backwoods
How to spend a winter’s day.
It’s raining again, Feb. 22 and plus 4 degrees. The bit of snow that fell last week is taking a cutting.
I hate rain in winter but I’ll make the best of it tomorrow and run up around the bay to hunt for a few seatrout. A buddy of mine spotted some very big fish a few days ago.
The extreme variability of our Avalon Peninsula weather can leave your head spinning. Last Saturday I was out hiking with friends, on my snowshoes in around our cabin. The weather was windy and bitter cold. I loved it. We weren’t doing much, no specific purpose in mind, just rambling about and soaking up some real winter ambiance.
Now I’m sitting at my computer with rain beating on the window. It’s a bit depressing. Thank God for winter seatrout fishing, best executed in mild weather.
Me and two of my buddies, Denis Abrard and Robert Richards, decided to enjoy a Friday night at our cabin and a Saturday of rambling, despite the fact that we were all busy. Robert was helping a friend finish the interior of a house, Denis had a late dental appointment and I struggled with a writing deadline.
No matter, we all committed to leaving the road at 7 p.m. for a nighttime snow hike to the cabin. Denis had to drive to my place in Spaniard’s Bay, all the way from Pouch Cove. Typical of a committed woods runner, he knocked on my door ahead of schedule. With loaded packs, poles in hand, and headlamps ablaze, we struck out on snowshoes for a night in the woods, followed by a Saturday of exploring on racquets.
Robert and I are Friday night regulars at the cabin, ever since we built it about seven or eight years ago. Denis has been in a few times with us since we met seatrout fishing at South River on a rainy cold April morning in 2011.
Denis moved to Newfoundland from Quebec in 2007. He first visited our fair land in 2004 to hike, and was so captivated by the island’s rugged landscape and beauty that he wished someday to plant roots here. Apparently Denis doesn’t shy away from snow, wind, rocky terrain, fog and sleet. In 2007, his wife Florentina had a job opportunity in St. John’s so they moved. They settled in Pouch Cove, buying a wooden house nearly 100 years old.
Most folks would be apprehensive about setting up home in a century old wooden house. Not Denis. Denis is a master woodworker, not just sheds and barns, which he can certainly handle, but he creates the most magnificent wooden art.
Denis invited me to his home shortly after we met on the river and I was immediately captivated by the sight of a life-sized brown trout, hewed of nothing but wood, no paint, only woods of the most appropriate hue, texture and shade. Even the characteristic spots on the trout’s sides were of pure, unstained, natural wood. Denis imports wood from all over the world to make up his colour palette.
Denis is a fly angler and artist, a combination that certainly complements. He had turned his hands to wood carving while still living in his French homeland and found the aroma of wood too intoxicating too resist. He decided to make hewing and shaping wood to form, object and construct his career path. The remote mountain trail or tumultuous river is not a reliable living, and for select few a family wage. But life’s peculiar twists and turns often bring divergent paths together.
Denis was born in France, in the city of Emburn, on the south side of the Alps, near the shores of Serre-Ponçon Lake in the Durance river valley. It was a place well suited to a boy inclined to roaming hills and unmarked trails, searching for adventure, free-flowing cold mountain water, and trout. There were small babbling mountain brooks, alpine lakes, as well as a very serious river system.
The Durance and Sorgue rivers flow into the Rhone River heading for the Mediterranean Sea. Denis came of age amidst a myriad of fine and varied angling opportunities. No wonder he adapted to Newfoundland’s salmo species so gracefully and demonstrated craftiness both at the vise and waist deep in water. I’m seasoned in the ways of Newfoundland fish and I find much to learn from Denis.
One of his passions is fishing for rainbow trout around St. John’s, in the Bauline Line area. The St. John’s Game Fish Protection Society seeded rainbows in several ponds in this area during the early 1900s. One of the ponds has a fantastic hatch of hexagenia mayflies. These are very big greenish yellow hatching insects and the trout gorge themselves on them.
The best way to catch these voraciously feeding trout is to put a fly in their path that matches the real thing. Denis, also an artist with fur, tinsel and feather, has created a wonderful realistic hexagenia pattern. He was kind enough to bring along his tying gear and backpack it into the cabin for a cold wintry Friday night of fly-tying; extended body hexagenia mayfly tying lessons in the backcountry.
We arrived at the cabin around 8 p.m. and kicked off our snowshoes before entering our humble country abode. The lights went on with a flick of the switch — gotta love solar panel power. After hanging up our outside coats we quickly discovered that the one-hour, predominantly uphill hike had worked up quite a sweat. The cold air stuck in my damp upper body like frosty needles.
Good thing we were in a cabin with an ample supply of dry wood. Camping out in winter is serious business. I would have slowed the pace on the hill climb if I were tenting. Anyway, my axe quickly rendered a dry chunk of fir into thin splits. In no time the stove was crackling and heat began to permeate the frosty dwelling. We all hung up our damp base layers and replaced them with dry duds from our packs.
Denis cracked open a lovely green glass bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey and we settled in for a comfortable evening of conversation and tying.
I learned how to tie the secret pattern amidst pipe smoke, and despite a slight swirling in my head from several glasses of malt. If this rain is still pounding on my window in the morning I might just tie up a few before heading out for seatrout. You might see my truck parked along the Bauline Line this coming summer, or Denis and I floating around a pond in blow-up boats.
On a life path from the west of France to Newfoundland, Denis has found a way to combine his love of fly fishing, wild places and woodworking. Only the most blessed men and women manage to find vocation through avocation.
If you are interested in seeing more of Denis’s work, check out his website http://thegreencod.