Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Angel hair attractor
Heber Springs angler asks for trust, ties a masterpiece
“Do you trust me?” With that question, George Born, manager of Ozark Angler in Heber Springs, introduced himself to Kathleen Anderson. It startled her, but yes, she said she trusted him.
Born directed Anderson, a 1982 graduate of Little Rock Central High School who serves on the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Commission, to sit beside his fly tying bench. Anderson, amused at such a whimsical lark, sat rapt with an air of expectation.
“Look over there toward that window,” Born said. “What do you see?”
As Anderson described the sights on that side of the store, Born lifted with two fingers a small lock of Anderson’s golden hair.
“I’m going to pull it just a little, so don’t be alarmed,” Born said.
Before Anderson could protest, Born snipped the hair free with a small pair of scissors. He showed it to a stunned Anderson before taking his own seat in front of his fly tying vice. With a strip of blue wire, he anchored the hair to a hook. He folded several strands of hair on both sides into wings and anchored those to the body. He attached a small amount of partridge hackle and dubbing, secured everything with a couple of knots and presented Anderson with an imitation mayfly that glowed like electrified fiber optic.
A native of Carbondale, Ill., Born moved to Arkansas in 1972 with his wife Carol. They have been married 55 years, and he speaks of her with the endearment of a newlywed.
“I was about to go to prison from about high school on,” Born said. “I said a little prayer to God, and he sent me an angel. When you’re with an angel you have to be good because you know who an angel answers to.”
“She deserves a medal,” Anderson said.
“She has wings instead,” Born said. “I moved to Arkansas for work. Most guys give their future wives a snow job. I gave Carol a blizzard. Part of that blizzard was me telling her, ‘I’ll make a living if you make it worth living.’ She held up her end of the bargain 100%.”
Born said his father ran with people that Born described as some of the godfathers of fly fishing. Born’s father allowed him to tag along at age 9.
“They’re the ones that taught me to fish,” Born said. “I got out of it during college like a lot of young men do, but after I moved to Arkansas in 1972, I started fishing this river.”
It is, of course, the Little Red River, which in 1992 surrendered a 40-pound, 4-ounce brown trout to the late Howard “Rip” Collins that held the all-tackle world record for brown trout for 19 years.
In 1972, the Little Red was still wild and undiscovered.
“It was a paradise!” Born said. “There were virtually no houses on the river, and there were no boat docks. We watched it all happen.”
Anderson and I came to Heber Springs to fish. We stopped at Ozark Angler to buy Anderson a fishing license and trout stamp, but Born told us we were wasting our time.
“We got seven inches of rain,” Born said. “The lake came up seven feet. The river is all blown out.”
When you can’t fish, you visit with kindred spirits at a fly shop. Joining us was Ebb Estes, a fishing guide on the Little Red, along with a rotating cast that came in and out.
I asked Born and Estes how an angler can dial in a pattern when trout want a zebra midge or a root beer midge but they’re picky about size.
“You start with two that you think will work, and you work with color and size until you find one they’ll take,” Estes said. “If you don’t get a take in 15 or 20 casts, you need to change flies.”
“Ebb is more efficient than I am,” Born said wryly, drawing a laugh from Estes.
With that, Born sprinkled some Size 30 hooks into his palm. He plucked one and poured the others back into their pouch.
Size 30 is tiny, about the size of a fire ant. He put the hook in his vice and began tying a midge. He showed me how to twirl the thread bobbin to create an invertebrate’s ribs. Then he attached some yellow feather material for the wings.
“You can throw this with a big rod, but your cast is different,” Born said.
“Size 20 is as small as I go,” Estes said. “Any smaller than that and you have to use such a small tippet, and then you have to play a fish longer than you really should.”
Anderson asked how such a tiny hook can subdue a powerful trout.
“It does,” Born said. “This little fly right here can take everything an 18-pound trout can dish out.”
Finally it was time to go. Anderson and I toured the national fish hatchery below Greers Ferry Dam, and then we sat on the bank where a pipe from the hatchery discharges water into the river.
The river was clear, with a green tint that’s characteristic of Ozark streams. A small flotilla of johnboats motored up and drifted back down. In one of the boats were Jonathan Basaldua, David Hudson and Tyler Lambert. Basaldua and Lambert were combat veterans, and Hudson is a fishing guide who treated the soldiers to a day of fishing courtesy of Wildops, an organization that helps combat veterans cope with post- traumatic stress syndrome through fly fishing. Basaldua caught a trout and deftly guided it into Hudson’s net. Anderson and I shouted our congratulations, prompting a lively conversation over the river’s roar.
There are no strangers among anglers. The love of the tug is a universal uniter.