I grew up in fishing country, Texas to be exact. Every hardware store in the state sold
fishing equipment, and some even sold a few tools and nails. My personal favorite was Buddies Hardware,
which was really no more than an extension of Buddies Grocery Store. The reasons I preferred it were relatively
simple. First because it was just a few
blocks from my home, and second because I could get food and bait at the same
time.
Over time stores began to appear specializing in sporting
goods, but most carried only the most basic fishing supplies. But then again, this was Texas, and serious
fishing was done with just basic equipment.
The simpler the better. I don’t
recall when the hardware stores began to drop the line of fishing gear in favor
of such mundane items as hammers and screwdrivers, but over time I realized
that a major change had taken place.
I’ve fished with a tree branch, trimmed of excess leaves and
twigs, attached to kite string tied to a bent nail with a worm from the garden
stuck on it. For a float, I used one of
the excess twigs trimmed from the tree branch.
And it worked. Sometimes I
didn’t even use the tree branch. But my
grandfather had a more novel approach to fishing.
Papa had a small boat he had nailed together from old lumber
he had around the farm. It weighed
about 10,000 pounds as far as I was concerned, but he was able to load it into
the back end of his 1938 Ford Coupe and tie it so it wouldn’t fall out onto the
road again. We would drive to one of
the nearby stock tanks (a man-made watering hole for cattle and coyotes) and go
fishing.
Once we had the boat in the middle of the tank, he would
unbox his “fishing gear.” It was an old
crank box telephone with two long bare wires coming out of the back. He would throw one wire over each side of
the boat into the water and give the box a few fast cranks. Over the next 30 or 40 seconds fish would
float to the surface and we could pick the biggest ones to take home for dinner. This was fishing at its best.
One day Papa came home with a store-bought boat. It may have been 3rd or 4th
hand, but at one time it was store bought.
The boat was a 10 foot jon boat, and it was a thing of beauty. While it was still heavy to me, I could
actually load it into the back of the old car by myself, but Papa still
insisted on tying it down himself. It
didn’t take long for us to try it out.
We drove out to a rather large stock tank on a friend’s
property a few miles away and launched the boat. We climbed in, rowed to the middle and tossed over the
wires. In his usual manner, Papa gave
the old telephone a few quick cranks, but it was only momentum that created all
cranks after one. We realized a little
too late that electricity, water, and a metal jon boat do not go well together. In a vain attempt to remedy the situation,
he tried to uncrank it, which produced the same effect.
The fish floated to the surface as they always did, but this
time we just looked at them with compassion.
We saw any number of potential dinner options, but we were just too, um,
stunned to take advantage of the situation.
By the time we could gather our wits about us, the fish had recovered
enough to swim back to the bottom of the tank.
Our only choice now was to crank the telephone again or just go home.
It was a long five miles home. We carried the jon boat over to where the old wooden boat lay and
set it along side the old craft. And we
stood there looking at the two boats for several minutes before putting away
the telephone on its shelf in the nearby barn.
We never spoke to each other about the lesson learned that
day, much less to anyone else for many years.
Actually he passed away without ever saying anything about it at
all. The jon boat simply disappeared
one day, and the old wooden boat rotted beyond repair from lack of use. The lesson I learned from it was to go back
to what I knew best, a string, some kind of a float such as a cork, a hook, and
a worm. This brings me back to the
evolution of the sporting goods store.
When the hardware stores began to decline from their glory
days as the place to buy fishing equipment, the sporting goods stores started
carrying more fishing items. The
problem I had with these stores was that no one there knew anything about
fishing.
The stores carried backpacks and camping equipment. I could understand this since fishing could
occasionally involve some hiking and quite often a few nights of camping. I could understand the football equipment,
the baseball equipment, and even the basketball equipment. I definitely could understand the hunting
equipment. I could not understand the
skiing equipment, especially in Texas.
I could not understand the specialized clothes that everyone seemed to
need to ski, hunt, or fish. I could not
understand why the people working the store knew everything about skiing and
nothing about anything else.
The fisherman was now on his own. No longer could he go to local hardware store and find out where
the fish were biting. No longer could
he ask for a specific size of hook and get it.
No longer could fishing stories be swapped with someone who had been
there and let the big one get away. The
sporting goods stores were just a big cold place with little to offer the
traditional Texas fisherman.
It didn’t take long for someone to realize the problem. I began to see something called Tackle
Stores pop up around the state. These
were much better than the sporting goods stores in that the people running them
did know something about fishing, and the product line was all about fishing,
but the personal relationship once developed in the local hardware store was
missing. Still it was better than
nothing.
I fished for many years under the guidance of these sporting
goods stores and tackle stores, largely having to figure things out for
myself. When I took up fly-fishing, I
assumed that little would change in the situation. There is, however, something I was not expecting to find—The Fly
Shop.
They don’t sell nails, hammers, lumber, or chain. They don’t have 16 year olds expounding the
virtues of snowboards. They don’t have
footballs, baseballs, or basketballs.
They sell fishing equipment, albeit very specialized equipment. This is the dream I lost when the hardware
stores started selling nails, hammers, lumber, and chain.
I was directed to one of the few remaining fly fishing
stores in Southern California by the fly fishers I met at the Long Beach
Casting Club. Actually, they told me of
5 or 6 stores, but only one was near to my home, so I went there. I walked in the door and just stood there
blocking the aisle for about one minute.
That’s how long it took for someone to offer to help me. I don’t believe I’ve had anyone offer to
help me with fishing equipment in 30 years or more. Not only was this person willing to help, but he also actually
fished on a regular basis. I walked
into the store expecting nothing. I
walked out of the store having had all my dreams fulfilled. Well, most of them. Some we don’t talk about.
I have since been to many fly-fishing stores. They range from sophisticated operations to
small one-person shops, but in each and every one I can expect and get personal
attention by someone who knows what they are talking about. Well, at least they know more than me. But I have never met anyone working such a
store that doesn’t fly fish. The person
may be happy, grumpy, tired, bored, or something else altogether, but they all
speak with some knowledge. They know the
best rivers and lakes in the area, and where to fish on them, and what to fish
with. They know all the secrets of the
local area and often far beyond its borders.
They know I’m not there just to buy some flies or leaders or other
trinkets, although they gladly take my money for them, they know I’m there to
pick their brains about fishing. And
they give freely of their knowledge.
I’ve been a fly fisherman for just a short amount of
time, but during this brief adventure, no fewer than four store closures have come
to my attention with many others obviously struggling. Can the fishing community afford to allow
the Fly Shops go the way of the old Hardware Stores? I think not. Yes, there
are many tackle shops around, and they are decidedly better than the ones of 30
or 40 years ago, but few have much in the way of fly-fishing equipment. While fly-fishing is probably not going away
anytime soon, the local suppliers may need to turn to nails, hammers, lumber,
and chain to keep their doors open.
