Word: drakes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Bing: "I'd put a yellow feather in there to imitate the color of the drake's legs. Some people say the fish can't tell the difference. But those fish know the brand name on your waders and even how many patches...
...Idaho Falls had given him some flies. Lempke caught 26 fish that day and was, he recalls, "proud as a peacock." He was also hooked. He left school shortly thereafter, worked at an assortment of jobs and ended up a pipefitter in Los Angeles. But every time the green drake made its appearance, its siren call prompted him to drop everything; hence those three lost jobs. Eventually, Lempke came back to Idaho Falls and devoted himself to fishing his river, while doing enough pipefitting...
...pretensions and conceits affected by adherents of the sport. He uses an automatic reel, for instance, considered quite gauche by purists. He blends a mixture of gasoline and an oily substance called Mucilin to use as dry-fly ointment. He stumbled on his own version of the green drake when he noticed the rubber mat unraveling from an old throw rug and worked it into his fly to give it body without adding significant weight. When he is suited up for fishing, his short-billed pipefitter's cap, pulled down over the half-moon of white on his forehead...
...local filling station on this or that May fly with the words, "Well, I hate to say this, but I don't believe those were Baetis propinquas." Or Ephemerella infrequens. Or Epeorus albertae. But Lempke reserves his finest pronunciation and greatest admiration for Ephemerella grandis, a.k.a. the green drake. "They're damn pretty, for bugs," he says...
Lempke casts, and his fly lands just above the spot where a fish has left widening ripples. He picks up his line and casts again. Three times, four times. On the fifth cast, the green drake just barely nicks the surface when an olive back emerges, and with an almost imperceptible disturbance, the fly vanishes. It is a big fish. Lempke sets the hook...