The Doc Spratley and Kamloops Trout

Doc Spratley fly

 The other day I was thinking about a fly called the Doc Spratley. The fly is named after a dentist who happened to be in the shop when the fly was being tied for the first time by Dick Prankard, who originated the pattern around 1949 in Mt Vernon, Washington.



It is a deadly pattern I first used in Postill Lake, British Columbia for Kamloops trout.

Kamloops trout are rainbow trout. They are well adapted to the clear, rich waters of Canada's west. They eagerly take a fly, fight with lots of jumps, grow to an impressive size and are great table fare too.

If ever "Intelligent Design" advocates need an example to prove their point, the Kamloops Trout sure seems like it was custom built for the fly fisherman.

I was just beginning my fascination with fly-fishing in those days and we fished the lake by trolling a black Doc Spratley slowly around the edges. We regularly caught a bunch of fish.

My main fishing buddy in those days was Nick Palmaruk. Nick is a great guy with a wicked sense of humour. At the time, he was the chef at a downtown hotel in Kelowna. One of the traditions that evolved early in our fishing trips was that we would take fairly elaborate lunches.

I only mention this because when I was in my twenties I'd regularly fish all day on a can of Pepsi and a chocolate bar. I'd barely stop for a pee, let alone for lunch. It was a completely foreign concept to me.

 A typical day's outing would involve meeting in the pre-dawn, loading the lunch and gear then heading up into the foothills of the mountains in my old Nissan pick-up. The narrow logging road was an adventure in itself. Every blind curve, of which there were plenty, could reveal a fully loaded logging truck barreling down upon us.

As a chef, Nick when it was his turn to provide the lunch, would provide an incredible feast, foi gras stuffed cold pheasant breast with an aspic glaze sort of thing complete with a three-foot baguette and a very good bottle of wine. Of course I felt obliged, when it was my turn, to at least match his effort so I'd get extra crispy on the bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and never diet cola, only the real thing was good enough.

Postill Lake BC

I remember one particular day as we were trolling along with mixed success. I was holding the motor control arm with one hand, eating a drumstick with the other and watching my rod tip carefully as I listened to Nick expound on the importance of good food.

Apparently this particular bucket of chicken didn't exactly represent the state of the art of culinary expertise, at least as practiced in the better restaurants of the day. I calmly finished my drumstick and carefully brought his line in hand over hand across the transom, cautious not to alert him to anything unusual going on in the back of the boat. As his fly came into my hand I hooked the well-cleaned chicken bone onto it and then, just as carefully, let the line back out. When it reached the end I gave it one good tug.

"Hello", he hollered and started an epic battle to land what he expected to be another good trout. The fact that it wasn't jumping convinced him that it was in fact a big fish, bigger than any I'd caught that day anyway.

That’s when I learned an important lesson about delaying the bragging until you have the fish in your net. Nick hadn't learned it yet so he kept up a steady stream of chatter until it slowly dawned on him that this was too strange and one-sided a battle to be a fish.

He fell silent and continued to reel in line until he was holding his leader. Dangling below his hand was the beautiful Doc Spratley fly with a well-stripped chicken bone firmly attached.

He slowly turned and gave me a cold stare. "Damn" he said. "He got my bait."



image of fly from www.thechronicflyfisher.com/HOME.HTML