DUCKLING STORY

The Fly Fisherman's Liar's Club - From the Book of Gink.

Note:  Story is guaranteed to be a concentrated and pure to the bone lie.

Someone asked me to finish this story I wrote years ago. So here is, finished. He was smart enough to 'ask the question'.  The answer is in this dear, wonderful, almost completely true, story that took place in Hamilton, Montana in the Bitterroot Valley. I hope you enjoy it... gg

A TROUBLED MORNING: (and on Duckling Advice)

INT. Camera Fades Onto Group in Coffee Shop - Early Morning.

FADE IN: to conversation:

So, there we all were, gathered around for our early morning coffee and glazed donuts. John lived out South of Hamilton going towards Darby, Montana. He had this neat little spread with a pond that was fed by the Bitterroot River and the pond had ducks on it. One queenly Mallard had little, fluffy, new yellow baby ducklings. "They’re cute," he said.

At least he mentioned that fact one morning over coffee where we all gathered before reporting to our respective places of employment.

"Yep," he continued . . . nodding his head in disbelief. "I took the grain out to feed the ducks yesterday evening to scatter it around as I always do, and from across the pond comes my Mallard fresh off her nest with all these cute, little and new ducklings trailing and swimming after her. She was quacking in great pride and excitement because she was a mama!"

"So?" Asks one of our fellow fly fishermen.

"Well, she got a third of the way across the pond as I was scattering the grain. All the other ducks were already quacking and pecking around my feet when suddenly there was this big swirl of water and splash and damned to hell if this big brown didn’t take and eat the last trailing duckling. I couldn’t believe my eyes!" He exclaimed. "It not only happened last night but he did the same thing this morning!" He emphasizes with a rap of his knuckles on the table. (Cups rattled)

"You’re kidding," chided Dave Hardy who works to this very day at the Ravalli County Bank.

"NO, I’m not kidding," returns John, a bit miffed. "Yesterday I had nine new mallard ducklings and now, this morning, I only have seven left," he drifts off staring at his cup.

"I don’t know what I’m going to do."

"How big . . . is this brown," someone asks. "You saw it once, right?

"I saw it both times! This is the biggest brown I’ve seen in twenty years and the bastard is in MY POND eating duckling sandwiches, I’m pissed."

"Hell, catch him," I smirk.  "Tie up a big, duckling fly and fish for him," I add.

"Is this another one of your crazy ideas," asks another fly fisherman of the round table.

"If matching the hatch works for Schwiebert and us, why not matching the duck?" I reason.

John brightens up and thinks about it. John is a good fly tier, so I continue and everyone starts to listen.

"Look John, go to Maggie’s store. She happens to have some feather dusters for sale and one of them happens to be yellow. Just use as many Yellow duster feathers that you need to tie a realistic duckling fly. Then, this evening when you go to grain your ducks at the pond, and as

she comes swimming across to you again . . . simply cast that duckling killer fly behind the last swimming duckling . . . need I say more?!"

Another member of the round table harks, "You know. It’s such a crazy idea, that it might work!"

Everyone starts thinking about it, especially John.

"Okay, okay! I just might try it," John ponders, staring into his coffee.

John goes to Maggie’s Store and goes home gets to work. He proceeds to tie up a duckling fly and since he never did one real fluffy before, he spends a couple hours designing it. I swear, it looked so real I thought the damned thing would quack and waddle off the table. It was a work of art!

So John does the fly and comes on over to my company and asks for a bottle of Gink which I was happy to donate to this cause. He invites me over for the test and I arrived well enough ahead of time to make sure I didn’t miss this rare opportunity of his sheer genius and inventiveness. We get his rod strung up and out to the pond we go, just as the sun starts to set behind the Bitterroot Mountain Range. (Shadows lengthen) John is ready with the fly rod and I have the bucket of grain. I start to cast it around. Suddenly, here comes the Mallard with her seven remaining ducklings - quacking in excitement.

John starts casting and none too soon! His marvelous duckling fly lands a little long (which was good in this case) and he strips in quickly. The ducklings follow mother, adroitly as the fly catches up. John manages to keep the Fluffy Duckling Fly a little behind the last, trailing duckling. Dang it to hell, if there isn't this awesome, HUGE SWIRL of water! It’s the biggest I’ve seen in years! I'd swear a gallon of water was sucked down into that big, pink, gaping hole in the water. John was tied into a huge monster! I mean, HUGE!

John fought the fight of a lifetime. His whooping and hollering testified to that fact. He was all around that pond as was that hungry, meat eating fish! It was nip and tuck for at least a half hour, and then the time extended into forty minutes and then fifty five minutes. I thought, "Surely he would never get this fish," but by golly, he slid that monster up on the slippery, muddy pond bank and jumped on it. It flopped so hard that it seemed to pick John up off his chest a couple times. All I could to was gape. I stood there with my mouth open in disbelief. This had to be a new world record!

I took its picture and we measured and weighted it.

The fish was 45 inches long and weighted three pounds!

Everyone stares at each other in dismay and slowly, one by one they start leaning back in their chairs slowly shaking their heads?

"Forty Five Inches long and weighing just three pounds? How can that be?" They grumble sarcastically.

I lift my coffee cup and toast everyone.

"The rest of him was feathers."

There was a long silence as they all looked at each other, then quietly, each one slid his chair back and left the restaurant in single file.

They refused to pay for my coffee that morning . . .

trails end -

Uncle Gink