Cal Bird stopped by my shop in northern California on a hot midsummer afternoon about 40 years ago. He was on his way to fish Hat Creek and wanted me to come along. If Cal wanted me to go fishing with him, I rarely refused.
Cal was old enough to be my father. I called him Papa, as his children did, and we loved each other as a father and son.
We met when I was a student at San Francisco State. He had a small fly shop not far from where I lived. I was amazed the first time I watched him tie — and peppered him with all sorts of questions. He dealt with them in a way that invited more.
He was the fly tying master and I was the apprentice. I watched him unlock the arcane mysteries of technique, materials, color and the behavior of light. He ultimately encouraged me to develop, as he had, a personal fly tying style that went beyond what was written in books. In the eyes of more famous tyers who watched him tie, he was the master of masters.
Our friendship that began with fly tying eventually grew into every area of our lives.
He was a very private person but genuinely warm, kind and humble. Only a handful of close friends really knew him well.
The Bird’s Stone dry fly was featured for decades in Dan Bailey’s Fly Shop. Today, his Bird’s Nest nymph is produced in fly factories worldwide.
Most of his patterns, though, are less well known. He tied for his own small shop in San Francisco and Frank Moore’s Steamboat Inn on the North Umpqua in Oregon. He also tied for my shop. Some of his favorite flies were known only to his close friends.
The lessons he delivered from behind the vise were often metaphors for life. Don’t take short-cuts. Make every fly the best you can tie at the time, with the best materials you have available. I learned lessons of integrity, patience and hope from Cal — behind the vise, on the stream and as we shared life.
On that sweltering August afternoon when he picked me up to go fishing, I figured there wasn’t much chance that we’d catch anything. I went to spend time with Cal and didn’t expect much else.
We stopped by the little mom-and-pop convenience store down the road from the shop for sandwiches. Lunch in tow, we arrived at Carbon Bridge, where the placid stream flowed between gently sloped banks of tall grass in a little valley surrounded by rolling hills of diatomaceous earth and volcanic bluffs. There were no other anglers in sight.
Cal was benign and quietly cheerful as he strung up his rod and asked, “What do you think you’ll start with, Chuck?”
“I dunno, Cal,” I replied. “Hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Well, think about it — and pick something,” he encouraged. “You know, the fish are still there, maybe laying in the shadows by the weeds, and you never know … with the right fly … ” There was a twinkle in his eye as he looked at me.
It worked. I selected a fly and began to fish, relaxed but in earnest. Between casts I watched Cal’s nonchalant-looking but accurate casts, and ever-so-subtle rod tip movements as he guided his fly downstream.
After a while he suggested that we take a break. We went up to a slight dip in the grassy bank overlooking the stream. He took the sandwiches out of his rucksack.
“They sure make good sandwiches there, don’t they Chuck? Just as good as home-made.” A gentle breeze came up.
He smiled and went on. “You know, it feels a little cooler, laying back in the grass here, than it did back at your shop.”
We ate, and talked a little. After a lull in the conversation Cal said, “Just take a look, Chuck … the waving grass, the oaks below the pines on the hillsides, Hatchet Mountain, Mount Shasta, and look at the creek. In a few hours there will be fish rising everywhere and a swarm of people casting to every rise — but right now, we have it all to ourselves.”
I was beginning to understand why Cal brought me.
As I let it soak in, he turned to me again and said with that twinkle in his eye, “And you never know, Chuck … it’s like they say … on the very next cast … ”
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