The first time I went to Arkansas to fish, my friend and I got pulled over, our car searched and our contraband confiscated. As the police officer walked away from the car, he turned and with the smile of a peace officer who was about to consume my very high-quality weed, he said smugly, “Bet I ruined your fishing trip.” Joke was on him though. It was the best trout fishing trip of my life until that point. I really had no concept of the biblical term gluttony until I had pulled out my fourth or fifth slab of Ozark gold with no end in sight. My soul filled to the size of a home-bound hoarder, and I had no plans to stop. These browns were originally stocked either by the Fish and Wildlife Service as an experiment in the late ’40s or by some Grapes of Wrath -type characters in the middle of the night from a bridge, depending on who you ask. Either way, the trout are wild and large, validating my long-held belief that big water equals big fish. These particular specimens can be caught during the winter on streamers, on caddis in the spring, and on big foam hoppers at the end of the summer, which was why I found myself in Cotter, walking into the fly shop on a sunny afternoon. You can tie flies for a trip like I usually do, after painstaking internet sleuthing for the whisper of a pattern here, or the local name of another pattern there, or you can walk into the shop and grease the right palm of the right dude and buy the only pattern you’ll need all week. I did both, as usual, and, as per usual, “bought and paid for” beat tying blind every time. But being able to buy the right pattern is only a side benefit of the shops in Cotter. It’s kind of like Ibiza for old white fishing-famous guys who are into brown trout. No other laboratory is like the White for great minds throughout flyfishing history to test their theo-ries. I tend to nerd out on stuff like this. When told that Davey Wotton, the Welsh Nino Brown of the wet fly, was over at the Saturday morning tying/bullshitting session, it took every shred of self-respect I had not to fanboy all over the king of swing. He wasn’t hard to spot sitting at the table of overalls-wearing, camo-clad older men. He’s not a large man or a young man. He was also the only one speaking Welsh. With ink like a mid-level Russian gangster and a chiseled mouth cussing more than any I’ve encountered, he became cemented in my mind as the hardest man to ever fish soft. I have a sense that every trout town used to be this way—built on a foundation of like-minded individuals who actually en-joy being around each other, talking about fishing and slinging insults in only the manner that people who are fond of one another can. Too often these days compe-tition and ego preclude anyone sitting around talking about anything at shops. A fly shop used to be the social and informational anchor of the fishing community. These days it has become just another transactional er-rand to run before the weekend. It’s easy to get lost in the nostalgia of the present around the White. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Grossman dancing to celebrate his first fish of the day—after missing five fish prior to this brown. Photo: Dave Fason A perfect White River brown darting back to its rocky home. Photo: Dave Fason At the end of a day pulling mega streamers on Arkansas’ White River, or prior to a night of chucking mice, an Arkansas table is set properly by KT’s Smokehouse BBQ. It’s as authentic as it gets in Cotter, drawing everyone from tourists passing through to camo-clad locals wrapping up an evening whitetail scrum. Photo: Robert Dotson THE FLYFISH JOURNAL 045
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 13.4: Page 45
