| Page B4 — Terrace Standard, Wednesday, July 4,1980. Immortal quest for Don Gapen had the fever — brook trout fever. Rach day of the season he sallied forth from his lodge to angle for a speckled leviathan that would insure him a place in the record books and a slice of angling immortality. He failed in his quest but en-route Gapen had some wonderful fishing and managed to invent what is perhaps the most successful fly of alltime. - Apparently it happened this way: Gapen, an American angler, could not find a brookie of suitable size in. his native country since their range had been and continues to be greatly reduced by landscape reforma- tion and the introduction of those durable and bloodthirsty European predators, the brown trout, so he made the pilgrimage north to the Nipigon watershed in Ontario's Algonquin Na- tional Park. It was on the bottom of the streams and lakes in the Nipigon and in the stomachs of the larger trout he caught, that Gapen made the acquaintance of a. sculpin known to many fishermen as the darter minnow for the way it walks about rocky and muddy bottoms on its enlarged pectoral fins, to others as the miller’s thumb after its bulbous head, and to others still _as the muddler minnow for the way it muddles around in the muck. Gapen took a hard look at the mottled contours of the little bullhead, then used all the wrong materials to. come up with a pretty good looking im- itatlon. The varigated browns and tans of an oak turkey wing was a good match for the tail fin and dorsal of the sculpin, gold tinsel aped its body, and the enlarged head of the natural was cleverly sculpted from spun _ SPORTS NE The Skeena | Angler — by Rob Brown deer hair. There is little chance Momma Muddler will mistake a Muddler Minnow tied according to the original blueprint for one of her babies, but itis a fair bet a trout. might, except no amount of coaxing will get the thing to the bottom for more than ‘a few moments because of the materiais from which it is con- structed. In his attempt to craft a copy of a sculpin, Don Gapen: made a dandy copy of almost everything else. Soaked in grease and floating on the water, a large mudaler makes a darn good grasshopper or a credible giant stonefly, * Fished just under the surface in smaller sizes, it resembles an emergent caddis pupa. Dressed with a silver body and mallard Wings, the muddler bears strong resemblance to the skittish, silvery baitfish cutthroats and cohoes hunt in the eelgrass jungles of coastal estuaries, And if all these resemblances were not enough, the versatile muddler is-also mistaken for crayfish, sticklebacks and big hairy dragonflies by all manner of gamefish. ' While Gapen was tossing his muddled ‘concoctions | to Nipigon squaretails, a Califor- ‘nian angler named-Aranas was rolling some barnyard materials into_a very effective trout ‘and steelhead fly. .A% pencil-sized . : Special after’ the: good’ colo: ‘hank :of deer from. last. year’s : “hinting trip. was” the > “tailing “material, a strand jute. fibre was : wound up the shank for a body, and a turn or two of barred rock up. front was all there was-to: Aranas’ ‘Sackfly’’. Later christened the Burlap, Aranas’ simple brainchild continues to bag bags of trout. While the creations of Aranas and Gapen -: were . _ becoming popular all over the continent, a certain Colonel Carey . was casting over the interior lakes and casting around for a better imitation of the famous travell- ing sedge. To his rescue came tackle shop. owner and tier e killer fl Lioyd “A. “Day, Lloyd ‘wrapped two pheasant flank. feathers in: front of a body of green ‘wool. and called the'fly '‘Morikey fac-~ ed Louise’. Who. Lotise was is: lost in obscurity, but” ‘perliais: she objected to the: name forthe. — * fly was later dubbed the Carey and soon became'a standard Then, some three decades later along came_me, ‘Why not ‘take’. ‘ the most pronounced: featiifes’ . of all three of these killer flies; I thought with numbing brilliance, and combine them in ‘one pattern? First 1 'wrapped.a - body of burlap a la [Aranas, then the flowing” “ pheasatit- hackle of the Colonel’s beloved fly and topped tHe Wu off with ‘the muddler’s spun deer head. Even before the fly left the ¥ vite, I had the feeling it would ‘be’ a. classic. I rolled up another, pro- ceeded to my favourite stream and got skunked. wos JEFF NAGEL 638-7283 WS- TERRACE STANDARD semen Oldtimers compete TERRACE — Oldtimer soc- cer players from across the northwest clashed here two weekends ago, but at the end of the tournament it was a Terrace team that came out on top. The Northern Motor Inn Oldtimers took top honours and claimed $750 in prize money at the June 24 tourney by defeating Kispiox 6-1 in the final. Kispiox made it into the final against Terrace by edg- ing out Kitamaat Village 3-2. The, Terrace over-35. players faced little opposition, winn- ing every game they played, several by high scores. Terrace’s Errol Stevens was also named Most Valuable Player of the tour- nament, and another Terrace player — Richard Hugo — scored the most goals, Softball tourneys Minor softball! boys and girls got a good shot of the competitive spirit at the Gold Cup tournament two weekends ago. In peewee boys action, Houston took the top spot, followed by the Terrace Kinsmen team in second. Almwood Contracting finished first first in bantam girls division, beating out sécond-place Smithers. Squirt girls action saw Ter- race Travel also defeat Smithers for first place. Mid- dieton Trucking was first in peewee girls competition, In the Silver Cup tourna- ment a week earlier, the Bri- Don mite girls beat Skeena Hotel 5-1 in the final to take top spot. Houston won the squirt boys division, and Smithers took the squirt girls title. Games" donation ' The organizers of the 1991 Northern B.C. Winter Games ~— to be held here next February — got a boost last Friday with. their- first major donation, . Terrace Minor Hockey president Lew Larmour: presented a $5,000 donation to the games committee. Regulations require the hosts raise more than half of the cost of the Games locally, Games. publicity: director ‘means raising -$145,000 of. the event's so, 000 ‘budget. : ‘said, B .C; Summer Games moved its: