LOSING DAN BY JOHN BERRY

I did not write last week. On Easter Sunday, my ninety four year old father suffered a severe stroke and was injured in a fall. A few days later my younger brother, Dan, died of congestive heart failure. I had to return to Memphis to help my sister, Ernestine, settle the family’s affairs. I was very concerned for my father and I was deeply saddened by the loss of my brother. Dan was not just my brother he was my best friend. As children we shared a bedroom, and as adults we shared a passion for fly fishing.

My sister went through my father’s possessions and I went through Dan’s. The idea was to identify any keepsakes to cherish and what needed to be donated. The job was interrupted from time to time by a flood of memories. At first, I found the fly rod that he used to teach me how to cast. He had begun fly fishing when my late sister, Carol, had bought a fly rod but could not figure out how to cast it. Dan took the rod and taught himself how to cast and then taught me.

Over the years his casting improved. He was the first Federation of Fly Fishers Certified Casting Instructor in Tennessee. Together we taught fly casting at Shelby State Community College, the Mid South Fly Fishers and Tommy Bronson Sporting Goods. We taught thousands of people to cast and Dan was the lead instructor on all of it.

I found his fishing shirts embroidered with Berry Brothers Guide Service Fly Fishing for Trout, our logo. We started our guide service over twenty years ago. Although Dan discovered that he didn’t like guiding he did love to teach and we did a lot of classes.

I ran across his various fly tying vises and remembered that he was a commercial fly tyer for several years and taught fly tying and fly casting to wounded veterans through Project Wounded Warriors at the Veterans Administration hospital in Memphis. There was box after box of his flies including his most innovative patterns, like the turkey tail emerger or Chuck Berry’s emerger (his take on Chuck’s emerger). It reminded me of our tying flies together at the Sowbug Roundup or the Southern Council Conclave. On occasions like that he would tie size thirty two dry flies. Thirty two is basically the smallest hook made and he used a jeweler’s loop to see them while tying.

When Dan fished, he liked to combine his superior casting skills and his ability to tie the smallest of dry flies. He preferred to make a perfect seventy foot cast to deliver the size thirty two dry flies on mirror smooth glide water with a twelve foot leader ending in 8X tippet. I would ask him how he could see such a small fly, at such a great distance. He said that he could not see it but set the hook, when he saw a rise, where he thought the fly was. This method was very rewarding to him and he would rather catch one good fish like this that a dozen with a nymph under a strike indicator.

I also found the fly fishing vest he wore when we met out west to fish Yellowstone in 1989 and discovered that there was a historic forest fire in full swing. We ended up driving down to the Green River in Utah and having one of the best fishing trips of our lives. We woke up at the campsite in the morning to see antelope wandering near our tent. We caught giant trout on dry flies on a section of the river that was the hideout for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s hole in the wall gang. We reluctantly headed home at the end of the week but returned several years later to fish it again.

There was the light weight sleeping bag and tiny Coleman stove that we used when we backpacked up Hazel Creek, a remote section of the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. We hiked about ten miles up the trail to fish for native brookies. We took turns casting dry flies at rising trout. We ate freeze dried food for six days and gorged on the greasiest cheese burger and fries that we could find, when we hiked out.

Then there was the Nikonos waterproof camera that he carried every time that he was on stream. It was heavier than a brick and used thirty five millimeter film, an almost obsolete medium. He took some great photos with that camera. He had been a photographers mate in the navy and worked as a professional photographer for decades. He had reluctantly changed over to digital cameras recently but kept the Nikonos for fishing trips.

While I found a huge cache of rods and reels I was not able to locate the Hardy Marquis 7 fly reel that he used for his fly casting demonstrations and fly casting classes. I was with him, when he bought it at a gun show for $37.50. It was an incredible bargain and was one of his favorite reels. I did find his Ari T. Hart reels that were his favorites. He used them ninety nine percent of the time, when he was fishing.

I think of him often and miss him. I will never fish again, without his memory accompanying me.

John Berry is a fly fishing guide in Cotter, Arkansas and has fished our local streams for over thirty years.