Jack Gartside 1942 -2009

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

From Dan Blanton's BB:


Jack Gartside passed away peacefully last night.

As many of you know Jack was diagnosed with small cell cancer in October 2008. After therapy over the winter months Jack was able to enjoy trips to Florida in the spring and local venues throughout the summer. However in early Fall it became apparent that the cancer had spread and Jack was admitted to hospital last month.

Jack’s fly tying skills were legendary and his impressionistic patterns fooled fish of all species. Gurgler, Soft Hackle Streamer, BMG, Gartside Hopper, Firefly are just a few of the many unique patterns he developed - so often with materials discarded or overlooked by others.

Anyone lucky enough to have fished with Jack will remember his stealthy, heron like approach, relaxed casting and retrieves that breathed so much life into his patterns.

Even on the slowest of days when you couldn’t “buy a take” his enthusiastic chant of “Any minute now, any minute now…” would keep your spirits up.

As many of you know Jack was truly one of those rare and special people who lived life to the full and captivated so many of us with his infectious charm, enthusiasm and some truly terrible jokes & pranks...

Jack will be hugely missed.

More details to follow at his website:

www.jackgartside.com

[Mr T]

Sad news indeed.
I have read a number of articles about him tying flies in a cab along with many other places; he seemed like a cool guy.

[Jgoding]

I bought one of his small bound paper books, it was a cool read. Hopefully I still have it somewhere but with each pattern he gave it's history and the adventure that it was born from.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

He was a "real fly fisherman" who lived to fish.

In some ways Jack was kind of like our late Bill Schaddt on our north coast, fly fishing for Steelhead and Salmon.

I think Jack was in Boston and waded for Stripers a lot. He developed lots of special fly patterns.

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Closest thing we have around here to those guys in David Lee and Andy Guibord. David and Andy are "real fly fishers" which I think I use to be but somehow lost my way?

Now I am a professional verbalizer of fly fishing? I mostly talk about it........

Only a few people seem to live to fly fish? The late Dave Howard was in that special group of "real fly fishers".

Joe Shirshac has to be the oldest "real fly fisher" I know though.

These are people who seem to have been born to fly fish and that is their life.

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There is another group of people I have recognized and that is the "real outdoorsman" like our late Henry Starr.

These are old timers who's lives where filled with hunting and fishing for the most part and the seasons of the year drove them to it.