Remembering Dave Howard, one of the best anglers in knew.
Some years back Dave came into my fly shop and I waited on him myself.
He had a fairly good modern fly rod with an old Pflueger Medalist fly reel on it.
He wanted us to look over his outfit because he was fairly new to the sport.
Dave drove around Sacramento area photographing house for the Real Estate market.
I think he fish every day, early and late in the American river.
I took off his fly line and added some backing, cleaned up his connections.
He had been wade fishing every day for shad in the American river.
His reel was missing a screw and it was 'dry as the desert' inside with no grease at all.
I added a screw and tightened all the rest, clean his reel some and greased the axle/spindle.
This was the beginning of very long carrier in fly fishing and later drift boat guiding locally.
Dave had this special sense or ability that most do not have being able to figure out how catch fish on a fly.
He was the 'Shad King' during his rein on the American river.
Later he got the Stripers dialed in too.
Dave like the Cortland QD 225 sink-tip or sink-head which was Cortland's answer to the Teeny super fast sinking sink-tips or sink-heads.
He also developed the small "Wet Pinky" shad fly that was the local gold standard until Jeff Chin showed up.
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