Eagle Lake seminars with Jay Fair

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

I tell this story in the shop more than twice a year for the educational value:

We have had several seminars at Eagle Lake in the past. We would go for 3 days in November off the full moon where one of our staff would take 6 customers to learn how to fish Eagle Lake from the master, Jay Fair.

This was told to me by a friend who was taking one of the seminars.

He said the first day Jay took them all in two boats to one of his favorite places to wade for big Eagle Lake Rainbow Trout. This is a place with a rocky lava bottom where he would turn over rocks later in the day so they could all see the scuds.

He said that they all lined up in about 12" of water right off the bank in the very early AM. He said that Jay went down the line and cast each person's outfit and then showed how he retieves very, very slow. He actually caught a fish while demonstating with each person's rod.

Then he got down to my old friend Georgie Martin who had been fly fishing for 50 years. Jay did not cast George's outfit and just said, "You already know all this stuff."

George told me he was disapointed because he wanted to see if Jay could catch that last fish and make it 6 in a row.

True story.......

[Darian]

Hmmmmm,.... Bill, are you sure this story shouldn't be under the topic of the "best story that wasn't tr...... Oh,.... Never mind.....

[jbird]

My buddy Dave went to the clinic a couple weeks ago. Denny Rickards invited him over to fish with him friday as well, the clinic was on a saturday. The scud flats were high and dry do to drout/low water conditions. The lowest water and slowest fishing denny and jay have seen in 23 years. No one caught a single fish .....including Denny and Jay. It turned out to be just a $150 seminar. , more or less.

Jay

[Tracy Chimenti]

here's another good one, Bill.

back when I wrote for the Fishsniffer, Jay invited me up to take a group of McDonald's execs and their families fly trolling for a week when the Ronald McDonald Youth camp was getting off the ground.

On the third day of fishing, we brought the boats into shore on a sunny beach inside Troxel. Everyone clammored out of the boats to go to the bathroom and fetch their lunches.

After lunch, all 15 of us were were lying there under a Juniper, just taking in the sun and the nice spring afternoon. Jay layed back, and looking into the Juniper, took a drag off his Winston, exhaled, and said, "You know... those big balls of debris you're looking at up there?... those are made by Pack Rats... and inside those balls are probably a dozen pack rats apiece...."

Everyone clammored under the tree to see what the master was talking about. Then he took another drag off the Winston, ground the butt into the dirt, exhaled, and said, "... and when you find pack rats, your gonna find rattlesnakes... lots of 'em." Suddenly people were getting up, looking under their sweaters, and generally looking uncomfortable. Jay just closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

He is truly a man of charactor.