Bear Trap

With the introduction of the Bear Trap comes a great story and one of the reason I started tying flies. 

It was the summer of 1975 when I asked for and received a fly tying kit for my birthday.  And as I reflect back to my preteen days I am really surprised my parents allowed me to navigate the river in big, heavy, rubber hip boots on my own at such an young age.

Our family had a little summer cabin on the banks of Washington's Deschutes River.   It is here where I took the many hours of reading in bed (when I should have been asleep on school nights) learning from books on fly fishing and attempted to turn this knowledge into practical, hands on success; which, proved to be painful for the quite a few months.  It was fun none the less.

A good dozen or so trips were taken every year as travel time was just under an hour from the house to cabin.  The upper reaches could be called classic freestone water with a lot of beautiful wild rainbows as well as some rather large cutthroat.  I rarely encountered other anglers however, one older gentleman named Roy, lived in a gorgeous, well manicured house along the banks a few cabins upstream from us.  He would occasionally come out and stand on his bulkhead and yell out casting instructions and the direction of where he wanted me to cast (to fish below him).  Despite what seemed like hours of his directions I remained skunked.

Walking back to the cabin at dusk one evening Roy was out watering his front yard.  He stopped me and asked about fishing.  Of course it was uneventful of me.  He asked to see what flies I was using and looked surprised when I showed him my assortment of brightly colored flies (the common Taiwan assortment) from the local Kmart in town.  I remember a couple of Muddler Minnows and hare's ear thrown in the mix, but the brightly colored ones were far more numerous.  (After spending hours of looking at the color plates in Ray Bergman's, "Trout," I assumed all flies should be brightly colored.)  Roy excused himself asked me to stay for a moment.  He came back to his fence and handed me a Sucret's tin with about two dozen different patterns and took a few minutes to explain the each of the flies.  The first one to catch my eye was a pattern called the Bear Trap.  This streamer style pattern had body was gold mylar tubing and fairly heavy wing with a little red underneath the hook.   Roy told me he named the pattern due to using grizzly bear hair for the wing and it was a very good fly for the larger fish and probably imitated the numerous small bullheads (sculpin) in the river.  

As the next few seasons progressed I saw less and less of Roy, but he would make sure to come out of the house and wave as I fished the waters in front of his place.   One evening on my walk back we chatted a bit at his fence.  I mentioned that I started tying a couple years back and couldn't find grizzly for the wing of his pattern.  He said to use the center portion of a white bucktail to get good brown colored winging material and not to be afraid of using olive.  Just then Roy asked to me stay  put for a second as he went inside the house and came back with a rather large patch of grizzly bear and handed it to me.  "Now you found it," he said.  He told me to use it wisely and heard the story of his hunt some 25-plus years early.  I  remember that evening well.  It was my 13th birthday.  (The large patch of grizzly Roy gave me is pictured above.) 

The last time I saw Roy was the early morning of 18 May, 1980.  As I finished fishing the water in front place of his place I could hear the family shouting my name.  And then I saw my aunt.    She was on the opposite bank yelling, "Mount Saint Helens just erupted..."  "We've got to go now!"  By the time I made it across the river and to dirt road all the cars were packed and ready.  Away we went - waders and all - to higher ground.   Once on top of the hill we stopped to take a few pictures and get me out of my waders.   Although the eruption was over 60-miles away the sight of the ash plume was impressive.   Thankfully the direction of the blast was away from us that day, but I still ponder the possibilities today.

Fourteen years would pass before I fished the upper reaches of the Deschutes again.  The selling of the cabin didn't bode well with me and my enthusiasm for trout fishing waned.  I became obsessed with salmon, steelhead and searun cutthroat.  The hour drive to catch 14-inch trout was longer for me.   I would rather drive a little further and fish for 20-pound wild steelhead on the Olympic Peninsula  or cast big flies for the returning coho on the beaches of Puget Sound.     

Grass, shrubs and saplings were as tall as the windows of the cabin. The roof was in dire need of repair and looked as if it was ready to go at a any moment.   Even the wrap around deck was covered with moss and appeared dilapidated.  The sight was quite unsettling.   The memories of my youth soon erased the thought of the cabin as I entered the water.   

Every so often I wondered about Roy and if he knew how he changed a 10-year old's life with a small tin of flies.

The original Bear Trap pattern was dressed quite heavily compared to most hairwing streamer patterns of the time.  It probably fell into the anadromous steelhead hairwing catagory more so than a trout fly.  The mylar tubing would provide for a thick, visible body and the bear hair would boost a bigger silhouette in the wing.  Not to mention grizzly hair has very translucent silvery tips.  It is awesome material but incredible difficult to find these days.  Make sure you check local, state and federal laws before possessing, transporting or selling any bear parts.  I have use the grizzly patch sparingly over the years.  Mainly for a handful of working steelhead or display flies.

Old Roy said the pattern probably matched the small bullheads in the Deschutes River. (There are a lot of them!)   I can see that in the coloration and movement despite lacking todays' sculpin fly shapes and sizes.  

Bucktail (the brown center section), as Roy mentioned, is a solid substitute for the grizzly bear hair and various shade of brown and olive or brownish olive are available.  The only downfall to bucktail eventually becomes brittle sooner than other hairs.  In the pattern below I opted to use Arctic fox for the winging material.

The Bear Trap became one of my all time favorites!  In addition to a solid performing trout streamer it has produced wonderfully for summer steelhead on Washington's Kalama and Cowlitz rivers. I have changed the pattern a little for aesthetic purposes, but I am sure Roy would be proud!

Materials

Hook:  Mustad 3665A or TMC 9395, Sizes 2 to 10 (TMC size 4 pictured)

Thread:  UTC 70 or 6/0, black

Body:  Lagartun tinsel, gold, medium

Wing:  Artic fox, brown (leave a little underfur)

Throat:  Schlappen or hackle fibers, red.  Should be tied long.

Eyes:  (Optional) Jungle cock tied short