PHILIPSBURG - During the past dozen years or more since I became hopelessly addicted to fly-fishing at Georgetown Lake, I've made a ritual stop in Philipsburg each time I go to the lake.
I pull in at either the Sunshine Station, out on Highway 1, or the hardware store on the main drag in the middle of town.
Then I make a beeline for a glass case under an inconspicuous sign that modestly proclaims 'Locally hand tied flies.'
The cases contain all the traditional Montana favorite patterns - Adams, Joe's hopper, salmonfly, royal Wulff. They're all fine flies and I can attest to their durability and trout-fooling effectiveness.
But the ones that I make my ritual stop for are distinctive not quite like any standard patterns, deceptively simple, yet definitely 'buggy' looking. The labels on their case compartments grabbed my attention right away: 'Georgetown special,' 'Georgetown nymph,' 'Medicine Lake special' and 'shrimp special.'
Over the years, those patterns have proved deadly for me in my perennial pursuit of Georgetown Lake's lunker rainbows.
I often wondered about the identity of the angling genius who created those wonderful patterns.
Finally, my curiosity drove me to find the source - 61-year-old Bob Harris, born and raised in Philipsburg, and a lifelong fly-fisherman.
'I kind of grew up on Georgetown Lake and Rock Creek,' said Harris. 'I started fly-tying in high school, just as a hobby, something to do. I'm just self-taught. There was an old guy who ran a sporting goods store in Anaconda, Don Hornbacker, who had Don's Sports Center, I used to fish with him all the time up there, and he taught me a lot about fishing Georgetown. He kind of explained the flies to me and I kind of perfected 'em. I tied flies for him for a long time.'
Later, when Harris attended college in Missoula, his flytying education was furthered by his association with legendary fly-tier Norman Means, aka Paul Bunyan, the creator of the famed Bunyan Bug.
'I used to buy Bunyan Bugs from Paul Bunyan in Missoula when I was in college,' Harris said. 'I'd go down and watch him tie flies in the Turf Bar. I'd go in and BS with him. He kind of got me tying some different flies, too. I still have some Bunyan Bugs he tied.'
Fly-tying is really just an avocation for Harris, who is the assistant student supervisor at the Anaconda Job Corps Center, where he has been employed for 34 years. He started work there in 1967, a year after the center opened. The facility has an enrollment of 240 students, who study such career skills as heavy equipment operation and mechanics, carpentry, welding, cooking and office occupations.
In recent years, he said, he hasn't been fishing as much as he used to.
'Now I got those,' he said, pointing to a bag of golf clubs leaning up in the corner of his den, next to his fly-tying bench. 'They kind of take up my time these days.'
His fly-tying stalled since the end of December, when he had a triple bypass heart surgery.
Fortunately, (for him and fans of his flies) Harris said he's feeling much better, and he's back tying flies again.
'I just enjoy it for something to pass the time,' he said, 'especially in the winter.'
He usually ties about 200 dozen flies a year. He's sold them at the Sunshine Station and hardware store for years. But the hardware store recently closed, he said.
The patterns Harris 'invented' for fishing Georgetown Lake and other local waters aren't revolutionary. They just incorporate materials and design adaptations, based on his experiments and observations, that make them particularly effective in the waters he fishes.
Harris' 'Georgetown special' is a dry damsel fly pattern that looks much like other versions. But his has a body made of blue nylon baling twine that Harris found at Osco Drug in Butte.
With its grizzly hackle wing, the simple pattern floats like a cork, and can withstand repeated maulings by ravenous rainbows.
The blue baling twine is an example of his innovative approach to fly-tying.
'I like to experiment with different materials,' Harris said. 'I use this rubber tubing as the body for a hopper. It's something a picked up in an automotive shop. I'll just go through some fabric shops, and if anything catches my eye, I'll get it. My drawers are full of all kinds of stuff. I've probably got a lot of stuff you'd never think of using for fly-tying materials.'
His 'Georgetown nymph' probably imitates a damsel nymph, but it's nondescript enough to pass for a dragonfly nymph, or some other aquatic trout delicacy. It is made of a green rug wool that Harris found in a fabric shop, with a turkey feather wing case, and an olive grizzly hackle trimmed top and bottom. Harris can whip one up in his vise in a flash. It's my favorite Georgetown fly.
The 'Medicine Lake special' is the pattern Harris devised for imitating the giant caddis that hatch in the evenings at Georgetown in early fall. Trout go crazy for the naturals and Harris' imitation.
He came up with the idea for the pattern while watching the big caddis. hatching at Medicine Lake located not far from Philipsburg in the Skalkaho area.
The 'Medicine Lake special' is his most popular fly pattern, particularly among local flyfishers, Harris said.
Like it in Rock Creek as well as anything,' he said. 'It's my most popular fly around here for some reason. It works for everything - a hopper, a caddis, a stonefly. It's just buggy.'
His 'shrimp special' pattern originally was created as an icefishing pattern, Harris said.
'We always used freshwater shrimp for ice-fishing at Georgetown,' he said. 'So that fly was an experiment to use icefishing up there. But then I found that one worked better in the summer.'
His personal favorite fly for Georgetown, Harris said, is his dry damsel.
'I always found the dry damsel most effective for me,' he said. 'But I'm not a great nymph fisherman. I like the surface fishing better than underneath. Both work. But I prefer the ones that float. I like to get into the real shallow water in Georgetown. Right in the weeds. You lose more fish than you catch when those big old rainbows get down in the weeds. I mostly float-tube up there, or just wade in the shallows, in Comers and Eccleston bays.
'I like it best, probably when the damsels first start hatching, in early July. Then, again, I like to fish the big caddis in the early fall. Right at dark, those big babies start flopping around on the lake like big, old dive bombers.'
The fishing at Georgetown has waxed and waned over the years, said Harris.
'When I was a kid,' he said, 'we used to catch fish seven and eight pounds down by the dam. Then you could still use minnows for bait. God, they'd hit those. They had a hatchery on Flint
Creek where it comes in by the Seven Gables. You couldn't fish right there. But you could fish below that and catch some big spawners.
'I saw it there where you couldn't hardly catch any fish for a few years. And now it's come back. You can catch seven- and eight-pounders there again, and a few big brookies up to three, three- and -a-half pounds. That's a nice brookie.'
When he gets bored tying regular patterns, Harris said, he experiments with colorful, detailed, classic Atlantic salmon flies. He follows old pattern directions for some, and his imagination for others, he said.
'I just like the colors,' he said.
Charlie Dirkes, owner of the Sunshine Station, said Harris' flies are always in demand at his store.
An avid fly-fisherman and flytier himself, Dirkes pronounced Harris' flies 'damn good. If I don't have time to tie 'em, I'll use his. He does things right. His flies stay together. It's simple: They're built with quality. I like his rat-faced McDougal and his Medicine Lake special. That's a damn fine fly. But you've got to have it put together correctly. If not, you're dead meat. He also ties a very, very, very good streamer.'
Although he said he's never fished the fabled skwalla stonefly hatch on the Bitterroot River and other local streams, Harris said he gets so many requests for a skwalla pattern that he's adding one to his repertoire this year.
Another recent twist in his flytying craft, Harris said, is creating flies as jewelry.
In collaboration with Philipsburg's Sapphire Gallery, Harris produces flies as a centerpiece for tie tacks, pins, pendants and earrings.
'He'll tie whatever fly you want,' said Mellonee Grange, a sales clerk and jewelry designer at the Sapphire Gallery. 'He
even did a hot pink one for us we call a bar fly.'
The jewel flies are tied by Harris on a 14-karat catch-and-release hook, Grange said. Each piece features a Rock Creek sapphire mined nearby and mounted on the hook at the gallery.
'That's about as Philipsburg as you can get,' Grange said.
