The short man in the bow of the boat didn’t look the part. He moved the fly rod in rhythmic sweeps, expertly laying the tiny bream bug on the water, first four inches to the right of a stump and then the same distance to the left of it. But instead of traditional fly casting attire, a vest with clippers and hook extractors dangling and a felt hat spangled with flies, he wore khaki pants and shirt with a matching khaki work cap. Black work shoes and a black belt completed the outfit of this skilled angler.

Although the image of that man in the little boat has lingered in my memory for over 50 years, it is nonetheless clear. In fact there are even subtle details about him that abide, like the watch pocket sewn into those khaki pants which held a gold pocket watch, the only type time piece he ever carried. I never saw him try on a wrist watch. The indelibility of this vision of him can be attributed to the fact that I was an impressionable pre-teen seated in the stern of that boat, and the man in its front was my father. His birthday was today. He would have been 101.

We spent many late afternoons fishing for bream in Dr. Davidson’s pond or at Warren’s lake. I caught the colorful bluegills with a cane pole on those early trips, and later with a fly rod of my own when we would alternate sculling for each other.

When I moved back to Meridian after retirement, I reactivated my fly rod. I wanted to cast to bluegills again after fly fishing for brook trout and rainbows in the western mountains. One day I was shocked to see an advertisement for Bar Nun poppers in a magazine. This cork-bodied bug was my father’s favorite. I had assumed the old Bar Nun had probably been discontinued long before my father died. I had not seen the lures for sale in many years. Upon reflection, this was understandable because I had lived in places where bream fishing was not common.



Happy discovery



I was elated that the popper was still being made and mentioned to someone that I would write the advertiser in Pennsylvania to learn how to buy some. I had not forgotten my dad’s favorite pattern — silver body with tiny green spots and a black and yellow feather/hackle behind.

My acquaintance told me that Bill Sanders kept Bar Nuns in stock at his gun shop. In Bill’s shop, I asked about the popper. He told me to look behind some merchandise on a certain shelf and I found them there enclosed in cardboard boxes with different numbers printed on the outside. “Do they still make the silver bodied ones with green hatching,” I asked Bill, holding out little hope. “I don’t know,” Bill answered. “Take a look for yourself.”

There were orange ones, then black ones, then chartreuse ones. The next box was labeled “style number 38.” When I opened it, there they were; rows of the old fly I knew so well in my youth, the ones I had bought at Nunnery Hardware retail store. I bought a handful.

In the early 1950s Gene Nunnery determined that the bream bugs of his day needed reshaping. The cork bodies should be slimmer. He designed some and sent the prototypes to Falls Bait Co. to produce them to his liking. Barrett Nunnery Hardware had the cards, on which each dozen flies were displayed, printed at Dement Printing Co. in Meridian. The cards were sent to Falls which shipped large quantities of the final product back to Barrett Nunnery Wholesale Hardware where they were distributed to retail hardware stores within a 125 mile radius of Meridian, including Nunnery Hardware retail store. In those early days hardware stores were where one bought fishing tackle as there were no specialty tackle shops or large discount stores.

The right to produce and distribute the Bar Nun Popper was later sold to the Gaines Co. in Pennsylvania. The fishing tackle market eventually was dominated by discount stores, tackle shops and mail order businesses, so Barrett Nunnery no longer distributed fishing tackle, except for one item; the Bar Nun popper. A few years ago, the Meridian wholesaler finally closed its doors and another chapter in the storied life of the Bar Nun bluegill lure passed into history.



Return to yesterday



On my first outing with my new bugs, I felt considerable nostalgia as I tied a clinch knot in the four-pound test leader and pulled it tight against the hook eye of the colorful silver and green bug with its black and yellow tail. I let the little cork and feather fly dangle for a moment, its thread-like white rubber legs shimmering in the morning light. Then I pulled the fly line in large loops from my dad’s old South Bend Oreno Matic reel, the one he bought in 1941, and whipped the rod fore and aft, false casting to gain distance. Finally the little popper sailed out over the pond and dropped to rest on the water.

No fish seemed interested in the offering. But several casts later in a different spot, the familiar “smack” of a bluegill prompted me to lift the rod tip and set the hook. Round and round the little fish went, pulling sideways as bream do, and coming at last to surrender at my feet. I chuckled at the little fellow’s zeal. He had a considerable mouth full of the popping bug, it being almost too big for his bite.

My mind’s eye saw a thousand of his kind from a time many, many years ago, not only on my fly line but on my father’s line as well. At that moment I knew how good it was to be back in this place called home and to remember that it was also home to that little silver fly that I associated so closely with Daddy. How satisfying to once again cast the Bar Nun popper to the big blunt-nosed bluegills.

Sometimes I can close my eyes and see my khaki clad father at the other end of the boat with his favorite silver and green popper on his line, dropping it softly in the still water along the shoreline.