Fishing Adventures on Nesowadnehunk Lake

By Tom Remington

Several years back, I used to travel to Nesowadnehunk Lake in early June for a long weekend of fly-fishing with friends. We would camp out at the Wilderness Campground on the south end of the lake. It was a good group and always promised to bring unusual events that stick with a soul for a lifetime.

As I begin to write my stories and retell the events of some of those memorable outings, sadness creeps into my thoughts as I realize that of the about a dozen of us who made the trip, three are no longer with us – all three passing on before their time.

One of my stories involves Vernon Inman and his brother Milt. Vernon died just over a year ago in a tragic plane crash while being flown out of a remote Maine pond after a weekend of fishing. His good friend Harlan, also a companion on the spring trip to Nesowadnehunk, died in the same plane crash.

To know the Inman brothers is to love them and anyone who knew them realized that they loved a good story and a laugh. When Milt and Vernon got together as they did often in their outdoor adventures, boring was never a word that would be used to describe any of the events.

Both men love to fish and I think that for Milt in particular, the fish love for him to catch them because it always seemed that he never had much difficulty in landing fish in a boat. I have been in the same boat with him and we fished with the same gear and he could catch as many fish as he wanted while I couldn’t manage a nibble. Once I even used his rod and fly immediately after he had caught several fish, yet I could manage only frustration and confusion.

Milt ties flies for his own use and is very good at it as well. He is eager to share what he has tied with family and friends but I still think he has a public fly book and a private fly book – one that few others have ever seen. He has also taught several people to tie through organized classes and privately in a one on one setting. I have spent some time with him as he generously taught me a few things and walked me through a couple attempts at creating my own bug. He told me once that part of the thrill of fly tying was to actually catch a fish on something that you created. It gives one a sense of accomplishment. I can attest to that feeling, as I remember catching something with a fly that I tied – an alder branch hanging high overhead next to the riverbank.

For whatever the reasons, I believe that the older I become there seem to be fewer and fewer “characters”. It’s true. They are dying off along with the World War II veterans. Soon our world will be dull and boring because these characters will no longer exist. Are characters born or do they evolve?

Make no mistake about it Vernon and Milt Inman are both characters and they are hellish good fishermen to boot. People like Milt and Vern, exemplify their trait by their uncanny ability to recognize traits and personalities of other people. As the expression goes, they can read them like a book. Not only are they good judges of character in people but because of the years of experience fishing and hunting, they can pretty much tell when someone is spinning a yarn. If you are one of the unfortunate ones to have been drawn in to their schemes unwittingly, they can set you up and play you like a bad violin.

One lesson I learned a long time ago was to not believe everything either one of them told you. They played their games so well, even the closest of friends never knew if they were being set up or not. Both men could tell in an instant if you were prime for the picking. You had to be on your toes all the time and even then most times you were outwitted.

This is all leading up to a story. One spring several of us made our yearly pilgrimage to Nesowadnehunk Lake for fishing. As is often the case when there are more than one or two people in a group fishing, all ideas and resources are pooled together to find out what fly is hot and what is not. This trip was no exception.

Nearby to our campsite, was another camper and fisherman and we all noticed that whenever our group was around camp and whenever the discussion involved what kind of fly any of us were using, he seemed to bend an ear pretty hard in our direction. Little did I know that as usual, Milt and Vern had picked up on this guy long before any of the rest of us had.

Any good fisherman that ties flies would bring their tying equipment with them when they went on a trip such as this one. We had finished supper and as dark settled in over the campsite, Milt went into his tent and brought out his fly tying gear and promptly went to work. He had been spinning his yarns one small sentence at a time baiting this man in the nearby campsite.

He had also convinced most of us that were in his camp that he knew what fly the fish were taking. He said he was going to tie everybody the same fly that he had used on the first day that had caught him so many fish. As he began to tie while a couple of us held flashlights and lanterns, a small crowd of us campers began to gather around. The nearby camper was waiting in the shadows hoping that someone would invite him in.

Once Milt and Vern had the table set, they completed their act by asking this guy if he would like to buy one of Milt’s concoctions. That was all it took – hook, line and sinker. This guy wasn’t even fighting the pull of the line. He was simply following it all the way to the end of the rod.

He laid out his cash on the picnic table and quickly scooped up his custom fly and departed. Within minutes he was back with some more cash. He wanted two more if Milt was willing to tie him two more. Milt obliged and began to tie two more just like the first one.

While he waited he began to spin some yarns and even to the novice such as myself, it didn’t take long to realize that not only was this guy a bad storyteller but he was an outright liar. We all know that fishermen spin stories and tell yarns. Sometimes we even believe the stories being exchanged but this guy was a joke. I won’t even bore you with the details about what he was telling us but it involved him paying several hundred dollars for one fly that caught the only fish that was a world record blah, blah, blah. Oh, yeah!

As I said, being novices at setting people up, as most of us were we got bored with this guy almost immediately and became distracted with other things. I noticed though that Milt and Vern were still giving this guy much more attention than he deserved.

While we were preoccupied with this guy’s lies, Vernon had made his way into the tent and had brought out a small tape recorder that he had hidden in a small bag. He turned it to record before leaving the tent and had discreetly placed it on the picnic table in front of this guy and then began to pump him for more lies.

None of the rest of us had realized what he was doing and when the dust had cleared and this guy had moved back to his own campsite, we all began discussing the events of the evening and having a good laugh. The laughter broke into a roar when Vernon pressed the play button on his tape recorder. Who goes fishing with a tape recorder? You need ask?

These are the events that make fishing and hunting and being in the outdoors memorable. Sharing them with family and friends is what life is all about in my opinion.