Sportsman's Legacy

by William G. Tapply

  William G. Tapply was the author of more than four dozen books and over 600 magazine articles. He wrote thirty-one New England-based novels, including Outwitting Trolls, Bitch Creek, and Third Strike, the latter co-written with Philip R. Craig. Tapply’s handbook, The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit, continues to be used in writing classes and workshops across the country

  He also published more than a dozen books on fly fishing and the outdoors, most recently Every Day Was Special. He was a Contributing Editor for Field & Stream and Upland Almanac and a columnist for American Angler. His articles, stories and essays on writing, fishing, gardening, education and other subjects appeared in dozens of national publications.

  He was a professor of English at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., where he taught writing for fifteen years and was the Writer in Residence. He and his wife, novelist Vicki Stiefel, ran The Writers Studio at Chickadee Farm. Tapply lived and wrote in Hancock, New Hampshire, until his death in 2009. Visitors are still welcome at his websites: WilliamGTapply.com and SportsmansLegacy.com.

  SPORTSMAN’S LEGACY

  BOOKS BY WILLIAM G. TAPPLY

  BRADY COYNE MYSTERY NOVELS

  Death at Charity’s Point

  The Dutch Blue Error

  Follow the Sharks

  The Marine Corpse

  Dead Meat

  The Vulgar Boatman

  A Void in Hearts

  Dead Winter

  Client Privilege

  The Spotted Cats

  Tight Lines

  The Snake Eater

  The Seventh Enemy

  Close to the Bone

  Cutter’s Run

  Muscle Memory

  Scar Tissue

  Past Tense

  A Fine Line

  Shadow of Death

  Nervous Water

  Out Cold

  One Way Ticket

  Hell Bent

  Outwitting Trolls

  STONEY CALHOUN

  MYSTERY NOVELS

  Bitch Creek

  Gray Ghost

  Dark Tiger

  BRADY COYNE/J.W. JACKSON

  MYSTERY NOVELS

  First Light

  Second Sight

  Third Strike

  OTHER FICTION

  The Nomination, a thriller

  NONFICTION

  Those Hours Spent Outdoors

  Opening Day and Other Neuroses

  Home Water Near and Far

  Sportsman’s Legacy

  A Fly-fishing Life

  Bass Bug Fishing

  Upland Days

  Pocket Water

  The Orvis Pocket Guide to Fly

  Fishing for Bass

  Gone Fishin’

  Trout Eyes

  Upland Autumn

  Every Day Was Special

  OTHER

  The Elements of Mystery Fiction, a resource for aspiring mystery writers

  SPORTSMAN’S LEGACY

  William G. Tapply

  White River Press

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  © 2011 Vicki Stiefel Tapply. All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced or used in any form, or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  First published 1993 by Lyons & Burford, New York.

  Expanded version published 2011 by White River Press

  White River Press

  P.O. Box 3561

  Amherst, MA 01004

  www.whiteriverpress.com

  Cover designed by Blake Ricciardi

  Photos on pages 181 - 185 courtesy of American Angler magazine

  All other photos courtesy of the Tapply family

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-935052-22-7

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-935052-47-0

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Tapply, William G., 1940-2009

  Sportsman’s legacy / William G. Tapply

  p. cm.

  Originally published: New York, NY : Lyons & Burford, c1993.

  ISBN 978-1-935052-22-7 (pbk.)

  1. Tapply, William G. 2. Hunting stories. 3. Fishing stories. 4. Sportswriters--United States--Biography. 5. Fathers and sons. 6. Tapply, H. G. (Horace G.), 1910- I. Title. SK17.T29A3 2010

  799.092--dc22

  [B]

  2009049284

  Dedicated with love, admiration, and appreciation to Muriel Tapply, my mother, the other (and dad would say the better) half of this equation and a skilled sportswoman in her own right, who believes that fathers and sons should fish and hunt together as often as possible, and who makes the world’s best applesauce cake, and who had the uncommon wisdom to pick out the right father for me.

  “TAP” AND MURIEL TAPPLY 1967

  BILL AND MIKE, 1987

  CONTENTS

  Dad by Mike Tapply

  He Called Me “Babe” by Vicki Stiefel Tapply

  Introduction

  1. Last Hunt

  2. 1918

  3. Partners

  4. Invisible Writing

  5. Wild Trout

  6. The Sure Thing

  7. Ex-Plores and Expotitions

  8. Into The Woods

  9. Field And Stream Grouse

  10. Gone Fishing

  And Furthermore...1994—2009

  The Phil and Bill Show—a dialogue between

  Philip R. Craig and William G. Tapply

  My Friend Phil Craig

  Burt at Ten

  A Birthday Trout

  Tap’s Nearenuf

  Gone Fishin’~2

  Summer Solstice 2009

  BILL AND HIS DAD, MID 1990S

  THE TAPPLY FAMILY, LATE 1950S, TOOK PART IN ARCHERY COMPETITIONS; TAP, MURIEL, MARTHA (BILL’S SISTER), BILL

  DAD

  Ours was seldom the first house to acquire anything the neighborhood kids would envy. In the 70s, we didn’t have cable TV or a pinball machine in our basement. Our first microwave did not show up until halfway through the Clinton era. We had horseshoe pits in the backyard and a thriving vegetable garden, but they were of little interest to the neighborhood kids.

  Don’t misunderstand—we lived quite comfortably. But things were more often bought for their utility, not the novelty of ownership.

  So I remember quite vividly the summer we got a canoe, which, to my six-year old sensibilities, seemed both novel and extravagant. She was one of many former rentals being sold by the Concord boathouse to make room for a new fleet. With the canoe strapped to the roof of our hatchback, Dad and I eased our way back through town. I thought perhaps now the neighborhood would see the Tapplys in an awesome new light.

  Turns out that no one particularly cared about a used aluminum boat. It didn’t even have a motor.

  The next day, Dad asked if I wanted to take the canoe out fishing. I suppose we had been fishing together before that, but I have no distinct memory of it. However, I recall this trip easily: digging up night crawlers from the garden and collecting them in a coffee can; helping Dad tie down the big canoe to the roof of our small car; and the brief drive to Warner’s Pond. It was just a mile from our house.

  There, I remember launching the canoe for the first time. With half the boat in the water, I climbed in and Dad pushed it afloat, spryly jumping aboard at the last moment. The canoe teetered briefly as he settled in, and then we were centered. Our new craft cut through the water effortlessly, and as we moved along the shoreline, reflections in the water of clouds and trees were swallowed by the eddies spinning off Dad’s paddle strokes.

  Setting the paddle aside, Dad whistled under his breath and strung a worm on a hook. He cast the line and handed the rod to me. Soon enough, we were ca
tching bluegill and perch and sunfish and largemouth bass. By the time we ran out of worms, dusk had set in. I had not noticed. It was nearly dark by the time we paddled back to shore.

  The neighborhood kids never knew what they were missing.

  Memory is a funny thing, and I am undoubtedly mashing together snippets of many different trips to Warner’s Pond into a seemingly cohesive recollection of When We Got the Canoe. In fact, we must have had a hundred little adventures on that pond by the time I turned eighteen. Most of them have fused together into a single composite of me in the bow, Dad in the stern, a rod in my hand, current gently lapping the gunwales. There is an odd timelessness to all of this, due in part, I think, to the lack of clues that put any of our trips in historical context. The water and sky and shoreline did not change much from one year to the next. The white seat cushions we bought with the canoe are still the ones kept in the shed. We never listened to the radio while fishing, so I cannot associate a memorable Red Sox game with a particular fishing excursion. It was simply Dad and I, and while we were out fishing, nothing seemed to change.

  However, from Dad’s perspective in the back of the canoe, watching me fish at age six, then twelve, then eighteen . . . I imagine the changes were remarkable.

  As the years passed, we scouted other ponds and rivers in the area “ex-plores,” Dad called them). I graduated from a spin-casting outfit to an Orvis 6-weight. Down the pockmarked road from adolescence to young adulthood, we remained fishing partners.

  On occasion, he and my sister, Melissa, had fishing adventures of their own (after one trip, she proclaimed herself a “crappie” fisherman, much to Dad’s delight). In time, young sister Sarah had her time in the canoe as well. On land, she gravitated to Dad’s fly tying bench, perfecting her version of the Wooly Bugger.

  Dad enjoyed being the guide whenever we took out the canoe. He scanned the water for surface activity while easing the canoe within precise casting distance of fallen trees and lily pads. He was not chatty. His actions were deliberate, his senses tuned to the environment. He was hunting.

  As a youngster, I was far more distractible. Poor Dad, captive in his own canoe, often became my go-to resource when I was confounded by life’s big questions: Is it possible—possible!—that we might catch a sturgeon today? (After all, they are the largest freshwater fish known to man.) How do batteries work? Why can’t you divide by zero? When can I start drinking coffee?

  Thankfully—for both of us—my instincts took over at the slap of a rising fish or a tug on my line. While I learned everything I know about fishing from my father and grandfather, they could not have taught me the intense focus that takes over when you suspect a fish is showing interest in your bait or lure or fly. I’m pleased to have discovered that gene—the hunting gene—is present in me, too.

  A good fishing adventure is never soon forgotten, and we had plenty: landing a bounty of albacore off Cape Ann when I was fifteen, catching immense trout in the high mountain lakes of Oregon after I graduated college, and exploring the ponds and streams of New Hampshire after Dad settled up in Hancock. But perhaps our most memorable adventure occurred on Warner’s Pond, just down the street from our house, right around my 10th birthday. We had been on the pond dozens of times, but on this trip we made a discovery: Camouflaged by a fringe of marsh grass, we found a tributary feeding the pond. We poled through the grass and ventured up a windy, narrow stream. Large oaks and maples hung over us from the banks, blocking out most of the sun. This secret waterway held me in a state of wonder. At Dad’s beckoning, I cast ahead of the boat, craning to see what the next bend would reveal.

  Well into this excursion, I felt a pull on my line. I jerked back the rod. The line went taught and the rod tip bowed and quivered. I worked the reel excitedly. The fish struggled and surfaced, and Dad shouted, “Trout!”

  Trout indeed—a respectable 11” rainbow—my very first. Dad was overjoyed, and for me it was surely his reaction that signified the importance of this event.

  Of course, not all of our trips were rainbow trout and tight lines. We spent more than one raw, drizzly Saturday afternoon on the pond. Aquatic life was nowhere to be found. Slate gray clouds hid the sun, preventing reflections from playing on the water’s surface. In these days before Gore-Tex, I ended up soggy, cold, and disinterested.

  Dismal weather did not seem to bother Dad. He insisted it didn’t bother the fish either, and yet I don’t recall any of these trips being particularly prosperous. For Dad, getting out on the water and wetting a line could salvage an otherwise miserable day. Taking one of his children with him seemed to guarantee a brighter forecast.

  For several years during my boyhood, my parents dropped me off to spend a week with my grandfather, H. G. “Tap” Tapply, and my grandmother, Muriel.

  I was too young to appreciate Grampa’s dry wit, and he might have been too old to identify with all of my childish musings, but we enjoyed fishing together. Grampa would paddle our canoe along the shoreline of Lake Winnipesaukee, pointing at targets for my lure, and I demonstrated an ability to get “close enough” most the time. All the practice on Warner’s Pond paid off here, as competence earned his praise (common sense also earned his praise, but since that was in short supply, the two mostly offset each other).

  Off the boat, we often explored the nearby woods. Here and there, Grampa would identify the call of a bird, point out animal tracks, or find something incredible, like the shed skin of a snake. Even now, I have yet to meet anyone so knowledgeable and attuned to all the workings of the natural environment.

  If Gramma did not join our adventures, she was likely dominating a Bridge tournament or preparing an elaborate supper centered around a pot roast and finished with lemon squares or mince pie. Outside the house, Gramma had an ability to stand in a vast clover patch and spot a four-leaf clover so quickly that I had to wonder whether magic was involved.

  The two of them were a terrific match for each other, and we grandchildren were lucky to have them in our lives.

  My dad wrote Sportsman’s Legacy to honor the time he spent fishing and hunting with his father. But what is the legacy? Strictly speaking, it is anything that is passed down from an ancestor. To that end, my father learned an awful lot from my grandfather. Dad had the good fortune to spend time among the most renowned hunters and fishermen of that era. He was keen to observe and learn from them, and groomed to join their ranks.

  Both Grampa and Dad were prolific writers, and their writing could also be considered their legacy. They left behind enough published stories and advice to line the shelves of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. In the essay “Invisible Writing,” we see how my grandfather’s red pen altered a young Bill Tapply’s approach to writing—striking adverbs for a single, powerful verb, and banishing ostentatious “vocabulary” words altogether.

  Surely, Dad had some natural ability to write well—people have suggested there must be a writing “gene” in my lineage—but it was never effortless for him. Writing “invisibly” requires self-discipline, patience, and invention. Dad practiced the skills he learned for decades before finding success with a publisher. Without Grampa’s instruction, I suspect there would be far fewer William G. Tapply books on my shelf. I would contend that the legacy is not the writings themselves, but how the writing came to be.

  Sportsman’s Legacy was published in 1993. I was still in college. Grampa was still alive. So was Dad. The book carried a different weight for me back then. It was a celebration of the amazing partnership that my dad and grandfather shared—one that I could relate to in a unique and intimate way.

  I have come back to this book again and again over the years. Each time I seem to pick up on something new—maybe it is just an odd story detail that strikes me in a new way, but more often, something hinted at between the lines that gives me pause. This is what it means to be a good father. This is important stuff.

  Sportman’s Legacy is a personal treasure, and I am thrilled to see it in print again. When I think of t
he August afternoon Grampa and I tried in vain to out-paddle a thunderstorm sweeping across Lake Winnipesaukee, or remember any those dreary and fruitless fishing excursions with Dad—that is when I miss their company the most. How fortunate that I can return to the words on these pages, and practically hear them in my dad’s voice.

  I hope that fathers and sons and daughters alike enjoy these stories, and every so often, pick up on something between the lines.

  Mike Tapply

  August 2011

  ABOVE: SARAH, MELISSA, BILL, MIKE, 2009; BELOW: MIKE AND BILL, 2008

  BILL & VICKI 1992

  HE CALLED ME “BABE”

  In the summer of 1991, I was intensely serious about getting published as a writer of fiction. Of course I had a day job—I managed a scuba dive shop. At noon, I’d leave the scuba shop and cross the street to the best sub shop in the world—Joe’s.

  Joe, the owner, loved to expound on cars and food and relationships, especially relationships.

  “Ya havta meet Mike’s pop,” he’d say, pointing to a fresh-faced kid building subs behind the counter. “He’s a writer, too!” he’d bark with enthusiasm, as if Mike’s dad and I were from a rare branch of the human race. And poor Mike. He’d roll his eyes and blush and never utter a word.