Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 24, 1995 TAG: 9507250014
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN/OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: BOLAR LENGTH: Long
Cleek lives high on the Jackson River, in a green valley between Warm Springs and Monterey, his 1840-vintage house, with white sides and a rust-red roof, close enough to the river to hear the water dance across rounded rocks.
He is 78 and has lived here since age 7, which was about the time he became a fly fisherman - who wouldn't with a stream full of trout at your doorstep?
Cleek never lost interest. He turned fly fishing into a vocation, and now it is part of his retirement.
``I fish some every day,'' he said.
Two seasons ago, Cleek opened his place to pay fishing, calling the venture ``Jackson River Fly Fishing.'' For $20 you can spend the day casting flies to about a mile of the Jackson and a stretch of its tributary, Bolar Run, which joins the river behind Cleek's house, just beyond his three gardens.
``I am retired, and it is about the only way I have of making any money,'' he said. ``I wish I had thought of it years ago.''
For 12 years, Cleek was a fishing pro at Cascades Creek, which boils up out of The Homestead's Cascades golf course and crashes through a gorge of waterfalls, wild flowers and wily rainbow trout. He taught fly casting at the Cascades, often to the rich and famous, and was invited to fish all over the world.
Cleek has more of a crusty look now, because he no longer needs to impress anybody or anything, other than the trout. His bony knees are accented by a pair of shorts, his stubly beard is two days old, his eyes squint through a frame of crow's feet etched into his leathery face by thousands of suns sparkling on the riffles.
Other than that, things haven't changed much along the Jackson. The valley has escaped growth, industry, overpopulation and development. The big difference is that the water no longer just contains the native brook trout that have been finning about in the river since the Ice Age.
``When I was a kid, all it had was brook trout in it,'' Cleek said. ``I used to come down here at 6 o'clock in the morning and catch some for breakfast.''
In the early days, Cleek made a fly rod out of a sapling cut from the stream bank. Before there was a serious road up the valley, anglers were coming from Clarksburg, W.Va., bringing their fancy bamboo rods and staying in a nearby home. They soon discovered that the Cleek kid knew the lairs of the biggest brookies.
``The next trip from Clarksburg, they brought me a bamboo rod,'' Cleek said. ``I caught all kinds of trout with it.''
In addition to brook trout, the Jackson now holds rainbows, browns and, its newest entry, a McConaughy strain of rainbows that run upstream from Lake Moomaw.
Cleek tangled with a 41/2-pound McConaughy this summer, a fish with the shape of a rainbow, but with the silver sides and wanderlust of a salmon.
``It liked to wore me out,'' Cleek said of the battle that stripped his line into the backing, only the fourth time in some 70 years of fly fishing that has happened.
``He went up and went down and went everywhere. He was bleeding in the gills; that's the only reason I kept him.''
The stretch of the Jackson that Cleek is lord over isn't restricted to catch and release, although most fly anglers who fish it preach and practice that philosophy.
``I don't care whether they release them or not,'' Cleek said. ``There are too damn many of them anyway.''
On a good day, you can hook 100 trout, Cleek said, but hot July days seldom can be classified as ``good,'' and that was the kind Bill Meneeley of Charlottesville was stuck with recently.
Lacking a hatch to entice the trout to leave the stream bottom, Meneeley, the football coach at St. Anne's-Belfield, tied on a weighted Hare's Ear. Cleek watched as Meneeley carefully let the current wash the offering into the deep holes.
``Move down a little bit,'' Cleek said, becoming an instructor again. He still gives lessons - although few ask - but the advice comes free and frequent, whether the occasion is casting or driving the narrow road up Bolar Run. He likes the fishing fast and the driving slow.
At one pool, Cleek took the rod from Meneeley, and began covering the water rapidly with casts that were quick and accurate. Many fly anglers move slowly, egret-like, holding their long, thin rod in one hand and a coil of line in the other, looking, stalking and occasionally activating the rod with a swoosh through the air that sends the loop of line across the water. Not Cleek.
``I can fish the whole damn river in an hour,'' he said.
At a pool on the downside of a bridge, where the water cuts deep, Cleek sat in an old kitchen chair and smoked and watched Meneeley cast. That's where Meneeley hooked and lost a fat trout, then landed a rainbow that had a wide, pink band along its sides two or three shades deeper than that of a hatchery trout.
``If they don't catch fish, they don't pay nothing,'' said Cleek. ``I stay with them until they catch fish.''
The stay is abbreviated during the late winter-early spring. That's when the trout get active, about the time the sap begins to run in the sugar trees, sending tourists up U.S. 220 toward Monterey where stacks of hot cakes await at the annual maple festival.
The action slows June through August, except for the last couple hours of daylight when a hatch is coming off the water. It picks up again in September and is productive through early winter, until the cold gets into the water from melting snow and freezing nights, and the trout stay on the bottom like stones.
For Meneeley, even hot July isn't bad.
``For me, the best part of coming over here is the fact that there aren't lots of other people,'' he said. ``I think it is great-looking water, and clearly there are lots of fish in here.''
Added Cleek, ``I've fished all over the world, and it is the best fly fishing I've ever seen.''
Information on the pay fishery and reservations are available from Cleek at 540-839-2759.
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by CNB