Gandfather Gallian Beats Bataan To Match the Hatch

My grandfather was Robert Lee Gallian. He was not my biological. I loved him even though because he was the only one I knew to be. The rest of the family hated him because he wasn’t apt to loan them money interest free and fully expected the principle back. After grandma Gallian’s first husband, Joe Silveria, a dairyman of the Santa Clara valley and father to my mother had passed, grandma’s second marriage was to Bob Gallian before he volunteered for WWll.

He left me with vivid recollections. It was about the time I was in first grade he would declare stuff to me like, “If you ever get the chance to cheat on your taxes and don’t, you’re no grandson of mine!”, and "I'll go to hell first before I tell my sins to a professional fool". That’s tough stuff for a six year old. I knew I had to really grasp these things for he would not speak them frivolously.

There was also the time he showed me where the key to the house was kept outside and the one for the liquor cabinet in the house. That was so I should never be perceived as an obsequious minor, desperate to aquire alcohol. Just in case I needed a drink. Gramps was a pal. I was sixteen then.

He was sent home from the Philippines honorably after the Japanese put four bullet holes in his leg near Cebu. Don’t know where he got the money but he picked up a new convertible and took grandmother motoring around the western United States. This is how he developed a passion for sport fishing. Seeing fish ladders built along side of spillways of the then, new damn construction and visiting the Smith, Rogue and Russian Rivers fascinated him. Also he frequented San Diego’s Shelter Island to charter sport fishing vessels bound for Mexican waters after tuna and marlin.

He worked in shipping and receiving for a retail furniture outlet in the Santa Clara Valley. He acquired two Japanese-American friends, one he worked with named Tomo and Tomo’s friend, Mr. Yamaguchi, who owned a drug store. Together all three would cut bait, fish and drink sake. I was there, I saw it. And how they kept their fingers, I’ll never know.

Bob Gallian taught me how to tie a trout fly. Somehow, he found the old Millpond Lake. It was used at the turn of the previous century to float redwood logs in, as they awaited their turn to be cut and planed at the waters other end. It was fed by a guided tributary off the Soquel Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Then it was owned by Rob Roy.

Roy had the pond stalked with trout and grandpa would have me practice my fly casting there on weekends. But he’d try to teach me fishing on the creek.

One needed to be where the native wild fish were. The fish were in shallow pools close to currents and there sought cover under rock ledges and overhangs. They awaited the currents to bring them insects overhead for the taking. The fish expected this at the rising and setting of the sun when the insects behaved this way and the fish had protection of twilight. The fish could learn. They were the more wily and skittish for it.

We were creek side by 5 p.m. The bugs weren’t mosquitoes.

They looked more like white gnats. There were millions of them, like a swarming cloud over the stream. I guess they mated then and the eggs hatched out of the water in the morning. Granddad explained it was our job to determine the kind of fly out there the trout used as a primary food source and match the pattern to tie. You’d have to be a bug guy to know all this stuff.

We went back to my grandparents’ cabin near the lake. He pulled out a tome with pictures about tying dry flies and I saw a picture of one called a White Miller that looked similar. Grandfather agreed and tied one on a size 14 hook. He critiqued my first and had me practice several more times. I drank a crème soda and grandpa had a shot of J D with a black coffee back. He smoked Kents. I drank sodas.

Grandpa could deliver a fly flawlessly. He could under/overcast when cliff sides and plant growth precluded a traditional backcast. Always landing what he caught, Grandfather would cut the barbs of his hooks, then smooth away burrs. He practiced catch and release before it was popular.

Years later, after I moved away, my father eulogized to me on the phone how the sun rose and set for me grandmother because of Bob Gallian. And he imagined it always would. Grandma’s world had ended. Grandfather died of a massive heart attack in the bed of another woman. A bottle of Jack Daniels and a pack of smokes were on the night stand.

Copyright 2010