...appears to be a hook and deer hair, with a bit of guinea fowl hackle up front.

I'm assuming as a skater it does basically that.I watched an old clip of Lee Wulff fishing with Curt Gowdy "skating"big bushy flies across the surface for Atlantic salmon.Cool stuff.

I don't think Al ever did put it in print. I have one copy of his old catalog and this pattern wasn't there. This was meant to make a ripple wake in the dark, at night, casting across and dragging down. Actually that's just my assumption. Al didn't put anyone on.


I knew Al. A little. He knew my name. I lent him a boat once. For a month or two. An d I spent a weekend with him once, at his place, talking about fishing flies boats and cameras. He was a multi-talented guy. Humor may not have been a strong point. He was detail-oriented and liked to do everything gung ho as best he could. At all times.

At one of his tying seminars in Bozeman he told the story of a Japanese collector who sent a bunch of money and told him to charge him double for every fly, because he wanted Al to take extra care in order to do his best work.

Al said he just pulled the order out of his regular bins, because he never did tie at anything less than the "best he could."

Al's garage had finished sheetrock walls with lots of neatly organized shelving. In summer the hunting gear was stowed there. In Winter the fishing stuff. Al tied in the basement but they did a lot in garage. They built nifty tree stands for archery hunters. Did they have a drop ladder? I can't remember.

That garage also had a large number of big color 8x10 prints of Al and Erik releasing big 24" inch or larger brown trout. There used to be a lot of them in the Beaverhead. I assume the Skater was for zeroing in on those really big ones.

:=))