O.K. but Bill thought he heard a plane land atPlumer’s so we stayed till noon, staking out theHome Run so that they don’t disturb “our” HoneyHole chars. We ate our cheese and onion sand-wiches at the first pool and had siesta for an hour.Wind had stopped and we expected the fish to be

stale all day, so we decided to go for a hike upthe Melville to the upper lake where we sawmoose last year. That was a hike of 3 hours inone direction. We saw ptarmigan on our wayback.

The blueberries and bearberries wereripe and everywhere. Blueberries tasted great.We ate a lot. At camp we washed and preparedthe four grayling and potato salad. It wasgood. I did not feel like going to fish again. Wesat and relaxed.

July 21Another great day. 15 degrees Celsius

and sunny at 6 o’clock. We had porridge andwent fishing downstream from O.K. Therewere lots of fish everywhere. Large ones couldbe seen in groups of 20 - 30 all along the shore.They were not taking readily. I left a smallmale in an enclosure we made - for lunch.

We found another fresh pile of bear shiton Grayling Pool. We fished till noon and wentback to get our fish, but it was gone! We did notwant to catch another one and had soup &sandwiches. After lunch and a siesta, I wentinto Honey Hole with mask and snorkel.

My God! What we saw the other daywas nothing in comparison to this. Fish in sev-eral layers. Large males 20 - 25 lb range werecovering every inch of Honey Hole. Bill esti-mated 1200 fish from Melville Pool throughHoney Hole. I stayed a long time a foot awayfrom some. They did not mind my presence.Colors were beautiful on some...

Males are on the bottom, or close to it,and upper layers are females. I have never seenanything like this - even on film. I held myselfin place by holding onto rocks and justwatched in awe. One grayling came to investi-gate me and nibbled hair on my finger. I hadto get out when, even in my wet suit, I got cold.

When Faruk Ekich speaks of theCoppermine, it leaves no doubt thatthis man is absolutely in love with

this river. Whether he is describing the gold-en dusting on the shoulders of a particularlybrilliant Arctic char or recalling the intensity ofthe gaze in the eyes of a Peregrine falcon, hispassion is almost palpable. He has beenrecording his observations of the flora andfauna of the Arctic tundra in journals for thepast twelve years. Since making his first fly-infloat of the Coppermine River in 1990 with his

friends Bill Mitchel and Dennis Kulhanek, he returnsto it year after year. Although Ekich speaks of theCoppermine as if he were its honorary river keeper,he will tell you in sincerity that he believes theCoppermine is Manitou’s river.

Over the course of twelve years and twelve raft

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July 20, 1998 — Coppermine River, NunavutWe were up at 6 o’clock. From our sleeping bags

we could see the tents of the Minnesotans on theMelville’s ridge. We prepared our Royal Breakfastand watched them pack up. They left shortly before9:00. We fished Home Run again. I fished from

Bull’s Eye to O.K. and Bill from the tail end ofHoney Hole to Bull’s Eye. Fish were not taking eventhough we could see them in the shallows and evenin O.K. tailing. I took 5 fish of which one was amale of nice color.

We were supposed to go fishing below the

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FARUK OF THE NORTHMichael Simon

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makes the annual pilgrimage to the Arctic primarilyfor the opportunity to cast his Spey flies, tube fliesand Waller Wakers for the magnificent specimens ofSalvelinus alpinus which abound in the Coppermine.However, as a diversion to the enticing, hooking andfighting of these char (which Ekich believes surpasseseven Atlantic salmon and Ouananiche for their fightingqualities), he takes a sabbatical and makes a shortjourney to Bosna Creek, a tiny tributary to theCoppermine, and angles for grayling in the mannerhe learned as a boy in the former Yugoslav state ofBosna. That “manner” can best be described as “farand fine” — with a small hand-tied hackled dry flydelivered at the end of a braided horse hair lineterminating in a single strand.

I asked Ekich to show me how he tied theseminuscule flies without the support of the vise, bobbinand hackle pliers that we mortals depend on, and hepleasantly indulged me. After collecting the materials,Ekich attached the slender thread to a #16 hook;English, I believe. In mere moments, he had attachedthree fibers for a tail and dubbed a slender, taperedrust-colored fur body. After adding a tiny dark dunhackle, the little fly quickly and effortlessly materializedfrom his fingers. Ekich glanced up with his twinklingbrown eyes and explained in his charming, soft central-European voice that this little fly was a virtual replicaof the pattern he was taught to tie as a boy in his

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trips down his beloved Coppermine River, ritualshave evolved, one by one. The longest standing ritualinvolves the feeding of his camp “landlords,” Chip andDale, the sik-siks (the ground squirrels of Nunavut),the bald and golden eagles, Lapland sparrows, (a pairbrought their young to camp to be fed), and even thegrayling of “Bosna Creek.” For the sik-siks, Ekich haspacked-in dried fruit, nuts and porridge. The eagles(and the seagulls) feast on the remains of the fewchar Ekich and his companions keep for dinner. Deerflies which seem to abound in the Arctic, are swattedand collected, then tossed to the eager grayling of theBosna Pool.

Then there is the ritual of the “adult beverages.” Atgreat sacrifice, precious kilos of the limited-weightallowance are reserved for a few, very choice liquids.A fifth of Dalwhinnie single malt Scotch is sipped inthe glow of an Arctic evening as Ekich reflects on theday’s events and records them in his journal. Theother precious bottle is a mature vintage of a wine mostof us only read about in a Sotheby’s auction listing.For example, in 1998 Ekich and his friend Bill Blatchcelebrated a memorable mid-July day with a bottle of1982 Chateau La Tour. Blatch is a wine broker fromBordeaux and Ekich’s frequent partner on theseArctic expeditions.

The ritual even closer to my heart than the “adultbeverage” ritual is the “Bosna Creek ritual.” Ekich

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own particular needs and style oftying. For his first model vise, hemade the wheel larger and engi-neered new jaws from steel witha hardness that would not damagehis beloved Partridge hooks. TheRegal vise was the model for hissecond design. For this one, Farukfabricated a spring calculated togive constant force to the jaws. Healso added a simple thread-restarm.

Ekich has handcrafted a num-ber of other basic tools whichfrequently are simply angle mod-ifications of existing modelsadjusted to suit his tying style.This modus operandi wouldapply to Ekich’s whip finisherand dubbing crook but hisunique dubbing needle servesanother function beyond the application of head varnishor the picking-out of a Hare’s ear body. Ekich’s bodkinwas fabricated from a short length from the mid-sectionof his Orvis Battenkill rod. I believe he broke it on alarge salmon whilst fishing the Petit Saguenay. Onceagain Ekich’s eyes twinkle as he tells me that thedubbing needle serves as a daily reminder of his“foolishness”.

All of these devices are testaments to Ekich's passionfor improvement, but the real gem of his invention is

the revolutionary Ekich Bobbin. In appearance, it hasthe clean skeletal lines of the type devised by FrankMatarelli over 25 years ago, but with a couple ofmajor improvements. One arm of the Ekich bobbinterminates in a spring-loaded disk on which thestandard spool of tying thread is mounted. The diskfunctions much like an automatic fly reel (without thebulk and weight!) in that it retrieves the slack in yourtying thread when desired, with energy stored whenthe thread is withdrawn from the bobbin. The other

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native Bosna. It was a traditional pattern used to catchthe grayling of the Vrbas, the lovely limestone riverthat flowed through Ekich’s home town of BanjaLuka. Ekich told me with a smile, that grayling (lipjenin his native language) were held in somewhat higheresteem than the brown trout they shared the Vrbas with.

As I watched Ekich tie the fly off with a series ofhalf-hitches, I became aware of two quite remarkablethings: one, that I was witnessing a direct link to thevery origins of fly tying — Ekich’s pattern was nearlyidentical to that famous fly tied by a namelessMacedonian and recorded by the Roman historian,Claudius Aelianus, in the third century, and secondly,that the man who had just tied a delicate, size 16 dryfly in his hands (with a facility surpassing even thatof Lee Wulff), was the same man who had designedan ingenious bobbin for fly tiers (such as myself) wholack the adroitness of a Wulff or an Ekich.

I was still further amazed when Faruk producedan ivory-colored fly line of thirty feet, perhaps, braidedand knotted from strands of a white horse’s tail. Ekichhad been taught to braid these traditional lines by theolder anglers of Banja Luka — his father was not afisherman. Aelianus mentioned these horse hair linesas well. As I watched the age-old technique, I wonderedsilently if the top-of-the-line fly lines of Bosna mightbe tied from the tails of Lippizanner horses, perhaps.

With his brown eyes sparkling, Faruk smiled andtold me about his “Bosna’ ritual.” It is a ritual thatbegan in 1993 on his first return to the beautifulCoppermine River. Ekich had been drawn to theCoppermine after seeing a presentation in 1989extolling the glorious Arctic char that ran up the riverevery summer. When he found grayling abounded inMelville Creek, the small tributary that entered theCoppermine at his camp, as well as in a namelesscreek two kilometers upstream, Ekich returned thefollowing year with his traditional Bosnian tackle. Hethen ceremoniously named the nameless creek“Bosna” and the pool at the confluence, the “BosnaPool.” Ekich angled for them in the manner he hadbeen taught as a very young man ... with braidedhorsehair line, tippet and simple hackled dry fly.

Perhaps the most sublime ritual of them all takesplace in the Bosna Pool as well. Ekich ties a beautifulwet fly on a Partridge up-eyed salmon fly hook. Forthe wings, he uses several multicolored hacklesplucked from a cape that was given to him by a boy-hood friend. That boyhood friend was killed in therecent war in Bosnia and in his memory, Ekich fishesthe Bosna fly at the Bosna Pool until a char keeps it,or it is lost on the bottom.

Necessity is the mother of invention ... These wordsof wisdom inspired Frank Zappa to title his seminaland brilliant first album, but they could also serve todescribe the ethic behind Ekich’s designing featsinvolving new, and improved fly tying tools.

Showing me two familiar-looking vises, Ekich toldme that he had simply felt a need to improve on thesepopular models in order to make them conform to his

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grand son, Adam. Although he was in the midst ofpreparations for his twelfth sabbatical to Nunavut,Ekich found time to share a lovely day on his homewater, the Credit River.

The Credit proved to be a nice, pastoral freestonecreek (a far cry from Ekich’s cherished Coppermine),but charming, nonetheless. My dear friend JerryKustich had written about the pleasures of the Creditin his splendid book, At the Rivers Edge, and I wasmore than a bit pleased to be guided on it, especiallyby Ekich.

Conditions were “iffy” at best, this being the yearof the Great Northeastern Drought, but Faruk foundthe few stalwart rising fish and put me upon them. Healso provided me with his own exquisitely tied caddisand soft hackled wets to take each of the handsomebrown trout we found in a taking mood ... well, mostof them.

At the start of our afternoon astream, my hostintroduced me to John Polowski who we found holdinga vigil on the bridge pool awaiting the last of the Greendrakes (or the first of the Brown drakes, I’m not surewhich). John was joined shortly by his friend, BlairWilliams, another Credit River regular. I was amazedand delighted by the fact that these two gentlemenwere angling with the sort of tackle that I, myself,spend far too much time admiring in photographs in

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radical departure from the Matarelli A-frame is foundin the wire arm on the outside of the bobbin, whenthe bobbin is resting in your up-turned palm. Thisarm is accessed by the fingers of the tying hand(other than thumb and forefinger) to easily augmentthe degree of tension on the tying thread. I don’t haveto tell tiers of deer hair and other unruly materialswhat a boon to mankind this feature is. Ekich says hisbobbin is all about “thread control” and, when all issaid and done; isn’t that what fly tying is all about?Mechanically speaking, anyway.

Ekich is the archetype of the Old World gentlemanangler. If Faruk were a bamboo fly rod (which heisn’t — in fact, he has barely cast one since breakinghis Battenkill, years ago), my good friend, MartyKeane would probably describe him as ... ”a classic,loaded with Old World charm.” And Marty would becorrect, and accurate, as always.

I visited Ekich at his home in Brampton, Ontariolast June and I was treated to a wonderful week onthe Northern Plain. I met his charming wife,Ghislaine, who was born in the town of PetitSaguenay, Quebec. Petit Saguenay, Quebec...(hmmm.How did an expatriate Bosnian come to meet unebelle Québécoise in an obscure North shore town?Salmon, perhaps?) I also met two others Ekich has apassion for: his darling granddaughter, Sophie and

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Above: Ontario’s Credit River. Ekich consults with John Polowskiand Blair Williams, two regulars on the Credit. Right: On the bankof the Credit River, Ekich obtains a condition report from Polowski.

Above: Ekish’s first hand made vise; an adaptation of the Crest vise.Inset: A tool fabricated to form flared copper tubes for tube flies.Left: Components for the assembly of the Ekich Bobbin.

publications like, Art of Angling Journal, for example.John was fishing a Hap Mills eraLeonard mounted with an exquis-ite Walker TR-2 reel. Blair wasfishing an even older Leonardfrom about the turn of the 20th

century and his reel of choice wasan Abbey & Imbrie model withhard rubber side plates.

I was impressed and made amental note to look into becominga Canadian in the near future.John and Blair admired my outfitwhich consisted of an 8-footMichael Clark rod (3-piece for 5weight) matched with a 2-3/4”Ted Godfrey Classic reel. John andBlair were impressed ... Ekich andI proceeded downstream.

Over the course of the nextfew hours, Ekich showed me withuncanny accuracy, the lies of mostof the usual salmonid suspects tobe found in the Credit. The patternsEkich gave me were successful inraising, if not hooking, each ofthese targets. As the sun declinedin the West, Ekich and I wanderedback to the car through the pines, ferns and birches.At a bend in the trail we spotted the Motherlode of

Morels and quickly stooped to pick them. I loaded mylanding net with them andstuffed the pouch of Ekich’s vestwith the remainder ... (we leftone of each gender).

Arriving back in Brampton, Ipresented Ghislaine with ourbounty of mushrooms and sheset about to prepare a superbfeast of Cornish Game Hens tocompliment our catch of the day.As Ekich and I shared a dram ofDalwhinnie, I tried to call DougPeacock in Livingston, Montana,to get his recipe for morels but hewas not at home (probablysearching for Mexican Grizzlybears), so Ghislaine turned thepreparation of the fungi over tome.

The gorgeous and absolutelydelicious meal was served with afine salad and pilaf, and a niceBordeaux. As we raised our glassesin honor of Ghislaine’s beautifulfeast, Ekich smiled and said;“Michael, you really must let meshow you my Coppermine.”

I replied,”Yes.”

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