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"What do you think of this green drake imitation, Bing?"
Bing: "I'd put a yellow feather in there to imitate the color of the drake's legs. Some people say the fish can't tell the difference. But those fish know the brand name on your waders and even how many patches you got on 'em."
"Why are those fish so slow getting on those drakes today, Bing?"
Bing: "Damn if I know. Just throwing us curves, I guess."
Lempke remembers his first fly-fishing trip. It was 1929, and an old fellow in Idaho Falls had given him some flies. Lempke caught 26 fish that day and was, he recalls, "proud as a peacock." He was also hooked. He left school shortly thereafter, worked at an assortment of jobs and ended up a pipefitter in Los Angeles. But every time the green drake made its appearance, its siren call prompted him to drop everything; hence those three lost jobs. Eventually, Lempke came back to Idaho Falls and devoted himself to fishing his river, while doing enough pipefitting to pay for it.
When the fish are hitting, boiling and slapping the surface for the green drakes, Lempke is just another fisherman. But when the action slows, and fish are harder to catch, he is a good fellow to know. Says Lempke: "I've met a lot of people, because if you're on that river and catching fish, and other people aren't catching fish, then you're going to meet people." As the locals like to say, "Bing just has plain good fish sense."
The Lempke fish sense is combined with a mischievous sense of humor, and a studied disregard for the pretensions and conceits affected by adherents of the sport. He uses an automatic reel, for instance, considered quite gauche by purists. He blends a mixture of gasoline and an oily substance called Mucilin to use as dry-fly ointment. He stumbled on his own version of the green drake when he noticed the rubber mat unraveling from an old throw rug and worked it into his fly to give it body without adding significant weight. When he is suited up for fishing, his short-billed pipefitter's cap, pulled down over the half-moon of white on his forehead, and the crisscrossing of jerry-rigged gear on his chest make him look like a paratrooper ready for a midnight drop into Normandy.
Fly-fishing is the coming together of many different disciplines: casting, reading a stream's currents and knowing fish and insect habits. Lempke's cast, perhaps, is merely functional, but, says his fishing buddy Don Laughlin of Idaho Falls: "I've seen him catch a lot of fish. He may not have the prettiest cast, but his bugs look just like what's on the water. And he runs around this stream like an elk."