Emily Mitchell Wires preparing her Tomato Wiggle.

Courtesy Roy E. Wires (The Emily Mitchell Wires Collection)

AS A TEENAGER living in Herkimer, NY, Roy Wires fished mostly the lower end of West Canada Creek, limited by how far he could ride his bicycle. Middleville, about 8 miles up Route 28, was pretty much his limit. This stretch of the creek flowed mainly through farmland, and unfortunately, many times the creek banks became a farmer’s personal junkyard. It was not unusual to see old car bodies, worn-out farm implements, barbwire, and other junk discarded over the bank. The only problem was, in times of spring thaw and the resultant high water, many of those items got washed into the creek.

Roy inherited his love of fishing from his father Edwin and grandmother Emily.

Courtesy Roy E. Wires (The Emily Mitchell Wires Collection)

It was one of those items that one day almost cost Roy a big trout. Back in the days of this story, the dam on the West Canada Creek at Trenton re- leased water almost every afternoon to generate electric power. This of course resulted in the creek downstream of the dam rising 12 to 18 inches every afternoon and evening.

It was one of those late afternoons that Roy was spin-fishing a stretch of the creek with his favorite lure, a gold phoebe. After what had been a less than fruitful day up to this point, he hooked a nice brown trout that did a couple of cartwheels and then started digging deep. It was obvious that this brown trout knew his way around the creek; all of a sudden the line became tight. Although the fish was still hooked, as he could feel him and see an occasional flash out in the stream, Roy just couldn’t get him in. The only alternative was to wade out to where he was, and see what he was hooked on.

The fish had swum through a big roll of discarded barbwire. Roy knew there was no way he could thread him out of that mess, and wondering how long his four-pound test line was going to hold up, he started letting out line, hoping it would pull him downstream and he could net him below the coil of barbwire and then once he had him in the net, he would cut his line, and pull it through. Well, this sounded like a good plan, until the water started rising from the afternoon discharge at Trenton. Roy had already just about reached the limit on his hip boots getting to the fish, and knew that the rising water would flood his boots and he was going to be in real trouble.

“Standing on my tiptoes with the water coming up rapidly,” he remembered, “I was finally able to net my fish, a nice 15-inch West Canada Creek brown trout. At that point I just cut my line and headed for the bank with the trout. ‘Farmer Brown’s’ barbwire had almost cheated me out of a real prize trout, and the Trenton discharge of water was close to closing the deal on netting that trophy. I guess the fishing gods were with me that day.”