Page 19 - 2021 MAR/APR Outdoor Oklahoma Magazine

adjustment and be happy with both warm-water and cold-water back then, you had to be close to cold water and trout. And so the
fishing, but I can’t think of a place where a person can catch more White River was the place. ... But we were only about five hours
fish species on a fly. We have largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, from home.”
spotted bass, five or six species of sunfish, crappie, drum, carp, Creating the original and effective fly patterns that still bear
walleye, sauger, all the temperate bass like striped bass and white his name — such as the Dave’s Hopper — was essentially an
bass, and more than that. It’s a hell of a lot more than just trout.” extension of his artistic skills, he said.
The Neosho strain smallmouth bass of eastern Oklahoma’s “Basically, that’s what fly tying is, just another form of artistic
clear-water streams are still a favorite. sculpture. You’re working in three dimensions with thread, hair,
“That’s what I love about this area. We have all these streams that feathers, and a hook, and you just build with them to create the
provide trout-like waters, but they are home to those smallmouth. I illusion of an insect or a crawfish or baitfish,” he said.
love ’em,” he said. His first motivation to draw
Those old days on Caney keLLy BOstiAn came from his grandmother.
Creek and pre-reservoir days While at home with his
along the Grand and Illinois childhood illnesses, they
rivers were ripe for a pair would play a drawing game.
of teen-aged self-taught fly “She would make a couple
fishermen in the 1940s. lines on a piece of paper, and
“You couldn’t hardly describe then I had to draw from it
it to somebody now,” Whitlock to make something. Then I
said. “You couldn’t understand would draw a couple lines for
how many fish could live in her,” he said.
there. For every fish now, there His only formal art training
must have been 25 to 50 then. I came from public schools, the
don’t know how the food chain last of which was as a senior at
held up with that many bass in Muskogee High School.
those streams.” “My art teacher at
At the root of a life’s work Muskogee said my art would
inventing flies, creating art, never amount to anything
and teaching fly fishing is a kid because what I wanted to do
Dave Whitlock works on a sketch in his home art studio.
who pushed through a birth with my art, a camera could do
defect, polio and rheumatic fever in the first four years of his life a better job,” he said with a chuckle. The teacher simply did not
only to be bullied by other grade-school kids because, as he put it, “I appreciate Whitlock’s vision, especially after he first donned a
was pretty much physically an invalid in my pre-teen years.” facemask and snorkel.
“Kids can be cruel to handicapped people and I grew up not “The first time I ever looked underwater with a facemask, I
liking people much,” he said. “I was always happy in nature discovered another planet. ... I thought, ‘I’ve got to show this
because it was always peaceful and good to me.” to people!’ ”
That upbringing also created someone who exercises daily and His paintings may feature fish as the leading characters, but a
eats healthy, seldom needs to see a doctor, and who is studious, closer look reveals a full environment teeming with smaller fish,
imaginative, inventive, and who has made great friends all over tiny insects, crustaceans, and other fauna and flora typical to the
the world. habitat of the featured species. Look closer yet and you might
His fly fishing, fly tying, and artistry are all self-taught skills notice a little character, even in the eye of a mayfly or crawfish.
and seemed to come as naturally to him as making friends. “I see a personality in every creature,” he said. “I’ve come to
He graduated from Northeastern Oklahoma State University believe that every living thing has some form of a soul, whether it’s
and went to work as a research chemist in the petroleum industry a tree or an ant or a trout. They possess some form of a soul — not
early on. But his skills as an angler and artist led him out of that like ours, but if you watch them, they exhibit certain ethics. They
career at age 30. have their role in life, and they live it.”
For the bulk of his career, Arkansas’ famed White River was He gestured toward the stream and spoke of a whole world
his base of operations, which included a seven-year research effort of things going on in the water with minnows and crawfish and
that resulted in the invention of the Whitlock-Vibert Box System, insects all doing what they have adapted to do in their life cycles.
an in-stream salmonoid egg incubator and nursery device credited “Every square inch of our planet is like that,” he said. “I tell ya,
for boosting the White’s brown trout to world-record fame. The people who don’t see things or don’t like things in nature, they
boxes have been used around the world in trout and salmon species miss a lot in life.”
conservation project, including in Oklahoma’s Lower Mountain
Fork River. (Kelly Bostian has been an outdoor editor and writer for 35 years at
The world-renowned angler never strayed far from home, really. newspapers in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Tulsa, Okla. He now operates
“You stay close to your roots,” Whitlock said. “For fly fishing KJB Outdoors, sharing articles about outdoor recreation and nature.)

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