In my column this week, I pay tribute to the late Charlie Heartwell, one of the finest fly tiers West Virginia has ever seen:
When anglers “match the hatch” on West Virginia’s trout streams, they owe a debt of gratitude to Charlie Heartwell.
Heartwell passed away Oct. 19 at the too-young age of 72. The state’s trout-fishing community mourned his loss.
Some fishermen knew Charlie because of the years he spent as the Division of Natural Resources’ trout-hatchery supervisor. Most, however, knew him as a creator of exquisite trout flies.
On evenings, weekends and holidays, Charlie would hole up in the basement of his Beverly home and tie dry flies, wet flies, nymphs and streamers – 20,000 to 25,000 of them a year.
Like many commercial tiers, Charlie worked at lightning speed. From the first wrap of thread to the final whip-finish, he could fashion a standard winged dry fly in about 2 1/2 minutes.
Few tiers can manage that kind of speed, let alone do so while turning out perfectly proportioned, perfectly balanced, perfectly elegant flies. Charlie could, and did. Each of his flies was a tiny work of art.
I first met Charlie 30 years ago at Trout Unlimited’s Fly Fishing School. Charlie was there to give a fly tying demonstration, and to talk about trout-stream insects and the flies that imitated them.
When they introduced Charlie, the camp’s organizers went over his bona fides – a Ph.D. in fish diseases, the man in charge of all Mountain State hatcheries, supplier of flies to tackle shops around the country, etc. The buildup had me expecting some impossibly highbrow lecture filled with Latin scientific names and loads of entomological jargon.
Then Charlie spoke. “I’ve come to talk about ‘critters,’” he said.
Charlie had a remarkable talent for taking complicated, highly technical material and expressing it in words anyone could understand. He went out of his way to help fledgling fly fishermen, especially those who attempted to tie their own flies.
We became friends. He critiqued the flies I tied and showed me how to make them better. He gave me lessons on proportion and balance that I use to this day. He helped me build speed and efficiency.
Steve Brown, a DNR colleague of Charlie’s, enjoyed a similar friendship with him. In the 1970s, Charlie spent a great deal of time working out a “hatch chart” for the Mountain State – a chart that would tell fishermen when certain insects hatch, and which flies to use to imitate them.
“Charlie developed the hatch chart, and I got to be there to watch as it happened,” Brown said. “We did a lot of kick-seining to collect nymphs. We carried jars of alcohol around to preserve the bugs in. Charlie developed a whole series of trout flies based on the insects we collected.”
On one of those fishing-cum-research expeditions, to the headwaters of the Elk River near Slatyfork, Charlie and Steve enjoyed a day they’d long remember.
“We must have caught 50 fish that day, from mid-sized brown trout to rainbows in the 16- to 17-inch range,” Steve recalled. “The fish just wore us out. I visited Charlie in the hospital a few weeks before he died. We talked fishing the whole time. He asked if I remembered that day at Slatyfork. I said I did. Charlie looked me in the eye and said, ‘Best day of fishing I ever had.’”
People who don’t fish think fishing is all about the fish. It isn’t. It’s about the people you fish with, and the memories you collect together.
For those of us who knew Charlie Heartwell, the memories are warm. And rich. And lasting.
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