Area fishing community to honor a ‘true legend’
There will be an empty seat in the Missouri Trout Fishermen’s Association booth at the Kansas City Boat and Sport-show this week.
Clarence Peaslee, the man who entertained fishermen for decades with his fish stories and fly-tying demonstrations at the show, passed away Dec. 4 at age 98.
For his friends and fellow fishermen, his death leaves a void. When he passed, they will tell you, Missouri lost a true fishing legend.
“Clarence lived a great life,” said Roger Theroux of Kansas City, one of Peaslee’s friends. “He put in more hours on the stream than most of us ever will.
“A lot of us will always remember how many fish he would catch on his fly rod down at Roaring River. We used to laugh about ‘The Clarence Shuffle.’ “He would be catching trout one after the other when hardly anyone else would, and you’d see other fishermen just start shuffling over toward him, trying to see what he was doing. He was just a great guy.”
Theroux and other members of the Missouri Trout Fishermen’s Association will honor Peaslee at the Boat and Sportshow, which opens Thursday. They will have a tribute at the booth where Peaslee once tied flies.
“Everybody knew Clarence,” Theroux said. “Even in the last few years, when his health was getting worse, people would come up to us at the Sportshow and want to know where he was.
“A lot of people will miss him.”
Especially at Roaring River State Park in southwest Missouri, where Peaslee was an institution.
From 1932 until 2006, he attended every trout opener there, except for a few years when he was serving in the army during World War II.
He discovered the Missouri trout park at a young age when he worked for a fly-tier in the Kansas City area.
“(They) couldn’t afford to pay my wages, so he took me fishing instead,” Peaslee told The Star in 2003. “We went down to Roaring River for the opener, and we had a great time.
“We intended to only stay for the day. But it started raining like crazy and we couldn’t get up the big hill out of the park, which was a dirt road at the time.
“We ended up staying for a week, and we caught lots of trout. That’s how I got hooked on Roaring River.”
Peaslee became so attached to Roaring River that he and his wife, Florence, spent their honeymoon there.
In 2000, he was honored by the Missouri Department of Conservation for his long years of dedication to the park. Hatchery officials made Peaslee the honorary starter of the season that year and gave him the first tag.
“People say, ‘Aren’t you too old to fish?’ ” Peaslee told The Star in 2003. “And I tell them, ‘You’re only as old as you feel.’
When I get out on the trout stream, I don’t feel old.”
Peaslee was the consummate fly fisherman. When he wasn’t at Roaring River, he was often traveling to nationally famous trout streams. In 1939, he began an annual pilgrimage to Yellowstone National Park. His friends remember how he would tell stories about walking along the edge of Old Faithful and looking down into the mouth of the famous geyser.
In his later days, Clarence was a familiar figure to many of the area’s fly fishermen, with his white beard, flannel shirt and ready smile.
Last year, he and his wife received the Living Legend Award from the Federation of Fly Fishers. Earlier, he won a 50-year service award from the Missouri Trout Fishermen’s Association.
“Clarence was one of those guys you don’t forget,” Theroux said. “He was one of a kind.”
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/01/11/2578056/area-fishing-community-loses-a.html#ixzz1AnW5cGuQ
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