On March 23, 2011, the world suddenly became less interesting. That’s the day Joseph, Ellsworth Kimsey (81) passed away, closing a chapter in the history of California’s flyfishing greats. His personality was a splash of color across the muted tones of the upper Sacramento River canyon, where he was recognized as a master angler.
Joe Kimsey was owner of the Ted Fay Fly Shop in Dunsmuir for 15 years before Bob Grace (the present owner) purchased it in 1997. The Ted Fay Fly Shop, now the oldest fly shop in California, has gone through a few changes over the years, and Joe Kimsey was part of them all.
Though always a serious angler and fly-tying innovator, Joe never made the mistake of taking himself too seriously. Joe loved to laugh and tell stories, which is one reason people were drawn to him. At times, he almost seemed like a walking, talking, fly-tying Whoopee Cushion poised to ambush the next unsuspecting angler who entered his shop. But the term “legend” also comes to mind as he takes his place of honor among California’s flyfishing greats.
It seems only fitting to remember him with stories, tenderness, and the same mischievous wit. The following comes from conversations I had with Bob Grace and local guide Rick Cox shortly after Joe’s death. Many other friends also have fond memories of Joe; some have been posted on the Web, and others will surely find their way into the pages of California Fly Fisher over the coming months.
Beginnings
“Joe had been twenty years in the air force,” said Grace. “He would tell me ‘twenty years, two days and six hours,’ or something like that. He told everybody the same thing. He retired in ’73 and came back [to Dunsmuir] with no career plans. He saw Ted Fay downtown one day. Ted said to him, ‘I’m getting some overflow work [guiding]. Would you like some?’ Joe said ‘Yes.’ He began to hang out at the shop, tie some flies, and pick up more work. Then Ted passed away.
“Joe bought the store, the name, and what inventory was there and moved it into the Garden Motel, which later became the Acorn Inn. I bought the store from him in ’97.
“When I was getting ready to buy the shop, I had some real misgivings about owning a fly store. I was a student of the sixties and the seventies, and all the fly shop owners were notorious for being expert fishermen. We’re talking about the Andy Puyans of the world. I really felt out of my element, and I told him so. I said, ‘Joe, I’m an average fisherman at best.
How do you feel I might be qualified to own this store?’ This is something I will never forget: He said, ‘It’s easy; all you have to do is help the customers out, answer their questions, give them the information they want, and then make sure you’re telling the truth.’ That’s just good retail. It’s why he had so many friends. People came back to see him year after year. It wasn’t just his jokes, it was his help. “I was inexperienced both as a retailer and certainly as a fly-shop owner. I realized that any success I experienced would be a result of Joe staying on for a while. I told him, ‘Joe, part of this purchase agreement will be a commitment for you to stay.’ I think I asked him to stay for two years. In return, I got twelve years. It wasn’t that he wasn’t compensated for it. He was, but certainly not what he contributed.”
“I first met Ted Fay back in the early eighties, a year or two before Ted died,” recalled Rick Cox. “His shop was basically in his garage in Dunsmuir. Joe was working for him then in his garage when I met them both. Joe was tying Bombers. Ted was a chain smoker. He smoked most of the time and chatted. Joe was tying, and he had his pipe in his mouth. The picture I always remember of that initial meeting was Ted smoking constantly and Joe chewing on his pipe while talking. Joe’s words were clickity-clackity, clickity-clackity, clickity-clackity, with him chewing that pipe. After that, I continued my relationship with Joe at the shop at the Acorn Inn in the little cubbyhole that became the Acorn’s office. It continued on after Bob bought the shop and moved it over to the other side of the Acorn Inn.” Joe’s tiny shop had no bathroom, so Bob and Joe moved across the courtyard a year later to a larger suite, complete with facilities.
After they moved, they hung a sign on the door of the old shop (which they could see from their new digs) saying “We’ve Moved Across the Courtyard!” Bob and Joe watched customers approach the old location, read the sign, and not know quite what to do. According to Bob Grace, Joe use to poke his head out of their new shop door and yell, “Over here, dummy!” Joe Kimsey had a way with people. (The Ted Fay Fly Shop is now located in downtown Dunsmuir.)
Chick Magnet
“Joe loved women,” said Grace, “but not in a lecherous way. He relished the fact that women would be interested in fly fishing. He told me many times that he felt women are better students than men. Fishing, in his mind, is a hunter-gatherer sport that men feel they are supposed to know about. Women are a blank slate. Joe never married. One of his jokes used to be, ‘Why please just one when you can please so many?’ ”
“Bob and I always thought Joe was a chick magnet,” said Cox. “In the shop, for whatever reason, it seemed like Joe was drawn to women, and the women were drawn to Joe. Given he didn’t marry, you’d think he was shy or something like that, but you never saw that in Joe. He loved striking up conversations with women.
Whether they were male or female, people liked Joe. “He was well known at the Cornerstone Restaurant in Dunsmuir,” Cox noted. “He would go in there for lunch, then take his nap at the table. You’d go in there sometimes, and he would have finished his soup. His head would be buried in his chest — taking a little snooze right there. No one would bother him. They’d just let him take his little nap. Then, fifteen or twenty minutes later, he’d get up and toddle out of there.”
Always Enthusiastic
“In his last years of wading,” said Grace, “Joe and I went down to Flume Creek [on the upper Sacramento] to go fishing. I buddy-waded him across, and we went down one of those rock bars, and I hooked a large fish. It was huge. I said ’Joe, I’m hooked up!’ He turned to me and said, ‘Goddammit, it’s the bottom.’ Just then, the reel started to scream. Joe started bouncing around like a little kid and he went, ‘Get the net! Do we have a net?’
“ ‘Joe,’ I yelled, ‘I’m not worried about a net. I’ve got to deal with this fish.’ We never even saw the leader. The thing went back and forth and back and forth. Finally the line came flying out of the water, the fly still connected.
“I started cursing. I mean, I painted the sky blue. Joe just looked back at me and said, ‘Robert. ’ (He only called me Robert when he knew there was something he wanted me to hear, and I listened, because that meant he was serious.) He said, ‘You better hope that you live long enough for that to happen to you again.’ ”
Ribald Humor
“There was a light switch next to the door in Joe’s shop,” said Grace. “It was basically a guy standing holding a fish, and the toggle on the switch was his penis. In ’97, I bought the store, and we moved it to the new location in ’98. Joe immediately put that cover plate on the switch by the front door in the new shop. My wife, who’s got the greatest sense of humor and is incredibly liberated, said, ‘You know, I think that’s absolutely hilarious. But you have to understand that you’re going to have to deal with the one person who doesn’t find it hilarious.’ So we ended up moving it to the bathroom. We figured if they want to use the bathroom, then they have no choice. “I can say this because I sat in the same room with him for most of twelve or thirteen years. He told the same stories over and over and over. I used to have to bite my tongue and hope that the person who was hearing the story hadn’t heard it before, that it wasn’t his third time, too. He used to love to tell deer-hunting stories, particularly about when he hunted as a kid. He’d get on a story and tell everyone who came in for the next two months that story. Most of my customers were so kind. Even if they had heard the story three times, they’d never let on to Joe. They just enjoyed hearing him tell it.”
Shorts for Sissies
“One of the things I always get a charge out of,” said Grace, “is remembering how Joe used to think shorts and sandals are for sissies. Of course, he would never come out and say that, especially to a paying customer. He never wanted to offend anybody. He just felt that real men didn’t wear shorts.
“One day, it was getting really hot, and I decided I was going to start wearing shorts. He started giving me some real crap about it. I said, ‘You ought to give these a try.’ We had some very inexpensive shorts in the store, and I said, ‘You don’t like ’em, that’s fine.’ I swear, you never saw him in anything but shorts after that. He always wore his shorts with white ankle socks and some kind of loafers, and red suspenders and a belt. He was buried with those. My wife and I had a chance to view his body. He wore his shorts, suspenders, and his Ted Fay Fly Shop hat.”
“And a guide shirt that was labeled Joe Kimsey, Master Fly Tyer,” added Cox.
“Joe touched so many people,” reminisced Grace. “He never took himself seriously. He knew what he was doing and how to fish. In his own time, he was an expert. He never confused himself about it. It was just fishing. He didn’t put a man on the moon. He wasn’t trying to cure cancer. He was never overly impressed with his own importance.
“Joe had no family,” Grace said. “The shop was his family; my wife and I became his family. The shop was his life. The customers were his life. It was a great association. Still is, in my mind.”
