Remembering George Bing – A Fisherman
By
Ted Burns
George Bing died on October 31st, 2010 – he was 79. I hadn’t seen George for the better part of forty years and knew almost nothing of his life since about 1970 I’m very sad to say. I left Nelson in 1969 and seldom came back for long. But I sure knew him in the 1960’s – indeed. Nearly everyone who fished the West Arm then knew George because he was almost certainly the Arm’s most successful angler.
George generally fished with bait and he usually caught lots of fish. Special regulations like catch and release and fly fishing only were more or less unknown then and catch quotas (limits) were very liberal or non-existent. On one occasion in the latter part of the sixties, two boat loads of anglers ran up the Arm to Proctor to fish for kokanee at the outlet of the Main Lake. George Bing, Frank Hufty and Dick Parker were in one boat while Gary Kilpatrick, Ken Cook and I were in the other. Someone in my boat suggested we have a “fishing contest”. George agreed and after a few hours our boat had 165 silvers on board. George Bing caught 205. Parker and Hufty got bored after a few minutes so George caught nearly all the fish himself. Everyone fished in our boat. We thought there was no way we could loose but George easily out fished three pretty fair anglers. Today’s fishers will cringe at stories like this but that’s the way it was then not all that long ago. The Upper West Arm kokanee population crashed not too many years after our bonehead contest and I can’t help but think we were partly responsible.
George also fished a lot at Grohman Narrows. He found a way to catch the large rainbows that held just where the current started to draw at the head of the narrows under the power lines. These fish had tantalized anglers for many years. People had fished at Grohman for decades but most fished downstream at the creek mouth and around the Island. They knew about the power line lunkers because they rolled and splashed like spring salmon a couple of times a day but had little success catching them. George anchored his boat above the power lines and, against all logic, sunk a grasshopper down to the bottom. I hate to imagine how many beautiful rainbows George caught at Grohman. He supplied many a summer barbecue with fine trout in those years. George was such an accomplished angler that you got the feeling that he could have sunk a hockey puck down to those Grohman rainbows and still caught a few.
Goodbye old friend. I hope there are lots of fine lakes and streams filled with big rainbows where you are – save a few for your old fishing pals.
From left: Ken Cook, George Bing with a five pound kokanee, Dick Parker and Frank Hufty
Frank Hufty, Gary Kilpatrick, George Bing and Ted Burns
George Bing and George Longden with Grohman rainbows
Nelson Daily News
2010
Tags: Old friends, silver bonanza