He’s Seen Fly-Fishing Change A Lot In 25 Years
As he has told thousands of customers, Hardy Kruse is Spokane’s enduring “purveyor of piscatorial platitudes.”
Kruse is celebrating the 25th anniversary of selling fly-fishing equipment in River City. He took over the sporting goods department in the former Two Swabbies on East Sprague and turned it into an entity in itself: The Sport Cove.
Kruse more recently has moved the Sport Cove to share space with with an archery shop at 5727 E. Sprague.
“The changes that have taken place in fly-fishing in the past two decades are staggering,” Kruse said.
“The smallest flies I stocked when the store first opened was size 16, and darn few of them. Now we sell lots of flies down to size 24 - so small you can barely thread the leader through them.”
Technology has blessed fly-tyers with a vast selection of tying materials, Kruse said.
“I had one 4-by-8 foot pegboard panel of fly-tying material to start with,” he said. “Now I have 16 sections of it, and most of it is manmade, not just furs and feathers like it used to be.”
Kruse recalls a man who came in recently to look at fly-tying materials. “He’d been so busy with his business, he hadn’t tied flies for 15 years,” Kruse said. “Now that he was retired, he was going to start again. He walked up and down the aisles for quite a while.
“When I asked if he needed any help, the man said, ‘Yeh. What the hell is all this stuff?”’
Work to improve wildlife habitat has earned Brad Corkill of Whiteman Lumber Co. in Cataldo, a special award from Idaho Gov. Phil Batt.
Corkill and his employees have built a dike, erected goose platforms and planted wild rice to improve a wetland on company property. They also helped band 1,400 ducks over the past four years to help with waterfowl research.
Corkill was nominated by the Idaho Fish and Game Department’s Habitat Improvement Program employees, who provide funding and guidance to landowners who want to devote some of their property to wildlife habitat.
The program is funded through sales of special waterfowl and upland game bird hunting permits. The program has completed more than 3,200 projects covering 50,000 acres since 1988, the department said.
Mount Spokane State Park ranger Kary Peterson has received the agency’s Merit Award for work with volunteers and children. Peterson has spearheaded the work to restore a Civilian Conservation Corps area at the park on Mount Kit Carson.
Oregon resident Hjalmar Hvam, one of the top U.S. skiers in the 1930s and inventor of the ski safety binding, died recently after suffering a heart attack. He was 93.
Hvam, a member of the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame, came to Oregon from Kongsberg, Norway, in 1927.
He qualified for the U.S. Olympic team in 1936, but declined to compete in Hitler’s Germany. He was a coach with the 1952 Olympic team.
Hvam changed the ski industry after winning his second Golden Rose at Mount Hood in 1937. While showing off with his friends following his victory, Hvam landed wrong on a jump and broke his leg.
While hospitalized, he used his training as a draftsman to design the first self-release ski binding. Called Saf-Ski, the binding was popular around the world into the 1960s. It was used by ski troops in World War II and as a ski rental binding.
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