Master fly fisherman Mo Bradley followed his dream to B.C.

Long before he became a fly fishing legend who helped unravel the mysteries of trout behaviour, Maurice (Mo) Bradley was sent down to work in the coal mines of Derbyshire, England. As a member of a mining family he understood that he had no other choice. All seven of his brothers worked underground, as did their father, who started in the shafts at the age of nine. Mo went into the mines at 15, and was expected to work there until he retired or was killed on the job, as many were.

Instead, in his late 20s, Mr. Bradley followed his dream of big trout to Kamloops, B.C., and over the succeeding decades became a local icon, teaching thousands of people to cast, tie flies and catch fish.

Mr. Bradley, who had silicosis from the coal dust in his lungs, died in Kamloops on Feb. 19, following many years of declining health and the incremental loss of his vision, which eventually forced him to tie flies blind. He was 87.

“He liked everybody, he was good to everybody … and he tied flies till the bitter end,” his wife, Evelyn Bradley, said when reached by phone.

Mr. Bradley was born on Aug. 1, 1937 in Leabrooks, Derbyshire, England, and started working by the early 1950s.

“You did what your father did. If your father went down the mine, you went down the mine,” he recounted in Trout School; Lessons from a Fly-Fishing Master, a book about Mr. Bradley by Mark Hume (for which this writer assisted with interviews).

After being lowered three kilometres down the shaft he would take his lantern and walk another three kilometres along the dark, wet tunnel that led to his station. There, he would sort waste rock from coal by hand.

“It was colder than hell,” Mr. Bradley said. “It wasn’t a good life.”

Between shifts, he found solace in fishing for carp, roach, bream and perch. Local anglers revered trout, but, in England, such prized fish could only be found in private waters that were too expensive for blue-collar workers to access.

“You couldn’t legally fish for trout without paying a big fee. All the trout water belonged to his Lordship, but I used to poach when I was a teen. I was damn good at it too,” Mr. Bradley said.

When a close friend and fishing companion was pulled into a coal-shearing machine and killed on the job, Mr. Bradley decided he needed to find a way out of the mines.

He learned how to do bodywork and paint cars in a local garage – and began dreaming about immigrating to Canada. He had read about British Columbia in a sports fishing magazine. In Kamloops, the story went, the rainbow trout were wild and the waters were open to everyone.

In 1965, Mr. Bradley and his wife met with Canadian government officials about immigrating. They were encouraged to go to London, Ont. But he insisted it had to be Kamloops.

They got off the train in the small B.C. town on Nov. 5 that year, carrying a few possessions and a letter of recommendation from the owner of the Boathouse Garage in Derbyshire. The letter said Mr. Bradley was, “conscientious in every job, will try anything that is at all possible. A man with very high standards used to hard work and plenty of it.”

He got work at a local auto body shop, and soon bought a car and a small boat that he and his wife would strap on top as they set out to explore the lakes around Kamloops. She would row and he would cast, clumsily at first, as he learned how to fly fish.

His inquisitive and determined work ethic extended to his fishing pursuits and slowly he began to refine not only how to cast, but how to catch fish. They went to a different lake every weekend, studying the waters and bugs. He set up aquariums in his basement to raise aquatic insects, carefully analyzing their different life stages and making realistic imitations at his fly tying vise.

Mr. Bradley took a scientific approach to studying, experimenting and evaluating new styles of fly tying, creating imitations spun from thread, feathers and bits of wool.

“For 40 years I looked at my tanks every morning and every night. So I knew insects. And I tried to match the hatch,” he said.

Many of the techniques and fly patterns now commonly used by anglers in B.C. originated with Mr. Bradley and a small group of friends with whom he fished. They noticed how trout fed heavily on tiny black flies, known as chironomids, before they hatched on the surface of the water. Instead of a splashy rise, the fish seemed to roll, just below the surface.

To imitate that hatch, Mr. Bradley began tying flies so small you could fit three on your thumbnail. He would cast one of those small flies on a floating line and let it drift, allowing the wave action on the line to give it a slight motion. The tactic worked wonders, and soon he was catching a lot of fish.

Mr. Bradley became so good that other anglers used to follow him around the lake, fishing where he fished. Because he leaned out of the boat to wash his hands before tying on a fly, a rumour spread that he was using a secret potion. But secrecy was not something Mr. Bradley believed in and whenever he saw an angler struggling to cast, or going fishless, he would offer advice, and some of his flies. He said Kamloops anglers had welcomed him with open arms, teaching him willingly, and he sought to pay that debt forward, hosting a Kamloops radio and then a cable television show about fly fishing, teaching fly tying classes, and writing a booklet, From Ice Off … To Ice On, that described his favourite flies and told how to fish them.

He volunteered to teach fly fishing to school kids, organized a yearly fishing weekend for blind people who wanted to catch a trout, and gave away thousands of his hand tied flies. He wanted fishing to be accessible to everyone and shared his knowledge freely.

After retiring, he worked Fridays and Saturdays at Surplus Herby’s, a general outdoors supply store in Kamloops. He would sit on a stool tying flies at the counter, holding court, happy to help anyone who stopped by to chat.

“He loved all the kids who came to visit ‘Uncle Mo.’ They would bring him a quarter and ask if he could tie them a special fly for their parent’s or grandparent’s birthday. He’d take the coin and make them two,” Ms. Bradley said.

Mr. Bradley leaves his wife, Evelyn Bradley. A memorial book has been left at his fly tying desk at Surplus Herby’s, to collect the memories – and fishing stories – of those whose lives he touched.

Many will fondly remember looking out at the lake to see Mr. Bradley sitting in his small boat, anchored in a favourite spot, slowly casting and retrieving his fly. Buffered by rolling grasslands with a view of the open sky, he was far from the deep, dark coal mines of Derbyshire.

You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here.

To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@globeandmail.com.