The Mystery of the Striper Photo
By Tim Loomis
I have a good story about Andy Guibord, this month's speaker that originates in a Fairfield Connecticut hardware store. While I was back in Connecticut a few years ago, visiting my family, I stopped in to see an old high school friend at his family-owned hardware store. He invited me into a back office to gab. There, on a wall of the room, was a photo of a bearded man holding an impressive striper. Something really familiar keep me gazing at the shot. Now I'm in my hometown back east yet this photo was traversing the old "time-space continuum" thing and my memory cells were alerting me that the photo wasn't of a Long Island Sound angler. But where?
A few days later while fishing for small bluefish in a local Fairfield, Connecticut tidal creek, it came to me. That photo was of a guide I had met in California. But who? These things take time to figure out. I gave it a few more days and viola! While strolling the isles of a neighborhood grocery, a piece of the mystery of the striper photo revealed itself to me. Maybe it was the jar of salsa that my sister asked for or the aged wedge of smelly cheese my dad requested. Something stimulated the mental connection to a particular Kiene's Fly Shop guide named Andy.
OK, I had figured out who the guy in the photo was, but what was the photo of a Sacramento guide doing hanging on the office wall of a hardware store in Fairfield, Connecticut? My friend back at his hardware store didn't have a clue who it was or why the picture was in his store. The easy solution would be to wait until I returned to Santa Cruz, get on the phone, call Kiene's and ask Andy whathisname if he knew the answer. Like all good mysteries, this still left me hanging as Andy Guibord (only guide at the store with the name Andy and who has a beard!) didn't have any idea how his photo came to decorate that hardware store's wall. I called my pal back at the Connecticut store and told him who the guy in the photo was and asked him if he could take up the cause and try on his end to come to some conclusion as to why that photo was there.
To date, the mystery remains.
Fish On.