TEAGLE ROCK, Mo. - There’s no telling how many thousands of watery miles J.D. Fletcher logged during the decades he worked as a fishing guide on the Kings River and Table Rock Lake.

These days, Fletcher enjoys taking trips down memory lane, reliving adventures through thousands of photographs, articles and letters from customers. His collection fills some fill 40 to 50 photo albums, not to mention the array of lures, reels and fishing caps Fletcher amassed during more than 45 years of guiding.

Look, here’s a picture of Fletcher floating the White River where Beaver Lake is now. How ’bout this faded photo of a big old bass displayed on the blade of Fletcher’s boat paddle?

And look at this, his john boat is made of wood.

Flip through more pages and there’s one of Fletcher flanked by two smiling anglers holding a heavy stringer of bass after a fish-filled day on the Kings River.

Most of the pictures are black and white. Some are cracked and faded.

All show what fishing was like 30, 40 years ago.

Color photos show the crisp blue denim of the overalls that Fletcher wore back then. He sported a fine pair of Big Smiths on Friday when Fletcher and I paged through some of his albums.

‘OFFICE’ PHOTOS

“I’ve always enjoyed pictures and I’ve saved every picture I’ve ever taken,” Fletcher said when we got together in Eagle Rock, Mo., where he lives with his son, Jeff .

Fletcher called the Kings River and Table Rock Lake his “office” during his years as a fishing guide from the early 1960s until around 2010.

That’s a lot of customers and a lot of fish.

Fletcher has fished the Ozarks’ waters since he was a boy, growing up on Greasy Creek not far from Seligman, Mo. The bug to photograph his fishing trips nipped Fletcher while he was in the Air Force.

Fletcher was stationed in Germany in the early 1950s, assigned to motor pool duty.

“On the weekends we’d just check out a Jeep and go,” he said. Fletcher would take pictures of his buddies catching trout and grayling. He photographed their hunting trips, too.

When he came back to the Ozarks in 1953, Fletcher started a bait and tackle business and kept snapping pictures.

A Polaroid camera was at Fletcher’s side as much as a fishing pole when he started his float-fishing business. Just about all his customers got a souvenir picture or two to take from a J.D. Fletcher float trip, along with a mess of fi sh.

Before Beaver Dam was built, Fletcher and customers would float the White River from Ford’s Creek to Lost Bridge, or from Lost Bridge to the town of Beaver.

On the Kings River. Fletcher worked mainly from the U.S. 62 bridge to the backwaters of Table Rock Lake.

Fletcher helped put Northwest Arkansas on the map when stories about his float trip adventures were written up in Sports Afield, Outdoor Life and Field & Stream.

One of the articles in Fletcher’s collection was published in Outdoor Life in 1966. Fletcher and the writer, Wynn Davis, were on the Kings River near the Missouri-Arkansas line.

Davis had a bass on the line and Fletcher sounded off:

“Keep that bass on the line for another two minutes and you’ll have hooked it in Arkansas and boated it in Missouri.”

Davis got such a kick out of that line he used it as the first paragraph of his magazine story.

Pictures in Fletcher’s albums show him fishing with actors and pro athletes, but mostly with people from around the nation who just liked to fish.

Some of the pages hold handwritten letters from customers thanking Fletcher for a great time.

Those letters are testimony to the guide’s knack of getting along with every customer, showing them a fine day on the river and catching a few fish.

“I never took one person down that river that I wouldn’t take again,” Fletcher said.

“Visiting with people on the phone, I always tried to imagine what they would look like and how we’d get along.”

On the water, Fletcher would use his intuition to figure out if his customers wanted to talk a little, talk a lot or just fish.

“I had to learn how to handle people and I always enjoyed meeting new people,” he said.

There may be a limit on fish but not on the fishing stories and jokes Fletcher shared with his boat mates.

On the drift downstream, Fletcher points out the different kinds of wildlife, wildflowers and trees.

Customers, too, shared their own anecdotes and jokes with Fletcher. He fi led the best ones away in his noggin to share with anglers on trips to come.

KEEP OR RELEASE?

Pages and pages of Fletcher’s picture albums show smiling anglers, sometimes three or four in a bunch, with enough fish to feed a small town.

In the 1960s, it was catch and keep every legal fish. If it bit, it took a final swim in hot grease with some potatoes. An attitude adjustment happened around 1970.

“We’d float and each man would have eight or 10 bass,” Fletcher recalled. “Sometimes we’d have up to 10 boats on a trip.

“We got to thinking, ‘What’s going to happen if we keep keeping all these fi sh?’”

Fletcher and leaders in the fishing business nationwide beat the drum of catch and release through 1970s. Nowadays, it almost goes against the religion of some anglers to keep a bass. That’s the case even when it might be good to keep a few at lakes where bass are overpopulated.

The evolution of fishing played out during two hours of looking over just a sample of his photographs. To see them all you’d have to pitch a tent.

Then there’s a display of bait-casting reels on Fletcher’s wall. The earliest ones required the use of a heavy lure to cast. Braided line was the norm until mono-filament line came along.

Spin-cast reels and rods replaced bait-casting outfiits for a lot of Fletcher’s fishing.

TORCH IS PASSED

At age 82, Fletcher’s guiding days are behind him. These days his son, Jeff, carries on the Fletcher fishing tradition by guiding Kings River float trips and fishing trips on Table Rock Lake.

If you book a trip, J.D. might ride along to see you and Jeft off down the river. Don’t be surprised if he whips out a camera and snaps another picture for posterity.

Outdoor, Pages 6 on 02/07/2013