Dave Brandt has passed

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teter
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Joined: 12/21/04 19:00

Re: Dave Brandt has passed

#21

Post by teter »

Very sad. He was a giant of the Catskills fishing community and will be missed.

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DrLogik
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Joined: 12/20/04 19:00
Location: The Piedmont region in NC
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Re: Dave Brandt has passed

#22

Post by DrLogik »

Taken from my web site...
A few years ago I was fishing with a friend of mine in the Catskills on the East Branch of the Delaware near one of Art Flick's favorite spots. My friend and I sat on the bank discussing how the river felt. One topic turned into another and I noticed a plain clear glass bottle sitting in a home-made pouch on my friend's vest. I hadn't noticed it before and asked what it was. My friend pulled the bottle out and handed it to me. Naturally I unscrewed the cap and took a sniff. "Whew, smells, like Coleman fuel!", I exclaimed. Friend said, "Yup, ...and paraffin. Works pretty good for me". "What, you use it to float your fly?", I asked. "Sure do" was my friend's 's reply.

As my friend explained, he shaves off a few slices of paraffin into a mason jar of Coleman fuel and let's the paraffin dissolve. Once dissolved, he dunks the fly into the mix, false-casts the fly a few times to dry it and then makes a cast. One thing I noticed that was different from my friend's 's dry fly on the water and mine was that mine wasn't floating at the moment and his was...like a cork! That was my introduction to Bergman's Formula.
That friend was Dave Brandt. We stopped by his place in the summer of 2010 on our way back from Cooperstown. My son's team took 4th place in the baseball tournament there. Dave and I fished and chatted up a storm and had a great time. I learned a lot from this man.

Years before when we had The Fly Fishing Show here in Charlotte, he and Barb would drive down for the weekend. That's how I met him. Years later he was one of my instructors at Joan Wulff's Fly Casting School and later the Instructor's School. He was an amazing caster as well as fly tier and gentleman.

I'm going to miss you my friend.

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Brooks
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Joined: 04/07/19 15:58
Location: Idaho

Re: Dave Brandt has passed

#23

Post by Brooks »

I was very saddened to read this. I met Dave in 1989. I was working a ‘temporary duty’ stint at Federal Electric Corp. in Paramus,NJ. A friend and I (both westerners) drove in a rental car to Roscoe, stumbled upon the Catskill Flyfishing Museum which had a sign “Fly tying demonstration-Dave Brandt”.
We walked in and sitting at a smallish round table was Dave Brandt, Poul Jorgensen, and Lee Wulff. My friend and I looked at each other and we both quietly said “holy s—-!”. It was like two kids stumbling upon their super heroes.
I still have a small clear film roll canister with Dave Brandt’s business card rolled up in it with some Royal Wulffs that he tied (while Lee Wulff watched). And I have a small plastic box, his Catskill Sampler on my fly tying desk also. They’ve been on my fly tying desk all these years.
Our first trip to Roscoe was a heck of an adventure that I’ll have to detail some other time (sleeping drunk in our rental car at Hendrickson’s pool, snagging a duck with a muddler minnow on the holiest of dry fly rivers and much more).
RIP Mr. Brandt. You made a huge impression on this Idaho boy.

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