The man moves slowly along the rim of a pond, fly line etched in a pale arc against sunset water. A balsa popping bug settles into the surface, gurgles twice, then disappears into the maw of a largemouth bass.
At age 88, George Uyeno makes certain concessions to the march of time. He no longer pursues deer or elk, mostly because all the members of the old gang are gone. Trips to Alaska and other faraway lands reside in photo albums rather than day planners. A bamboo walking stick helps him through hard places that once melted beneath a sturdy stride.
But the casting stroke remains true, a laser delivery that always seems to land close to a fish.
Few Colorado outdoorsmen have pursued a greater variety of fish and game with more vigor or success on a working man’s budget. Certainly none has been more beloved.
Scroll back a quarter century to a narrow store front at 26 Broadway, a place that advertises shoe repair. Every Denver fisherman knows it for something else. At a time when wading boots have the life expectancy of the average housefly, Uyeno’s shop is the one reliable haven for repair. With unerring efficiency and shockingly low prices, he applies patches that will not leak, vulcanizes felt soles, shores up lagging spirits.
More than anything, the shop is a gathering space for kindred souls, a clearinghouse for information before computers and cellphones stole something precious from the human experience. Walls are covered with photos and trophy mounts, but mostly the place is garnished with friendship.
On any given day, the assemblage reflects a cross-section of Denver society; park your ego and bankbook at the door.
Customers include President Dwight Eisenhower, a frequent fishing visitor to Colorado. Supreme Court Justice Byron White seems to exercise particularly poor judgment in his purchase of wading wear.
“He came in every few weeks,” Uyeno remembers. “I wondered when he actually worked.”
Mostly, people came simply to visit with George, to touch the sorcery he holds over fish and game, to share the twinkle-eyed good humor of a remarkable man who already had endured an overdose of life’s travails when he came to Colorado in 1944 to work the sugar beet harvest.
Along with tens of thousands of other loyal Americans of Japanese descent, he had been plucked as a young man from his home in California and placed in an internment camp, this one in Arizona.
This most difficult epoch — chronicled in books, movies and the judicial process — left Uyeno confused, but not bitter. To compound the disorder and irony of it all, he was drafted into the U.S. Army less than a year after being released from the camp.
“It was a tough time, with a lot of hatred, but I was just glad to get into the service,” he remembers.
Before returning to Colorado, he married Dora Sugioka, beginning a 60-year love excursion along the rivers and lakes of the North American continent.
“I figured if I was going to spend a lot of time with George, I better start fishing,” Dora jokes.
In a southeast Denver basement rich with the trappings of a sportsman’s trade, one trophy stands out. It is a king salmon, 70 pounds, all silvery with dark spots. A nearby photo shows Dora Uyeno posed alongside.
“I never caught anything nearly that big,” laughs George, whose own long list of lunkers includes a state-record walleye.
Trips to Alaska no longer fit the Uyeno travel plan. But the itinerary does include jaunts to the San Juan River, the Missouri, the Green, Yellowstone National Park — not a schedule one might expect from a man nearing his ninth decade and just five years removed from open-heart surgery.
Canada geese still have reason to be nervous when Uyeno is lurking about; wild turkeys in six states know the sound of his call. After 18 years, he volunteers twice a week at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, teaching kids to fish.
“I figure I’ve still got a couple good years left,” he chuckles, a master woodsman grinning at the trick he continues to play with time.
Charlie Meyers: 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com
