May 13, 1998
Fish tale
Zoo landed exhibit from local saloon
By Garret Leiva
Herald staff writer
Any angler worth his or her salt has a tale or two about the one that got away. It is usually an epic yarn spun with 10-pound-test fishing line about some Great Lakes lunker. A story filled with a fish - and facts - so elusive they would make Melville's "Moby Dick" seem like chum bait.
The story behind the 30 fish on display inside a cherry wood cabinet at the Clinch Park Zoo is no different. It, too, is a fish tale. While hardly of epic proportions, it certainly takes out its share of line - the bottom of which may never be landed.
But on the surface, how the collection of trout, burbot and crappie landed at Clinch Park Zoo seems simple.
In 1993, Richard and June Furtney, then owners of the Sail Inn in Traverse City, decided the Barlow Street bar needed a change of decor. After stuffing the mounted fish in a storage locker for a few months, the couple decided to donate the entire collection to the downtown zoo. ... At least this is the way zoo director Ken Gregory remembers the story.
"The zoo was at the time looking for a collection of fish species from the Great Lakes, and they just called out of the blue," recalled Gregory, who said that such large exhibits rarely come from individual donors, let alone neighborhood bars.
Since that time, the collection has become quite the conversation piece at the Clinch Park Zoo, Gregory said.
"People will point to the collection and say, 'I caught one twice as big,' or, 'This is what Uncle Larry caught, and when we pulled it up it scared us; so we cut the line.'
"It's fun for the staff to just listen to all the fish stories," Gregory said.
But the Clinch Park Zoo is only half of the tale behind this particular fish story. The origin of the fish collection rests with a man named Andy and a story as clear as the bottom of Mud Lake.
As current Sail Inn owner Joe Williams recalls, the collection was donated by the Furtneys. Williams believes June has since moved to Florida and Richard had died a few years ago. There is no telephone listing for any Furtneys in the Grand Traverse area; so efforts to hook up with them were unsuccessful.
But the collection originated with the previous owner, a man named Andy, said Williams. While the man's last name escapes Williams, he said not many fish eluded Andy's collection. Pike, walleyes, saugers and blue gills all were brought to the bar by patrons who donated their catch to the bar owner.
The fish would later be mounted by a local taxidermist, the cost of which was footed by Andy, and displayed inside a large wooden cabinet with sliding glass doors.
Here, however, is where the tale starts to get fuzzy and the line begins to head for deep waters.
One of the stories floating around is that bar patrons who supplied the bar a fish would receive a free drink for their donation. As a longtime customer of the Sail Inn, Charles Nicholson of Traverse City said he suspects the story of drinks for fish is true. He is, however, doubtful of the rumor that the size of the fish determined the size of the free drink, as some have claimed.
That's not to say that Nicholson doesn't have his own stories to share. Take, for example, the time he tried to help further the fish collection.
"I took an old cane fishing pole, the kind a kid would use, and hung it up behind the bar with a piece of string and safety pin," said Nicholson, who also only remembers the first name of the barkeep. "The string was dangling over a goldfish bowl with a note attached that said, 'Catch your own damn fish Andy.'
"He sure got a good laugh out of that one," said Nicholson, noting that he has not seen Andy around in "quite a while."
While the whereabouts of Andy and his side of the story remain unclear, this is one fish collection that continues to spawn tall tales and exaggerations.
"The collection generates a lot of interaction between the generations of visitors," said Gregory the zoo director. "You see fathers and even grandfathers talking about the one that got away."