John Fleming....Indian Guide By: John Dettloff © 2014 With one of the Chippewa Flowage's most famous and favored musky haunts known to be Fleming's Bar, the name of Fleming is bound to remain forever ingrained in the souls of the flowage faithful for as long as these waters continue to flow. But what about the family for which this spot was named...and their only son, who came to be known as one of the flowage’s premier musky fishing guides during its heyday? While today's angling generation may never have heard the name of John Fleming, he stood as one in along line of native guides who seemed to possess a sixth sense about the mysteries of the flowage...and of where muskies were hiding. With the likes of Willie Belille, Fred Smith, and George James serving as some of Fleming's predecessors (guiding on its original lakes and rivers even before the flowage was formed) a steady stream of able Native guides were to follow in their wake during the coming years. Men like Edward DeMarr Sr., Charley Wolfe, Henry Smith, Ed Slater, Gorman Tainter, Edward "Swede" DeMarr Jr., Charlie "Man" Thayer, and young up-andcomers like Jack Hollen, Art Fleming, and "Mousey" Besoni were but some of the better-known Native guides of the flowage. But there was one name, that of John Fleming, which seemed to become synonymous with the term musky.
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