The First NFC Hat and the Story Behind It...
The first NFC hat…
“Bob thought for a second, took it off, looked at it, and said, “actually, this is the first NFC hat ever made”… ”
NFC was founded in late 2017. It was started as the result of an unsolicited phone call current NFC Executive Director Bob Mallard received from a young gentleman named Tom Dickens, a displaced Mainer living in DC at the time. Having just listed to a legislative hearing where a bill that would have prohibited the use of nonnative fish as bait that should have passed was killed by the Maine legislature, Tom reached out to see if he could help.
At the time the bill was heard, Bob was unaffiliated having moved on from Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine’s Fishing Initiative Committee, Somerset County Chapter of TU, and Dud Dean Angling Society, the last two of which he helped to found. While SAM FIC had got the heralded State Heritage Fish law passed, arguably the most important native fish initiative in the history of Maine, Bob felt they had gone as far as they were willing to go for wild native fish. And while DDAS had accomplished some important things, it was struggling to maintain its momentum.
The bill to ban nonnative fish as bait was one of several submitted at the same time to try to expand on the work done under the State Heritage Fish law, which after a decade had sat unchanged, proving why SAM took it to teh legislature in the first place. In addition to Bob, Emily Bastian, who was working for Maine Audubon at the time, and George Smith who had recently retired from his role as Executive Director for SAM and was currently unaffiliated like Bob, were the driving forces behind the bills.
The gist of the conversation between Bob and Tom was that if Bob wanted to be effective, he needed to get organized and affiliated with a group. Seeing no group that would be willing to do what Bob and Tom felt needed to be done, Tom suggested forming a new group, and offered to help make that happen with seed funding, legal paper development, website help, and branding. Having grown tired of the politics associated with formal organizations, Bob was reluctant to try get back into the game.
After further discussions, Bob decided to give it a try. He immediately recruited Emily Bastian. Next they reached out to Ted Williams. The first few things they worked on was a name, incorporation, legal papers, bylaws, logo, and a website. This took Native Fish Coalition from an idea to a reality, and seven years later something that was created solely to protect Maine’s wild native brook trout and Arctic charr is now operating in twenty-one states from Maine to Arkansas and northwest to Wisconsin…
the first nfc hat ever made…
Soon after NFC was up and running, Tom had the logo made into a sew-on patch. The trend at the time had shifted from embroidery to patches thanks to companies like Simms and Sage who saw the appeal and marketing value in the “retro” look that patches provided. Once the patches were done, Tom had one sewn on a sample hat to show around. As he had done with the patches, Tom chose a trendy “112” trucker hat from Richardson which has since become somewhat of an industry standard.
With a stack of NFC hats to choose from, Bob recently dug out a denim grey and black trucker he had not worn in several years. While at dinner, his wife Diana asked if it was a new hat as she had never seen it before. Bob thought for a second, took it off, looked at it, and said, “actually, this is the first NFC hat ever made”…
Recognizing the significance of it, Bob took the hat into the kitchen, marked the underside of the brim accordingly, and hung it up in his library along with a hat from his old fly shop, hats signed by fly fishing dignitaries, hats from fabled fishing clubs, and other collectables such as a pre Katahdin Woods and Waters promotional hat, BLM Fisheries hat, and a U.S. Border Patrol hat that he found on the side of the road in the woods.
While there is a lot left to be done with regard to moving native fish conservation and NFC forward, and Bob hopes to be able to stay in the saddle long enough to help make that happen, the first NFC hat is now officially retired before it became just another faded and soiled fishing hat discarded along the way like the countless others ones Bob has worn out over a half a century of fishing…
The first NFC hat, left, now sits alongside other collectable hats in NFC Executive Director Bob Mallard’s library…