A Fly Fisher's Sixty Seasons

by Steve Raymond

  That all happened hours ago. Since then I’d fished slowly and carefully downstream until now the sun was nearly ready to slip behind the row of cottonwoods and alders guarding the river’s western bank. I’d fished every likely place and quite a few that didn’t seem very likely. I hadn’t seen a sign of fish in any of them, and nothing had come to my fly.

  Now I was tired, my feet hurt, and my waders had started leaking. Not for the first time I hoped the people who make waders aren’t the same ones who make space suits for astronauts. Before forcing myself to start the long hike back to camp, I decided a little rest was in order, so I looked around, spied an old bleached log on a nearby gravel bar, and sat down on it gratefully.

  The river, where it skirted the edge of the bar, seemed nearly as tired as I was. At this point in its passage it was moving sluggishly while its current scrawled cryptic messages on the surface. The messages were in languages I couldn’t understand— Korean? Arabic?—and disappeared quickly, only to be replaced by equally alien texts.

  The fly I’d used last was stuck in the hook keeper on my rod. Idly, I removed it for a closer look and saw its hackles had been compressed and battered during its long, riffle-hitched progress down the river. That would never do, so I searched a cluttered pocket in my fishing vest, found the tube of dry-fly dope I knew was there, squeezed a little on my finger, and applied it gently to the hackles. The fly looked better, like a woman who’s just applied her makeup.

  Then I thought again of the fish I’d lost, as I’d done several times already. Once more I tried to figure out what I might have done differently that could have changed the outcome of the fight. Did I have the drag on the reel set too tight? What if I’d held my rod at a different angle during that final wild run? Would anything have made a difference? Maybe there was nothing more I could have done.

  Thinking about it made the pain return. It wasn’t quite as sharp as before—the passage of time already had eased it a little—but still strong enough to make me hold my breath and wince. More time was needed before it would finally vanish altogether. I knew that from painful experience.

  It made me wonder: If Izaak Walton had it right when he said a man can’t lose what he never had, then why does it always hurt so much?

  ASK THE GUIDE

  I HOPE it won’t offend anyone if I confess I’d rather not fish with a guide. That’s not because I bear them any ill will; most guides I’ve met have been really nice people. It’s mostly because I’d rather do things myself, which necessarily means fishing without a guide.

  There are times, however, when it’s impossible to fish without a guide. Some fishing venues require them, whether you want one or not—it’s the law. Other waters are accessible only if you have a guide to provide transportation. Fortunately, most guides I’ve had in those situations were friendly and pleasant, even if not all of them knew their business very well.

  The first real guide I had was on my first trip to New Zealand, where I had the great good luck to be invited by the New Zealand government as part of a journalist exchange program. My three-week visit wasn’t meant to be a fishing trip, however—at least not as far the government was concerned. Government officials had prepared a long list of things they wanted me to see, expecting me to return home and write about them. The itinerary included visits to a pulp mill, a dental school, a dairy farm, a factory where crop-duster airplanes were manufactured, a sheep station, an agricultural college, several tourist attractions, and other sites.

  Fortunately, during the pre-trip vetting process, the government discovered I was a fanatical fly fisher, so they left an open weekend in my schedule when I could try fishing at my own expense. They even arranged a guide, an aging, congenial, bandy-legged little fellow named Geoff Sanderson. He’d lost an eardrum in the war—he didn’t say which war—and the hearing in his other ear wasn’t much better, so I had to communicate with him mostly by shouting.

  He had an interesting history. He’d owned mining interests in northern China and was on a fishing vacation in New Zealand when he received a cryptic telegram: “You may consider that everything you had is lost. The Communists moved in last night.” With nothing else to do, he decided to stay in New Zealand and continue fishing—why not?—and eventually became a guide. His clients had included such American fly-fishing luminaries as Ted Trueblood and Joe Brooks, so I felt in good company.

  I’d just finished reading a book titled Trout of the Tongariro, by Tony Jensen, another New Zealand fishing guide. It made the Tongariro River sound so inviting I decided that’s where I wanted to fish, but it was such a fine day when I met Sanderson he suggested we try Lake Taupo instead and save the Tongariro for the following day. That sounded reasonable, so I agreed.

  We boarded his boat, a small cabin cruiser with an open cockpit in the stern, made to order for trolling but not well suited for fly casting. An enormous outboard motor was mounted on the transom next to what he called his “small” backup motor, an outboard of “only” seventy-five horsepower. The big motor gave us a jarring, tail-rattling ride as we headed out through wind-driven swells onto the huge lake.

  The Tongariro flows into the south end of Lake Taupo through a braided, brush-covered delta with several “mouths” and we spent most of the day fishing those—the so-called Blind Mouth, Hook Mouth, and Main Mouth. Sanderson’s technique was to locate a rip where the current flowed from one of the mouths, anchor at the edge, then cast into deep water with a high-density, fast-sinking line. That’s not my favorite way to fish, but when in Rome, etc., etc.

  We’d been fishing only ten minutes when another boat came alongside, piloted by a warden who asked to see our licenses. I displayed the two Taupo-area daily fishing permits I’d purchased for seventy-five cents each and managed to escape arrest. I also noted the contrast to fishing back home, where I’ve often gone ten years or more without having my license checked.

  After about three hours fishing, I hooked a good fish off the Blind Mouth and landed a four-pound rainbow. It made one fair run, but was nothing special. Later I landed and released a ten-inch rainbow. That was our bag for the day.

  That night it rained very hard and was still raining next morning. The Tongariro was completely blown out of shape, and fishing it was out of the question. Sanderson presented me a bill for $57 in New Zealand currency, or about US$50, for one day of fishing. Since I’d never hired a guide before, didn’t really know what to expect, and wasn’t carrying very much money, that seemed high. It was probably a good thing the weather had knocked out the fishing; if I’d had to pay for another day I might have run out of money.

  Now—more than forty years later—Sanderson’s bill seems laughably cheap.

  My wife, Joan, arrived to join me after the first two weeks of my tour and we added another week’s stay at our own expense. Fortunately, she brought a fresh supply of traveler’s cheques, so I was able to hire the second guide of my fishing life—the previously mentioned Tony Jensen. He was much closer to my age than Sanderson, could hear much better, and we hit it off immediately. He already had another client booked for the first day I wanted to fish, but said the other client was an experienced fisherman who wouldn’t mind if he split time between the two of us, assuming that was OK with me. It was.

  We started on the Tongariro at the famous Major Jones Pool, where Tony told me where to begin fishing, waited until he was satisfied I seemed to know what I was doing, then left to check on his other client. By the time he returned, I had fished my way to the end of the great crescent-shaped pool and landed five splendid rainbow from three to five pounds. “I could tell by the way you started fishing that you didn’t really need a guide,” Tony said. “That’s why I didn’t think you’d mind if I left for a while.”

  I decided Tony was the kind of guide I like.

  Next day he took me farther up the river where we found more trout, and I grew more impressed with his intimate knowledge of the Tongariro. In all, we spent six hours together over two days. His bill
was $48.

  As I was saying, that’s my kind of guide.

  Thirteen years passed before I fished with another guide. That was when my friend Dave Draheim and I joined nine other anglers for a trip to Christmas Island in the Pacific, still relatively early in its development as a bonefishing destination. Most of us, including Dave and me, had never fished for bonefish.

  When we saw the ubiquitous poverty of the people who lived on the island, it was easy for me to set aside my usual suspicion of people who try to make a living from fly fishing. Instead, I felt privileged to pay the local guides because they so obviously needed the money for their families, even though it soon became evident most of them were still in the very early stages of learning to be guides.

  Our first day Dave and I bounced around in the back of a small pickup truck as our “guides” drove a maze of potholed dirt roads, splashed through several lagoons, detoured around rusting military wreckage and fallen coconut palms, and finally dropped us at the shore of a lagoon that looked no different from many others we had passed. When we asked where we should begin fishing, one guide pointed vaguely at the water, then curled up in the front seat of the pickup and went to sleep. The other guide crawled in the back of the truck and followed suit. I didn’t complain; if I had to have a guide, which I did in this case, I’d rather leave him snoozing in a truck.

  I’d heard many tales of how difficult it was to see bonefish, and Dave and I soon confirmed they were all true, but I was glad to find that out for myself instead of having a guide point it out to me. It also didn’t take very long for us to learn to see the fish. After several hours of fishing, and what seemed like several miles of wading, we both got the hang of spotting the ghostlike shadows of cruising bonefish and each of us cast to a dozen or more.

  We also learned the truth of something else we’d heard about bonefish—they are extremely wary, and one must be very quiet approaching and casting to them.

  I had several follows and two takes for my efforts. One fish slipped the hook and I missed the other. My only catch was a small yellow snapper. Dave, however, landed two bonefish, one a magnificent six-pounder, which would prove to be one of the best of our trip.

  On the second day we rode an awkward outboard-powered wooden punt far into the island’s main lagoon, where the guides dropped us on a small island, again gestured vaguely at the water, then settled down to snooze under the shelter of the punt’s roof. Dark clouds scudded overhead, emitting quick bursts of rain, and only an occasional sun break made it possible to see anything in the water. I cast to one large shadow and hooked what turned out to be a black-tipped reef shark a couple of feet long. Twice it ran deeply into my backing and put up a good fight before I got it in close. Black-tipped reef sharks are aggressive fish, and even a two-footer has a full set of dentures and should not be trifled with, so I cut the leader well above the tippet and let the fish keep the fly.

  Later we moved to a pair of what we later learned were called “pancake” flats, large expanses of white coral sand surrounded by deep water. Here we found bonefish coming out of the deep water to feed in shallow channels on the flats, and if we took station on a channel and waited, it was fairly easy to see an incoming fish and cast ahead of it. Despite passing cloud shadows, I hooked eleven bonefish, broke off one, lost four others, and landed six. The largest was only about two pounds, but it was a lively fish that took out line in high-speed gulps.

  Guide assignments were rotated every day through some complex algorithm known only to the chief guide. Some days we were assigned guides we’d had before, other days we weren’t. Fishing assignments also were supposedly changed daily to account for tide changes and to assure the same flats weren’t fished every day.

  That seemed to be the theory, anyway.

  One day Dave and I were paired with two other fishermen. After a mediocre, almost fishless morning, we all bounced around in a pickup for nearly an hour until the guides stopped on the shore near a small island. Beyond the island was a flat Dave and I had fished a day earlier, but the guides assured us it would be worth fishing again, then took their accustomed places in the truck and settled down for a nap. We waded a channel to the island, casting to a few bonefish along the way, then crossed the island to the flat on its far side. When we got there, the flat was dry; the tide had already gone out. So we reversed course and returned to the channel we had just crossed, only to find most of the water had drained out of it, too.

  By then I’d walked and waded several miles without making more than a few casts. It was two o’clock and the guides announced it was their quitting time. Reluctantly, we got in the truck and plotted revolution while they drove back to the hotel. When we got there, we demanded more fishing time. One guide refused and went home, but the other agreed to take us out again. He took us to a big flat near shore where we fished another couple of hours. There were plenty of bonefish around, but persistent wind and fading late-afternoon light made it almost impossible to see them. Those we did see usually spooked before we could even get a line in the air. I broke off one fish on the strike and lost another that cut my leader on a coral head. It was the most frustrating day of our trip.

  Back at the Captain Cook Hotel, I admired a lovely blossom that resembled a large dogwood bloom. Curious to know what it was, I decided to ask the guide. He stared at the blossom, pondered the matter, then gave his answer: “Tropical Flower.”

  One further bit of evidence of the guides’ inexperience was apparent from a sign posted on the wall of the hotel dining room. It recommended contributions to the staff welfare fund “in lieu of tipping.”

  That would change radically in years to come.

  On the first of what would become three trips to Salmon Brook Camp on the Main Southwest Miramichi in New Brunswick, I knew I’d again be fishing with a guide. Not only was a guide required, but I was a complete stranger to the type of fishing I’d be doing, much of which would be from a canoe. So when I was introduced to Charlie Munn, I was ready to place myself completely in his hands.

  It was a good decision. Charlie came from a family with a distinguished history among Miramichi fishing guides and had twenty-six years’ experience of his own. Even so, at first I was a little nervous fishing from the front of his canoe while he sat in the rear watching everything I did. I felt a bit like a teenager taking his first driving test. But we soon achieved a level of mutual comfort—well, at least I felt comfortable—because Charlie had perhaps the best “bedside manner” of any guide I’ve met. He never said much, and when he did speak it was usually to suggest that “mebbe it’s time we tried a different spot” or “mebbe it’s time to head back.” He prefaced most of his few pronouncements with the word “mebbe,” which framed it as a suggestion, never a command.

  Even when I screwed up a cast or did something else wrong, he was never critical. But I soon realized he was always concentrating intently on what I was doing, following the progress of the fly on every cast, and if he didn’t like what he saw he would say something like “that fly isn’t tracking right. Mebbe I better have a look at it.” That was about as close as he ever came to a declarative statement. And if I hooked a fish and lost it, he would always say something intended to make me feel better—“saved you the trouble of releasing it” or “you had your fun with it.” I appreciated the sentiments, even if they didn’t really ease the pain of losing a fish.

  So we usually fished in comfortable silence, both of us watching the fly as it swept through its quartering downstream course. I fished a floating line so the fly was always in the surface film or just beneath, which usually made it possible to see. Charlie often saw fish before I did. “There’s a fish after that fly,” he would announce, and in the next moment I’d see and feel the strike.

  Salmon Brook Camp has exclusive rights to six pools or “beats” on the river, and Charlie knew every one intimately. He also knew where the salmon would be lying at almost any stage of water. I always felt that if there were any fish in the river, C
harlie would be able to find them.

  That doesn’t mean we were always busy fighting fish. Fishing for Atlantic salmon is similar to steelhead fishing in that it usually takes many casts and a healthy dose of patience just to get a single rise or strike. But the fishing in the Miramichi was faster than steelhead fishing, partly because the salmon runs are larger than most of the few remaining good steelhead runs on the Pacific Coast, and partly—or maybe mostly—because Charlie knew where the salmon would be.

  I also greatly admired his ability to pole the long, heavy canoe, especially upstream against the current. He would thrust his hand-cut spruce pole into the gravel bottom with a satisfying crunch, apply leverage, lean into the pole with all his strength, and drive the canoe forward in spurts of progress. I wouldn’t have wanted to try arm wrestling with him.

  In eighteen days of fishing over those three trips, I rose nineteen fish, hooked eight, landed three salmon—largest twelve pounds—and several grilse (salmon that had spent only a single winter at sea and usually weighed three to seven pounds).

  Thanks, Charlie.

  I returned to Christmas Island on the tenth anniversary of my first trip, this time on a magazine assignment to write a story about what had changed on the island since my first visit. I was traveling alone, but there were more than two dozen other fishermen in camp and I quickly made friends with several.

  I was most interested to find out what changes might have taken place with the guides. I recognized some from my first trip and it was soon evident they had learned more about what guides are supposed to do. No longer were they just truck drivers or boatmen who dozed away the afternoons while their clients fished; now they had learned to accompany their clients, wading with them and helping them see fish—most guides were much better at that than the visiting anglers—and suggesting when to change flies and what fly they should try.