If there’s one lesson I’ve learned from a professional career writing stories about fly fishing all over the world—and editing magazines that revolve around the same subject—it’s that fly fishing is less about the fish you might catch and more and about the interesting people you meet along the way, as well as the wild and beautiful places you could be lucky enough to experience.
Early in life, I took a shine to writing. I always loved reading. I wished I could end up being a writer. That was a wish, and I guess wishes do come true, because my other passion all along has been fishing. I somehow found a way to put two and two together, but only after a long, hard road of paying dues.
My wife is a retired 5th grade teacher, and I used to present to her classes once a year, showing slides of all the crazy adventures I’d been on. The lesson was that it was writing—not fishing—that landed me in all those places. The things you’re taught about grammar and spelling and storytelling all matter.
Most of the stories I’ve written have “backstories” that I’ve never published. Most of us writers have backstories, and if you ever got a bunch of writers to spill the beans, you might make a helluva book yourself. Top of mind, I remember:
… fishing “Curtis Point” in Florida with legendary Bill Curtis on the poling platform…
… white-knuckle bush plane flights into knee-deep sloughs on Alaskan rivers, and up-close bear encounters…
… sitting in a conference room at a Bolivian army base, with 10 grand U.S. leafed out on the table…
… riding Soviet-era Mi-8 choppers that stunk of av-gas, with rosaries swinging off the pilot dash in Kamchatka and on the Kola Peninsula…
… watching blue whales the size of 737s roll over my right shoulder as I fought a 200-pound mako shark over my left, off the San Diego coast with brother Conway Bowman…
… camping on beaches the entire length of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico, and cooking cabrilla in a skillet on the beach with a “retired” gang member, then brushing the scorpions off my sleeping bag in the morning…
… listening to Chris Santella crack out his backpacker guitar and sing Irish tunes (others sang along) as we waited in the airline counter queue in Shannon.
… jumping the break wave where the Rio Parismina meets the Caribbean in Costa Rica, in a skiff, as a tender boat waited and watched, in case we got tossed, so the bull sharks didn’t eat us…
… having my body painted by the Kayapo in Brazil (the defenders of the rain forest) to bring me luck as I fished in the wildest jungle in the world…
… sleeping in open hammocks in the jungle of Guyana… feeling like jaguar bait, wrapped in cheesecloth/mosquito netting…
… choppering into the fjords on the western coast of New Zealand, and dipping a tin cup in the river to drink as we chased two-foot brown trout on dry flies…
There’s more. Of course. So much more.
It’s the words, not just the fish, that took me to all those places.
And now, it’s the people, and the places, that still sift through my dreams most nights. And I wouldn’t trade any of it for anything in the world.
That said, all of this has only made me more deeply appreciate the home river and where it all started. My answer to the “if you had any one day to fish anywhere” question is home, on the Baldwin River in Michigan, and all these experiences only served to reinforce that.
So go, make your own adventures, near or far. But remember… it really isn’t about the fish… it’s about the people and the places. And home is where the heart is.
