All Fishermen Are Liars Page 10

  I enjoy and appreciate fishing lodges, but not everyone does. Balls-to-the-wall types may see regular mealtimes and other necessary regimentation as a waste of valuable fishing time. Self-styled experts sometimes chafe at having guides tell them where to go and what to do, although most of us would do well to let go of old certainties and learn. Do-it-yourselfers used to handling things on their own are sometimes uncomfortable being waited on. And even at a real wilderness outfit, some adventurers can feel confined to water they think has been fished too hard by too many others before them. A precious few of these folks will end up mounting their own expeditions, but for most of us that’s beyond the practical limit. That’s why there are lodges.

  Every fishing lodge is different, but most visits begin the same way. You step off the floatplane onto the dock, shake the hands of the camp manager and guides and, if you’re smart, make real sure all your gear is unloaded. Then you schlep your luggage to your room or cabin and assemble in the lodge for the short orientation meeting. Here you get the lowdown, which can be simple or complicated, depending on where you are.

  At a lodge in Labrador that’s known for its catch-and-release fishing for large brook trout, the owner said, “There are only two hard-and-fast rules here: One, no brook trout will be killed. Ever. And two, if your guide tells you to do something, do it. We can argue about it later.” Up till then it had all been hot coffee and good-natured hospitality, but there was a change in tone that suggested these two items went right to the heart of the matter.

  Sure enough, a few days later we were two hours from the lodge across a big lake fishing a river outlet; three of us in an eighteen-foot flat-stern canoe with a ten-horse outboard. The fishing was good and the only reason I noticed that the wind had stiffened and changed direction was that the mosquitoes abruptly stopped pestering me. But then our guide appeared at my shoulder and said, “Reel in, we gotta go.”

  It took ten minutes to hustle back to the outlet where the canoe was beached, and before we even got there, we could feel the new chill in the air and see whitecaps building on the lake. The crowns of spruce trees bobbed in the wind and the pearl-colored overcast darkened to a soggy gunmetal gray. We motored up the windward shore, staying in the shelter of the trees until we got directly upwind of the lodge. Then we turned and made the run across the lake. By then the wind had really picked up, the air had turned cold and big rain drops hit the backs of our slickers like gravel fired from a slingshot. A hundred yards off shore we were in serious rollers.

  A lesser boatman would have just made a dash for it, but our guy was smart enough to feather the outboard as we rose lazily on the big swells and then gun it into the troughs so we didn’t fatally ship water over the stern. I had a death grip on the gunnels of the canoe, as if that might help. This seemed to be going okay, but it was easy to see how that could change. As we neared the camp, we spotted the entire staff waiting for us on the dock. The owner was watching through binoculars. Two guides were in an aluminum dory with the motor idling, ready to come for us if it looked like we wouldn’t make it.

  But we did make it and the head cook, a sweet woman named Frances, herded us over to the lodge for hot coffee and an embarrassing amount of fussing. Our own mothers wouldn’t have been any more worried about us or any more relieved that we were back safe.

  That storm trapped us in our cabin for the next two and a half days. There was horizontal rain, gale-force winds, and it was cold enough for a daytime fire in the woodstove. Boredom closed in, but every time I started to mourn the fishing I’d left, I reminded myself of the two alternatives to coming in when we did: We could have waited and tried to cross the lake in even rougher seas and most likely drowned, or we could have stayed where we were to spend the next sixty hours out in the spectacular havoc of one of the worst storms I’ve ever seen with no provisions and no shelter.

  The moral is, if your guide tells you to do something, do it. On subsequent trips to that lodge, I’ve sat through the same speech nodding wisely, now the old hand who knows the score.

  This business of camp rules is a matter of style and every lodge handles it differently. Some, like the guy in Labrador, keep it simple. Others list everything that could possibly go wrong and either confuse you or scare you to death. A guy at a bass camp in south Texas just said, “Watch where you step. Everything down here will stick you, sting you or bite you and most of it’s poison.” On the other hand, I was once at a place in New Mexico where the manager, a tall man in a cowboy hat and snap-button shirt, grinned widely, slapped me on the back and said, “There’s only one rule here, and that’s that there are no rules.”

  I understood this to be hyperbole, and in fact I learned from the head guide that earlier that year this guy had booted a famous movie star who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, control his two large, troublesome dogs. Angry words were spoken, something to the effect of “I don’t give a shit who you are. I want you out of here now.” Sometimes the biggest glad-handers turn out to be the ones with the shortest fuses.

  Now and then, there are rules you abide by without ever knowing it. At a lodge in Alaska, the head cook—who also happened to be the owner’s wife—finally got tired of fishermen coming in early on slow or stormy days to hang around asking for coffee, wanting to talk and otherwise getting in the way while she prepared her labor-intensive meals. So one day she sat the guides down and said, “I don’t care how bad the fishing or the weather is, I want you to keep these people on the water and out of my kitchen until dinnertime.” Later that season a fisherman was heard to say, with undisguised admiration, “Man, these guides are gung ho. They won’t come in no matter what.”

  One thing that never changes, though, is the moment you step off the floatplane or boat onto the dock and into the gaze of the assembled guides who have come to size you up. I’ve seen people strut and preen and bluster, but it’s pointless. These guys will know all they need to about you in the first ten minutes on the water. The only thing you can say to a guide that will impress him is, “I’ve never fished here before. I’ll appreciate any help you can give me.”

  Of course, tipping is mandatory except in the kind of extreme circumstances that I’ve heard horror stories about but have never actually experienced. How much is up to you, your wallet and your conscience, but an enormous fish is worth a little extra. So is heroic effort, whether it results in fish or not.

  Some lodges put their tips into a kitty to be divvied up later, which begs a couple of questions: Do the cook and the camp manager get the same cut as the guides? Should they get the same cut? When I think my guide has gone above and beyond, I’ll put some money in the pot, then get the guy alone and slip him an extra hundred. I tip as much as I can. More often than not it doesn’t seem like enough.

  Every lodge eventually develops its own subculture, which is the result of an initial plan that’s been gradually informed and sometimes deformed by the people who run the outfit, as well as the realities of water, weather and fish. An Atlantic salmon or steelhead lodge where two or three fish can make for a bang-up week will naturally have a different sensibility than a place with five species of Pacific salmon where catches of commercial proportions aren’t unheard of.

  Part of lodge culture has to do with what we’d now call the level of service. Some outfits go heavy on the sumptuous accommodations and leisurely gourmet meals on the correct assumption that those are the only things they can control, while most of the things that can go wrong with the fishing are what an insurance agent would call “acts of God.” I was once at a place where the salmon run was canceled when a nearby volcano belched tons of evil-smelling sulfurous sludge into the river. Not much anyone could do about that.

  As long as the fishing is good, I have nothing against palatial lodges with vaulted ceilings, deer-antler chandeliers and five-course meals, and I know there are some who really enjoy that sort of thing. I once met a man at a fancy lodge who said, “I know it’s a litt
le over the top, but I work hard: I deserve this once in a while.” Fair enough, but I prefer places that think more along the lines of providing three squares a day and a dry bed so you can fish. I’m happy with a clapboard lodge where you eat a plain breakfast on a plank table at first light and sleep in a comfortable shack. For one thing, those places are usually cheaper. For another, they leave me feeling less like I’ve checked into a good hotel and more like I’m out in the sticks having an adventure, which is sort of the whole idea.

  Any fishing lodge can be good, but you naturally develop preferences over time. Given the choice, I’ll take a smaller lodge over a bigger one. That is, a place that has eight or ten fishermen in for a week instead of an outfit that has thirty or forty. This has less to do with the fishing than you might think. High-volume lodges usually have access to enough water and fish for everyone. It’s just that a crowd that size in a remote location can be oppressive and at mealtimes the dining room can resemble a factory cafeteria.

  I prefer older lodges to newer ones. For one thing, they often have the weathered, lived in, just barely out of the elements feel I like with lemmings living under the front steps and bats in the rafters. For another, places that have survived for a while probably know what they’re doing and have sent home lots of happy fishermen to tell their friends. And if the place doesn’t exactly run like a finely tuned sports car, it at least runs like an old pickup that’s owned by a good shade-tree mechanic.

  It’s not a requirement, but I prefer a place with a dog or two. Camp dogs are usually happy and friendly, and a kind word, a pat and maybe a few table scraps will give you a loyal pal for the duration. The only exception to that rule so far was a husky/wolf hybrid on the Agulawok River in Alaska that just plain scared me.

  I usually end up at fly-fishing lodges because that’s how I fish, but over the years I’ve had some excellent trips to places that don’t cater to fly fishers. This goes more smoothly now than it once did. Over the last thirty or forty years, the sport has become ubiquitous, so even gear guides have some idea of what to do with a fly caster and, unlike in the 1970s, burly sports are less likely to say mean things about “those hippies with their sissy rods.” I also think game fish that have grown suspicious of lures and spoons over the last few decades are still pushovers for fur and feathers. Or at least that’s how it seems.

  Speaking of the seventies, I can remember when communication at remote lodges consisted of a staticky shortwave radio that wouldn’t work on rainy days or when the northern lights were especially bright. That was always fine with me. One of the things I like about fishing lodges is the headspace that comes from being profoundly out of touch. Many places now have satellite phones that are more reliable, but I know a lodge owner who tells his clients that the sat phone is reserved for emergencies only, not for checking to see how the kids’ soccer games turned out or for calling their brokers. He once said to me, “If these people can’t be away from a phone for a week, they shouldn’t have come, right?”

  But emergencies do happen, regardless of how careful everyone is. I once fished at a lodge where, a few years earlier, a plane had crashed in a sudden storm, killing the pilot and several passengers. I won’t say everyone was still depressed, but when your worst fear comes true, it does permanently change the atmosphere. At a lodge in Canada the floatplane I’d flown in the year before blew a piston on takeoff and went down in the trees across the lake. It was a freak accident—the plane had just recently been serviced, inspected and certified airworthy. Everyone on board was hurt, but no one was killed. And at another place a man got seriously ill and couldn’t be flown out to a hospital right away because the floatplane was grounded by weather. They did finally get him out, but too late.

  No one was at fault. Those were just examples of what can happen. This possibility of real trouble explains any number of things: why some lodge managers simply smile at complaints about scratchy towels and underdone pasta, why you may be asked to sign a liability waiver when you go to a lodge and why many lodges now have the best communication available. But of course technology can, and inevitably does, go too far.

  I was at a lodge in Alaska recently that was close enough to a small, year-round settlement to have satellite TV and cellphone reception as well as wireless internet service. This may turn out to be the wave of the future, but I’d never seen anything like it before. We all caught fish, but in the evenings, instead of talking about them in front of the fireplace, everyone was busy texting, calling, e-mailing, watching TV or playing video games while I played the solitary Luddite, finding a quiet place to read or sitting on the porch waiting for a bear to shamble out of the darkening forest.

  I’ve met people at lodges who became close friends, I’ve gotten along with people I wouldn’t have liked if we hadn’t been thrown together by chance and of course I’ve run across a few stupendous assholes. I’ve spent evenings arguing, laughing, reminiscing and now and then sulking over a run of bad luck. I’ve endured unsuccessful attempts at entertainment. (Karaoke Night above the Arctic Circle is still a painful memory.) I’ve also formed temporary partnerships and alliances and now and then banded together with others to ostracize an especially nasty drunk or blowhard in a north woods version of Lord of the Flies. But I’ve never before been to a lodge that reminded me of a hotel lobby full of strangers.

  12

  TEMPORARY PURIST

  I live near the confluence of two perfectly good freestone trout creeks in the Rocky Mountains, but in early April when the midges are still on and the first of the blue-winged olive mayflies could be starting, the grass seems greener on the small tailwater in the next drainage north. This isn’t a long drive as drives to rivers go, but it involves going twenty-some miles up my own canyon—gaining over 2,000 feet in elevation in the process—crossing the saddle above Muggins Gulch, then looping around Mount Olympus and down into the next draw.

  In the kind of chilly, low-ceilinged spring weather that’s thought to be best for hatches, this trip also involves driving the narrow canyon road up into the sensory deprivation of the cloud cover. I know the route by heart, but when visibility is down to thirty feet, landmarks dissolve, one bend in the road looks a lot like another and I can catch myself wondering, is this Split Rock, or am I already at Lion Gulch?

  I’m not a fast mountain driver even in the best conditions, but I’m really creeping along now; peering ahead into the fog for a glimmer of taillights going even slower than I am, for the deer, elk and occasional bighorn sheep that are all possible obstructions on this road, not to mention the odd bike rider pumping uphill with his Spandex-clad ass aimed lewdly at my windshield.

  I also know that this wet spring weather lubricates canyon walls, causing them to shed a winter’s worth of frost-heaved rocks. These can be anything from a scattering of sharp granite pebbles in your lane to a car-sized boulder to a road-blocking landslide, none of which you want to come upon too suddenly. If you have any romance at all in your soul, the mountains in fog are hauntingly beautiful, but it’s best to keep your eyes on the road instead of mooning over the landscape.

  So it takes longer to get there than usual, but now that I’m down off the back side of the saddle, the visibility has improved a little. When I cross the bridge a few hundred yards below Olympus Dam, I can see that the river is flowing clear and right around a hundred cubic feet per second, even though the dam itself is just a faint shape in the mist. This is a perfect flow. It’s low enough for the trout to rise freely if they have a reason to, but still high enough to keep them from being any spookier or leader-shy than they already are.

  The last time I was here, the midge hatch was still going strong. I fished dry flies all afternoon and landed maybe half a dozen brown and rainbow trout, two of which were good-sized for this river. The first of the blue-winged olives were also just starting to sputter off to the tune of one mayfly every few minutes. It wasn’t even what you’d call a sparse hatch, but th
e bugs were an inkling of things to come.

  It’s now a week later and a textbook dry-fly day: thickly overcast, chilly and windless with the falling barometer fishermen believe makes trout bite. When I pull off to have a closer look at the river, it doesn’t seem to be drizzling at all, but after standing there for a few minutes I wipe the shoulder of my jacket and my hand comes away wet. The same thing will happen to an insect’s wings. Olives and midges like to hatch in weather like this, even though their wings dry more slowly than they would in more typically bright Colorado weather, leaving them on the water longer, where the trout can get them. It’s just before noon on a day when you’d expect an afternoon hatch. The canyon looks like a Sung Dynasty Chinese watercolor, and the river seems to be humming with anticipation—or maybe it’s just me.

  Four hours later I haven’t seen a single fly or so much as one rising trout—not even a dink in a foamy backwater. I’m not so much disappointed as I am puzzled and a little embarrassed. Everything I think I know about the local trout fishing tells me that hundreds of fish should be rising to a multiple hatch and they’re not. All the usual signs are aligned, including the skanky spring weather at 8,000 feet. Since I left home, it’s gone from fog to mist to drizzle to a light, steady rain. In the next few hours the precipitation will go the full distance from rain to sleet to the granular pellets known as graupel to outright snow after dark. To people from other parts of the country, the phrase “springtime in the Rockies” accurately conjures mountain meadows full of wildflowers, but not the fifty-seven inches of April snow that watered them.