“You don’t want a job in fishing,” Tom Rosenbauer once said to me. “You want a day job.”
Those aren’t the words an aspiring trout bum wants to hear, though I think I’ve passed the point of aspiration. Last I checked I have a freezer full of fish and wild game, no girl in my life, and a bank balance that reflects the cost of traveling the West in a pickup truck.
Tom’s right, though. Whether the freezer or bank account empties first doesn’t matter. Either one leaves me looking for work in an industry increasingly devoid of those opportunities.
Authors Spencer Durrant and John Gierach wait for a fish to take on a remote stream in Utah. Photo by Bob White.
Which is why, while waiting for our food at Arby’s in Evanston, Wyoming, I peppered John Gierach with questions about making a living as a writer.
John graciously put up with my questions, and the whole conversation put a smile on Bob White’s face. I have a feeling he’s sat court-side for many a similar discussion over the years he and John have been friends.
Just as we all refilled our drinks for the last leg of the drive, John piped up with a final piece of advice.
“I’ve only known you for a few hours,” he said, “But best I can tell is your problem is being too damn impatient. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
With that, he walked outside, lit a cigarette, and waited while I gassed up the car.
John was absolutely right. I proved him more so when, the following morning, I missed the first three fish rising to my dry fly because I set the hook too quickly.
It was late March, a bit too blustery for the blue-wings to really take off, but not so bad as to put them down entirely. John, Bob and I had three days of fishing planned, including two days floating the Green.
Authors Spencer Durrant and John Gierach gear up at the Little Hole boat ramp on Utah’s Green River. Photo by Bob White.
That first day I convinced them to hit a small, unremarkable creek a few hours from Flaming Gorge. It’s a sagebrush-infested, snake-filled, sweltering oven of a place, even in March. But there’s a good chance for a trout over 25 inches. Any time that you can catch trout that big from a creek that doesn’t get wider than 20 feet in most places, you do it.
I was the de facto guide since I knew the area. Bob hadn’t fished in Utah before, and John rarely visits. So, I set them up in a run I’ve had good luck in and sat back to watch them fish. It was an odd feeling, standing between two men who’ve helped mold fly fishing into what it is today, and telling them where to fish. I’ve never felt more unqualified in my life.
Bob insisted that John fish first, and John didn’t need any encouragement. He lit a cigarette, pulled out a fly box, and looked over the rim of his glasses. A Royal Wulff was the fly of choice.
Nothing John did was fast or frenzied. He’d traveled hundreds of miles to be here, and it was his first real fishing trip of the year. Most anyone else I know would’ve been a dozen casts deep by the time John dressed his fly with floatant.
He hooked a fish a few casts into the day, turning to me and grinning. Through the bushy white beard and dark sunglasses, I saw the same look of excitement that plasters my face when catching fish.
“It never gets old,” John said, as much to himself as to me.
Bob followed suit, though I could tell his decades of guiding in Alaska hadn’t been spent on brush-choked streams. He caught a few more trees than fish, something he laughed off later that night at dinner.
The last day of our trip, we stopped for lunch on a sandbar in the A-Section of the Green River. Charles Card, of the Dutch John, Utah-based Spinner Fall Guide Service, and my friend Ryan Kelly (a retired guide-turned-photography guru) got lunch ready while John, Bob and I took in the scenery.
“This never gets old,” I said, and John cracked a smile. Bob did too.
In the three days I’d spent with John and Bob, I’d come to realize something.
There’s a difference between hard work paying off in the form of a finished book or gorgeous painting and trying to force either into existence. Or, as John implied, there’s as much to enjoy while patiently waiting for things to work out as there is when everything comes full circle.
John Gierach and guide Ryan Kelly on the B Section of Utah’s Green River
Fly fishing isn’t the same as it was when John started writing and Bob started painting. Both men are hugely successful, though, because they’re at the top of their respective games. There’s less money in the industry these days, and it’s more competitive than ever, but people like John and Bob stick around not out of sentimentality, but because they’ve been patient enough to see things through.
In an era where everyone’s a “brand ambassador” and thinks their Instagram posts are worth a full-time salary, I reckon that lesson’s been lost. John worked odd jobs for years before he was able to dedicate himself full-time to writing. Bob’s story about how he became an artist included stints in two different careers.
Their success took time, sacrifice, and an understanding that having fun is worth more than what most “real” jobs pay anyways.
Spencer is a fly fishing writer, outdoors columnist, and novelist from Utah. He’s the Managing Editor of The Modern Trout Bum, and Spencer’s work has appeared in various national fly fishing publications. Find him on Twitter/Instagram, @SpencerDurrant.
Fly fishing is a noble sport whose avid practitioners learn the skills of finesse, observation and technique-and that would be great if it all stopped there. But fly fishing is more-oh so much more-than the stream side perfection of a mere handful of angling skills.
The broader curriculum also teaches us: Frustration (“When we see trout feeding regardless of our fly…the resentment is almost like the anger of a madman.” -Harold Russell); Jealousy(“Fly fishing is like sex, everyone thinks there is more than there is, and that everyone else is getting more than their share.” -Henry Kanemotto); Lying (“The question is not whether successful fishermen believe in God, but vice versa.” -Don Roberts); and Obstinance (“If I’m not going to catch anything, then I’d rather not catch anything on flies.” – Bob Lawless).
What Fly Fishing Teaches Us relates these lessons and many more in pithy words from angling literature and dazzling Denver Bryan photographs. Buy Now
