From the Jan./Feb. 2015 issue of Sporting Classics.
It seems every walk of life has its legends, and certainly fly fishing is no exception. For anglers who love the graceful symmetry of the cast, solitude and quite reflection in the most beautiful places in the world, the ability to pursue anything from bluegills in local ponds to billfish in bluewater, and the intensity of a take, the legends come immediately to mind. Lefty Kreh, Chico Fernandez, and Flip Pallot always head my list, and probably the list of many other sportsmen as well. Flip, however, due to his 16 years as the maestro of ESPN’s Walker’s Cay Chronicles along with his quiet voice and, probably most important, his understated, philosophical nature, has earned recognition far beyond fly fishing’s core community. For many he is not just a fly fisherman, he is what a fly fisherman should be.
I am also fortunate to call him a friend.
Our friendship began, oddly enough, on an elk hunt. I live high in the San Juan Mountains, remote and off the grid, and one day I received a call from a friend, Kirk Deeter, who is editor of Trout Magazine andwas doing a story about fly-fishing enthusiasts who also love hunting. He wanted to know if he and his crew could gain access to the nearby wilderness area through my land. Though normally protective of such access, I agreed. I figured a couple of days of climbing the rugged, steep, blow-down infested mountains and they would be gone.
About a month before the season I received a second call. Knowing I had a small cabin on my land, Kirk asked if they could use the cabin. I said yes. Then, ten days before season, the clincher: Their guides had bailed on them, and he wondered if my son would “show them the lay of the land.” My son said he’d be glad to help.
The day before the season, Kirk arrived along with a couple of photographers and Bruce Holt from G Loomis Rods. Later that afternoon we heard the roar of a diesel engine laboring up the steep grades that lead to my house and saw a pickup emerging from the golden aspens. As the truck got closer, I could see only a big guy behind the wheel of a white Ford pickup pulling a Harley.
When he drove up, out stepped Flip Pallot. I remember thinking that southwestern Colorado is tough on a four-wheeler; but a Harley? Later, I understood that in addition to all things outdoors, Flip has been a Harley man for a long time and had spent the previous weeks riding his beloved bike through the West, including a visit to the big biker gathering in Sturgis, South Dakota.
The pursuit of the wild things often yields success but it’s unpredictable, and from the beginning of the hunt the weather put us on our heels. Locals swear the jet stream itself had descended upon the San Juans. Gusts between 30 and 50 miles per hour blew day and night through the mountains and across the mesas. We hunted where we could, in the lea of the mountains and in the deep valleys. We saw elk, made even spookier by the wind, and we missed a few. The cracking sound of falling trees echoed through the mountains, but the rut went silent. Further to our disadvantage, we hunted with bows, but there wasn’t a compound bow on the mountain. We used only traditional archery tackle.
The circumstances were very tough—not just the wind but the terrain, the moving from one place to another, and the expectations never materialized. Such conditions frame the experiences of hunting and angling more than the quarry itself, yet these are the types of circumstances that define the measure of a man.
But it was a great week, and to the man they were true sportsman. They did not whine, complain, nor criticize the entire week. We hunted hard, drank good whiskey, ate great food, and filled our time with countless stories.
My fondest memories were the stump-shooting contests that Flip organized each day after lunch. We wandered the fields and nearby ridges, stick bows in hand, losing arrows, and generally harassing each other. Even though I had been seeing him on television for years, and felt I already knew him, Flip’s humility, concern, and love of the outdoors is even more evident when he’s among friends. And that’s what we became during that week of harsh weather and hard hunting.
Flip’s life story has been told many times. He grew up in South Florida, served in the army as a linguist, left the military to become a banker, then decided to build his life around his dreams and love of all things wild. What is often missed, lost among the public visibility of any angling or hunting legend, are the contributions he’s quietly made to conservation.
He has long been actively involved with the Everglades Protection Association, Ducks Unlimited, Sierra Club, Bonefish Tarpon Trust, and the Nature Conservancy, among many others. He is serious and articulate about our natural world, its threats, and the solutions needed to protect it. His convictions are firmly held and formed by a lifetime of loving angling, hunting, and wild places.
He’s also been a contributor to the great improvements in fly fishing equipment over the years. Some of the industry’s leading tackle manufacturers—G Loomis, Sage, Temple Fork Outfitters, and Tibor—have relied on him as a consultant. Other companies, such as Costa, Simms, Columbia, and Yeti, that make excellent equipment and clothing and serve the fly-fishing world, have employed his counsel. Flipp is also a 30-year member of the Mercury Outboard Saltwater Team.
While talking to me about Flip, Bruce Holt of Loomis summed up the difference between consultant and endorser. “Most consultants are really just endorsers, happy with putting their name on the product and getting a check,” said Holt. “Not Flip. When you bring Flip in, he is going to get in the weeds with the designers, engineers, and production teams. If you want his name on something, he is going to make sure it performs as advertised and to his satisfaction. He is a perfectionist.”
For me, Flip’s most significant contribution to outdoor sporting equipment is clearly Hells Bay Boats. As one of the original founders and the original designer, he strived to make the Hells Bay Flats Boat the standard against which all others are measured and a brand that mere mortals such as me continue to lust after.
In the early 2000s Flip and his partners sold their interests, and the company went through a change in ownership and honestly some slippage. Since 2007, however, it has been in the very capable hands of owner Chris Peterson and his team. Chris has been wise enough to bring in Flip to work with Hells Bay’s designers and marketing folks. Ask him about any boat model and you will get a detailed explanation, from both a design, production, and performance perspective. Every model is a built to be a masterpiece.
My dad always told me that a man without any pretense is a man worth knowing. Walk with Flip into the RIGS Fly Shop in Ridgeway, Colorado, across a deserted landing strip in Costa Rica to drop off or retrieve fishermen, or through any restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, during the Lowcountry RedTrout Celebrity Classic, and strangers will recognize his gray beard and quiet smile and likely approach him. He is always gracious, modest, and never hurried. He simply makes folks feel comfortable.
Several years ago I spent the night at his home in Mims, Florida, and had a great supper with Flip and his wonderful wife, Diane. He and I set out early the next morning to fish the St. Johns River. In his airboat we wandered for miles through the grass and marsh before arriving at a stream that flowed through a cattle ranch before emptying into the river. We spent the morning wading and fishing the creek for bream and bass. The trophy of the morning was barely ten inches long, but that was immaterial to Flip. He just likes to fish.
Spend time with him and you will learn that he is a storehouse of knowledge and carries a great passion for birds, flowers, alligators, and anything else that inhabits the wild world. Just don’t try to get him to large gatherings where someone is trying to “showcase” him.
The morning Flip, Kirk, and the rest of the crew left my home, I walked into my office and found a copy of Memories, Mangroves and Magic on my desk. The book is a thoughtful pictorial on Flip’s life on the waters of South Florida and beyond.
On the inside-front cover, Flip had penned a note that included a sincere thank you, a promise to get together again soon, and a closing that was right on target: “It is probably a good thing we didn’t know each other during our ‘youngerhoods’ or we would have knocked a lot of bark off a lot of trees.”
So true, Flip, but it would have been a blast. +++
Photos courtesy of Flip Pallot.