ABOUT THAT TRIP

October 11, 2010

Cleaning out some stuff I came across an August ‘07 issue of Fly Fishing Trade magazine. I believe it is no longer in print, but it was a ‘house organ’ produced for the fly fishing business. One of the neat things on the cover was “Jack Dennis Turns Forty” with a profile of his shop featured in this issue, (his shop was forty, not him personally). One of the lead articles was titled, “Is Selling Travel Right For You?” The travel article was written by our friend the late Jim Chapralis. Jim really was the creator of travel services which concentrated entirely on booking fishing trips outside the continental U.S. He eventually wrote his story, Fishing Passion which portrays his life as a fly fishing travel agent reviewed

Check out our review, HERE.

The fishing travel business has become huge - nothing like it was when Jim started when some fishing camps literally were leaky tents with fish and rice being three meals a day. 

Travel is continued to grow - we see the numbers of out of state vehicles here every day - and while some except it might slow down with summer pretty much being over, trust me, it isn’t. Frankly for me, the fall has always been my favorite time to fish the west. Just the absolute beauty is enough to make any trip to the west worthwhile, but all the trout have not been taken so you can look forward to that as well.

Just a few things you might want to keep in mind however before you commit the bucks to make a big fly fishing trip. This applies to anywhere actually, not just to our great American west. 

You need to understand first that when you live in a place with a lot of fly fishers, a ton of fly shops, more guides than anyone one needs, then occasionally one might hear a grumble or two about the people who hire the guides to supposedly put the anglers on to fish.   

#1 guide complaint - the anglers can’t cast.
#2 guide complaint - they won’t listen.

Once you get past those two, everything else seems to work out. Sure, folks who don’t live at this altitude don’t function as well as the ‘locals’ (a lot of which weren’t born/raised here either) so most can only fish about a half a day before they are so exhausted they want to quit and go home (or to the bar.) And if you are floating a river somewhere, do remember you need to have a vehicle at the other end (that’s what shuttle’s are for) and they generally aren’t equipped to pick you and your boat up in the middle of nowhere because your client is either worn out or has a hangover.

I realize the fly fishing industry depends on new stuff to have things to sell, or write about, but has it occurred to anyone that we don’t need any new flies, or a fly with some other neat gimmick? Bead-heads were considered a gimmick at one time too, now you can hardly go into a fly shop and find a fly which doesn’t have one. (Remember the late Castwell’s Bead-head Adams?) And that was supposed to be a joke!

I’ve also heard some grumbling from folks who have been on the big-deal-fish-with-the-celebrities trips as well. Turns out not everyone on those trips gets to fish with the big names. That depends on how big your name or wallet is. I just hate this stuff, how tacky is that? In the end obviously it’s still all about the money; it was supposed to be about having fun.

Back to the trip - I’ve always been told to write about what you know. I’ve been on a lot of fly fishing trips over the years (and no it’s not nice to ask how many years) and while some were more or less successful than others, I must in honesty say I’m not convinced spending a lot of money to go and fish for bonefish is the right thing to do. Bear with me a moment here, but the late Castwell and I could not afford to make that a way of life, not to take anything away from where we went, where we stayed or how many fish we caught. All of that was wonderful and probably fulfilled all the things a vacation was supposed to do. And at the end of the trip we, just like most of you who have been fortunate enough to have gone down to the Bahamas to go bonefishing, we packed up our flats booties and went home.

Sort of.

Living where the winters are colder than we would like them to be, for longer than we can almost stand, the memories of standing in lovely warm water fishing for beautiful streamlined rocket fish etches pathways of discontent minds. Discontent I will remind you we would not have known except for words bonefish and credit card spoken in the same sentence.

And that’s not necessarily a good thing.

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