'Guideposts'

E

arly on, in between high school and college I decided I wanted to be a guide.

You know, a fly fishing guide. I thought it would be romantic. A cool way to earn a buck. Girls would come up to me and say, "So, what do you do?"

I'd say, "I'm a fly fishing guide. I get paid good money to take people fishing."

"You smell like it," they said.

End of conversation.

Like most of the great plans I designed in my youth, this idea of being a guide was deeply flawed.

For one, the river that I wanted to guide could be tough to fish.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the fish were only 10 inches long, even if you caught one.

It was a poor formula for getting rich.

But still, I got a few clients. Getting a guide license in the state I lived in was pretty easy. You didn't need to work under an outfitter like here in Montana. You just had a to take a test and buy some insurance in case some client took a hook to the head or a fly to the eye or worse yet, stuck a fly in your eye.

The insurance was the killer. It cost around $700 a year, which is about what I made the entire year guiding.

But I also had a second job as a line cook, so I wouldn't starve to death. Plus I needed some sort of gainful employment so that I could buy enough gas to get to the river to take my clients fishing.

Since I had zero advertising budget, I decided to give away a few trips to the local public TV station, which auctioned them off.

The hope was that they'd go once for free, catch some fish, tip me, and then return again.

This worked for a couple of really nice guys who apparently didn't care how big the fish were that they caught. They just liked being out there with me coaching them. One particularly good client was named Ed.

Ed was happier than heck to catch an eight-inch brown trout or a six-inch brookie. He could cast about 15 feet on a good day, so catching anything was a treat.

(That's the dirty little secret of fly fishing clients. Most of them can't cast any farther than the rod is long, which is about eight feet. Without a boat, it's nearly impossible for them to catch a fish without scaring the trout out of their wits.)

Other clients weren't as good as Ed. The worst was the guy who said he didn't have any money to tip me, but he'd be more than happy to share a bong hit with me.

I declined.

In fact, after that guy, I gave it up altogether. Guiding was fun up to a point, but most of it was just a lesson in frustration. You can lead a man to fish. But you can't make him a fisherman.

Even so, I still like being an amateur guide, which is to say if I find a bunch of fish rising I'd just as soon share them with the right person than catch them myself.

Such as it was Sunday. I stumbled upon a pod of fish I knew were there and were hungry and instead of fishing for them myself, I let a friend named Mike have at them.

Mike caught two nice ones and had a bunch more on before it was time to go. It was a good afternoon.

I stood on the bank and watched.

"That was my first fish of the year," he said when he landed the first one.

"It's a good feeling, isn't it?"

"It is," he said.

Chris Peterson os the editor of the Hungry Horse News.