2 thoughts on “Assault Charges Filed on Fly Fisherman – Bitterroot Fishing Report

  1. “Down by the river, I shot my client….”

    Thanks to Neil Young for a new edit of his classic song.

    OR…

    “I shot the client, but I did not shoot his….”

    Thanks for reworking that one, Bob Marley.

    Oh dear, oh dear, boys and their toys and ambitions and egos. In the summertime, too, when the living is supposed to be easy….

    Reminds of a time in the mid 1990s when a certain, now very well-known river on Tierra del Fuego went “hot” – newbie-flyfisher clients worldwide suddenly must-do must-have must-own wanting to fish it, new guides and operators appearing by the minute to get themselves a piece of the former mere sheepdrink river and as much of the “Left my 911 at home”-type client action as possible.

    Guns were carried by a couple of competing late-entry guides, with one of the first actually being disharged on one occasion to deter a hated, opposite bank, local competitor-guide and his “I want nobody within five clicks of me. I paid for totally exclusivity and privacy, man…” client; rocks and best late-night bar-room Spanish on at least a couple of others as the blissfully unaware great sea-trout finned away in the water that lay between them.

    To use the title of a collection essays by the great American writer, Joan Didion (who borrowed the words from the concluding line of a great poem by the Irish poet, W.B. Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’ – “Slouching Towards To Bethlehem” [with a huge amount of self-entitlement and far too much testosterone, just like the politicos and record labels and management and, later, brands that hijacked 1967’s Summer of Love hippy dream and turned it into the Altamont nightmare and much much worse later else].

    With the centre fast centrifugally spinning apart and the bunch of very needy rough beasts some of our number have now become…

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again; but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    Best just to go fishing and leave the 911 and the business-life aggression and ego at home.

  2. There’s a story most fly shops wouldn’t want to talk about nor appreciate another outfitter talking about it on video. Bashing clients in public, REGARDLESS of what happens is amateur fly fishing guide stuff.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *