Pile of fish | Hatch Magazine

Wow, did Big Joe love to fish! And was he good at it! Really good! He would beat you to the cast like a gunslinger outdrawing you with his six-shooter. While you were midway through a double haul, Big Joe would fire out a lure with his spinning rod that would land inches from a rolling silver salmon. A couple of turns and he would rear back with a mighty hook set. Then he’d turn to you and ask if you wanted to reel it in.

Here’s the problem: Big Joe was a fishing guide. Another problem: I had just hired him for five days of fishing in Alaska.

Some anglers are “guide guys”; they wouldn’t dream of traveling anywhere exotic without booking a pro to take them around. I get that; it’s smart, but it’s not me. I prefer to work the problem on my own. That’s how I caught my first bonefish, tarpon, and Atlantic salmon. Yes, there were steep learning curves involved and sometimes lots of frustration. But in the end, I hooked, fought, and landed those fish myself, by God.

When I started researching DIY fishing for my first trip to Alaska, it sounded different. Much of what I read warned about Alaska’s limited road system and inevitable combat fishing. Images of rivers and streams overrun with anglers resembled opening day of trout season in New Jersey, except with snow-capped mountains in the background. If you decided to attempt a more adventurous wilderness experience and hike into the bush on your own, one bad decision and a grizzly bear would swat your ass into beef medallions. It seemed foolhardy not to hire a guide.

On the recommendation of a friend of a friend, my wife, Mimi, and I wound up choosing a fishing package on a big Alaskan river that boasted five species of salmon, plus enormous rainbows, char, and grayling. It sounded perfect; our guide, Big Joe, would pick us up each day after breakfast in his boat, then whisk us away to unlimited boat and wade fishing in America’s last frontier. Before I booked the trip, I even had the all-important client-guide conversation where I explained that I wanted to catch my first-ever silver salmon on my fly rod. “No problem,” he told me over the phone.

We met Big Joe at the dock, and he lived up to his name, standing a good six feet five and weighing north of 250 pounds. Camo neoprene waders, military moustache, and a well-worn Cabela’s baseball hat completed his burly Alaskan look. He fired up the boat, and we took our seats. I noticed an arsenal of tackle already on board—several spinning rods and a fly rod or two. We had brought our own gear, so I assumed they must be backups just in case I splintered a rod on a big salmon. Anticipation ran high as we motored downriver through blue-green waters. In the distance, snowy peaks from some faraway mountain range hung low on the horizon. “We’re going to find a pile of fish,” Big Joe said over the outboard. Then he added for emphasis: “A pile of fish.”

The boat slowed, and we spotted a few swirls from salmon that had just entered from saltwater. The boat, a sixteen-foot aluminum deep-V, seemed tight for two fly anglers plus a guide, so Mimi opted to spinfish, casting a bright marabou jig from amidships. I took the bow and had just started stripping off fly line from my reel, when I heard the whizz of another cast from the back of the boat. I turned around and saw Big Joe fishing.

Admittedly, I wasn’t all that versed in guide etiquette, but I did know one cardinal rule: a guide should never fish unless specifically invited by their clients. And even then, only for brief demonstration purposes, such as showing proper drift speed or line mending, or something else technical. This is for obvious reasons—namely, so the clients, not the guide, catch the fish. It should not bear repeating, but I will do so anyway—the guide is being paid to put clients on the fish, not catch the fish themselves.

Seconds later, this all became moot. “I got one!” Joe yelled. Yep, the very first salmon of our Alaskan adventure went to Big Joe. A few casts later, so did the second.

“Cast over there,” Joe excitedly said, clearly in the zone. “There’s a pile of fish.”

A silver rolled thirty feet off the boat. I picked up my line to make a cast, but before I could shoot the fly, Joe’s lure got there first. He hooked another salmon. And that’s when he turned to me and said: “You want to reel this one in?”
So utterly gob smacked was I, and facing down the fact that I would spend the next five days in a boat with him; and not sure I could answer my brawny, mustachioed fishing guide without screaming “Are you fucking kidding me???” I just swallowed and said, “No.”

OK—some of you at this point may be saying, “What the hell is the matter with you—you should have said something. You’re paying him!” And you are right; looking back, there were probably lots of ways I could have approached Big Joe and told him—in the nicest of ways—to cut the shit. But I didn’t, and I have to live with that. Maybe it’s because I’m too much of a gentleman. Did I mention that Joe was a big and excitable fella?

Let’s go back to the scene continuing to unfold on the boat. After Joe’s third salmon, I had somehow twisted my fly line into a truly awful knot that forced me to pop off my spool and snake line in and out of the reel frame to untangle it. A long time passed without me making a single cast. By now, the fishing slowed. Big Joe, perhaps bored from temporarily not catching fish, decided then—and only then—to ask if I needed help.

This time my answer was a louder and more emphatic “No.” Mimi looked at me, not fully understanding the nuclear war going on in my head. The rest of the day is admittedly a little fuzzy. I know we caught salmon—mostly pinks, which far outnumbered the silvers. Back at our hotel, I sucked down Alaskan Ambers and hated on Big Joe.

The next day, Joe motored us up a slow tributary. We got out of the boat and hiked a few hundred yards through knee-deep water to a sluggish pool full of ambivalent silvers that wouldn’t hit. I noticed that Big Joe didn’t bring a rod—a tip-off that the fishing might not be so good here. After an hour of nothing, with the feeling that Joe might keep us here a while to kill some time, I asked him if he wouldn’t mind going back to the boat to bring us our bug spray. The blackflies were pretty bad, I told him. He made it clear he did mind, stomping through the river like an angry giant. He came back with the bug spray. I thanked him and put it in my pocket. Maybe I would put it on later, I told him. It was playing passive-aggressive chess. Your move, Big Joe.

It took my wife, all five feet, three inches of her, to finally stand up to Big Joe. On day 3, Joe motored us upriver and beached the boat above a long series of riffles and runs. He grabbed his own fly rod and, gesturing at the river, said, “Pile of fish out here.” Then he disappeared around the bend.

We fished for a while, catching a few more pinks and some char. I briefly hooked an enormous colored-up, but out-of-season, king salmon that went airborne and easily broke off. Eventually, Mimi waded around the bend where she found Big Joe resting on a rock.

“Catch any, Joe?” she asked.

Joe took in a deep, satisfied breath then proceeded to proudly list the dozens of fish he had just landed: grayling, char, silvers, pinks, even an eight-pound rainbow, which would have been the fish of the trip for either of us.
Mimi stood silent for a moment then said: “Wow, Joe, did you leave us any?”

“Oh … sure,” Joe stammered. “There’s still … a … a … pile of fish out there … a pile …”

Mimi walked away before he could finish.

After that, Joe became quiet, you might even say sullen. Defanged, he never made another cast. For the next two days, he put us on more fish, and we caught them. And I recall some genuine highlights: lovely grayling rising to mayflies in riffles, intercepting a twenty-inch rainbow that was chasing down salmon smolts like a bonito. But again, much of the trip has gotten fuzzy. For me, Big Joe could never recover from his original etiquette breach. It was like a loud fart at the beginning of a first date—no matter what happens afterward, no matter how good the meal may have been or how wonderful the movie you just saw, what you remember most is the stink.

On the last day, Joe drove us to the airport. I gave him his tip, which was not a dollar more than adequate, and we boarded our plane. Yeah, I know, but I don’t have it in me to be a crappy tipper or to stiff him outright. Call it a character flaw.

And as for Big Joe … To paraphrase from the ending of one of my favorite movies, The Road Warrior“That was the last we ever saw of him. He lives now … only in my nightmares.”

Two years later, Mimi and I opted to take our chances on Alaska’s road system and found something far more practical than Big Joe—a beater rental car with a cracked windshield, leaky gas tank, and a laminated piece of paper taped to the glove box that read: “Do not put salmon on the back seat.” We parked the car at the end of a pitted dirt road and hiked along a boardwalk through some muskeg. It ended where a clearwater stream flowed into an estuary. Salmon rolled everywhere. We shared the spot with a few bald eagles and a lone seal, but no one else.

And yeah, we caught a pile of fish.

“Pile of fish” is an excerpt from the new book Every Cast, by frequent Hatch Magazine contributor Stephen Sautner. Every Cast is available now at Amazon and wherever books are sold.