This is a guest post from a buddy of mine who currently guides for native steelhead on the chalk streams of Central Texas. The story is true. The names and certain locations may have been changed to protect the identities of those concerned. For example, there really aren’t steelhead in the chalk streams of Central Texas.

Shitty Clients, Part I

By the Unknown Fishing Guide

The Unknown Fishing Guide with a not-shitty client, circa 1942

Let me preface this story (so that I don’t sound like a jack-ass holier than thou guide who cares nothing about teaching, education, conservation and only about catching fish) with the fact that out of the 1,000+ guide trips I have ran in the last 10 years, there have been exactly 2 people I would never fish with again. In fact one of the best things that guiding has given me is great relationships with people from around the country that I have met as fishing clients and with whom I have became very close friends.

This particular gentleman, we’ll call him Dick, started out our trip in a particularly interesting way. After the normal morning “hey hows it going, here’s where we are floating, here’s what to expect” we hopped in my pickup and drove down into the Yakima canyon. About 2 miles out of town, Dick says: “You know, Fords are pieces of shit, you need to get a GMC.” Ok, I thought, I’ve had good luck with my truck, but he’s welcome to his opinion. We continue down the road, making small talk, and he follows up the truck comment with this gem: “Eastern Washington is the ugliest piece of shit I have ever seen, it’s full of nothing but hillbillies and rednecks”. I thought that was a little rough, especially from someone from Boston, and who had seen two of the prettier places in Washington: The Klickitat and Yakima canyons. Certainly there were our share of Hillbillies in the 509, but no more than anywhere else in the west, and substantially less than Idaho. However, I was still going to college, and although an asshole so far, some people turn it around when your fishing, and I really needed the money.

We finally arrived at the river, got the boat in the water, and rowed down to a nice pod of trout eating blue wings. The night before we fished together, Dick and my boss had dinner together, and had talked about the Green river in Utah, one of the better trout factories in the country. For those of you unfamiliar with the Yakima, it will never be mistaken for the quality of the Green. It is a unique river with it’s proximity to Seattle, but at 1,300 trout per mile in it’s densest stretch it can’t hold the jock strap of the Green. Dick quickly caught two trout out of the pod, and completed the trifecta, “This Yakima is just like the Green” he said “full of dumb fucking trout”.

The third time was the charm, and I realized at this point that nothing I could do as a fishing guide was going to please Dick, so I gave advice as needed, treated him as nicely as I could, and continued to work hard to put him on fish. On our second day of fishing we floated half of the day before a monsoon that had engulfed the state of Washington caught up to us, and the river blew out. Still several miles from the finish line, this provided Dick an opportunity to share with me his knowledge and firm belief in Bigfoot. Were it not for this hour long discussion I would have never learned that Bigfoot is most certainly real, and can turn your brain off with alpha brain waves. Dick was particularly interested in the time I had spent in Forks, one of the more popular Bigfoot spots around. Of course I couldn’t help leading him on a little bit, and after two days of dealing with his shitty attitude towards life, at least the last hour was entertaining.

 

###

We hope you enjoyed this guest post by the Unknown Fishing Guide. The staff at the Unaccomplished Angler hope to bring more, similar stories in the future, as evidenced by the “Part 1” designation in the title. If you are an Unknown Fishing Guide and need a safe, anonymous forum in which to vent tell your story, please contact our editorial offices. Your secret is safe with us.