The Fishing

McGUANE  The fishing was excellent. The marls there are like nothing on earth. The marine shallows have islands scattered throughout. The fish would be back in the brush feeding, or coming out through the channels, or tailing on the flats. The fishing happens in a different and fascinating way all over the area. And no one lives out there. The place has a kind of innocence.

KEATON  It hit me when we were out there that bonefishing, the constant searching for these fish as they tail, is really hunting. Somewhere deep inside of us, Man has this hunting gene that we’ve become disconnected from. Bonefishing brings it back in a way. I almost missed the whole thing. I broke my foot before the trip, but I was pretty determined to go. I rigged up this waterproof boot for my foot, some duct tape, and some thick bags so I could wade. It worked.

CHOUINARD  I love bonefishing because you have to figure out so much with the tides and what the fish are eating. You have to be engaged to be good at it. I was fishing on this flat once when I heard this stockbroker on a skiff talking to his office back in New York on his cell phone. His guide pointed to a fish, and the stockbroker told whomever he was talking to that he had to go because a fish was coming in. That guy was totally missing the point.

KREH  If you can’t cast a fly a long distance in salt water, you’re hampered. You close off a big percentage of catchable fish. I see people out there trying double hauls, tearing out their hair and underwear trying to get the fly out. You have to rethink your cast. On the salt, you have to get away from the tight freshwater cast and lengthen your casting stroke.

The Cause

KEATON  The environment was what the trip was all about. This was for the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust. But it’s even bigger than that. The larger picture is the entire globe. Fishing is not only fun, it’s a way of immersing yourself in the environment, and it gives you pause, something to reflect on. I know that if someone told every guy down there that they had to give up fishing to save the planet, we’d all do it. We’d all be miserable sons of bitches, but we’d do it.
 
McGUANE  Wallace Stegner said nature is not for anything, nature just is. I think our relationship to it as fishermen is that we have a love of nature that is connected to our need to play some sort of game in it. And with that ceremonial adventuring in the natural world, one of the first things you notice is that if anything happens to the natural world, there goes your relationship to it. You get a conservationist mind-set just by being in it.

BROKAW  There’s never a bad day on the flats. There’s the beauty of the sun rising over the flats, the constantly changing prism of the water. I saw a sawfish, rays, sharks, all while I was trying to figure out the tides and feeding patterns of the bonefish.

When you’re out there, you realize that the environment is in charge. You have the unrelenting sun and the need for fresh water. I looked into the mangroves and wondered how long I could survive in there.

In the Boat with Lefty

CHOUINARD  Lefty told this story about how he was the Annie Oakley for Remington Arms in the late 1950s. He’d go around to fairs and have a guy throw an aspirin in the air and he’d vaporize it with a .22. He’d shoot a bullet through the hole of a washer. Some wise guy in the crowd wouldn’t believe him, so he’d put a one-cent stamp on the washer and shoot a hole through it. I asked him how he learned to do that. He said if you want to be a good shot, get a Red Ryder BB gun, take the sight off, and have someone throw beer cans in the air. You’ll actually see the BB and see where you’re missing. When I got home from the trip, I got a BB gun, and my wife has been throwing beer cans up for me.

McGUANE  Lefty told these amazing stories about his World War II days. He was at the Battle of the Bulge. He invaded a concentration camp.

BROKAW  He talked about living in the trenches, how the frozen trees became dangerous shrapnel. For me it was fascinating and another demonstration of the incredible stories this generation of men have, the incredible lives they they’ve lived.

KREH  I was with the 69th division, which met up with the Russians on the Elbe River. We dug these slit trenches. It was twelve degrees. We couldn’t move for a week, but neither could the Germans. We just sat there. Your body heat would melt the ice when you sat. When you stood up, it would freeze again and you’d have this pancake of ice on your rear end.

On the seventh day the fog cleared. Suddenly our airplanes filled the sky, like flocks of birds migrating in the fall. Some of them dropped these fifteen-gallon canisters attached to parachutes.We rushed out and opened them. Some of them had hot pancakes with syrup sloshing around in them. Others had dry socks.

Behind the Scenes

CHOUINARD  These two locals had some conchs. I love conch. One of the guys grabbed a conch penis and put it in his mouth. It’s supposed to taste good and make you potent. So I said, “Gimme one of those.” I gulped it down. Everyone else was looking aghast. It actually didn’t taste very good. It had a very acrid taste. And it certainly didn’t do anything for my libido.

McGUANE  Yvon talked about his mountain climbing days and killing porcupines with his ice ax and eating them. One of the crew interviewed him and said, “I understand you eat porcupines?” Yvon is so direct. He said, “What’s wrong with porcupines?” as if it were the interviewer who had a screw loose.

KEATON  I laughed like hell about the porcupines. Yvon turned to me and repeated his line. “What the hell is wrong with eating porcupine?” I said, “Well, we can start with the quills.”

KREH  The best part of the trip was the banter on the boats and around the campfire, the jokes and one-liners. I can’t really tell any of them to you, ’cause I’ve never told a joke that was printable.