Many of us hire guides when venturing to waters unknown, especially international ones. Those who don’t will often wish they had after hours or days without a single strike. Still, when we make such arrangements, some of them end there, become both our first and last trip with a particular guide.

Understandably, these engagements are fraught with expectation, excitement and a good dose of hope—not much different from, say, a blind date. Maybe. After all, who in their right mind would consider spending eight hours—much less days—in close proximity with someone unknown? (Well, it might depend upon who the date is.)

Far be it from me to line out the complexities and intricacies of being a guide—instructing and coddling strangers, even the occasional foreigner, having to adjust one’s approach to the vast array of clients presenting with all levels of flyfishing knowledge, experience, and competency. And, of course, egos, those buzzkills of many a date—blind or otherwise.

We know, or have heard of, such vanities: the newbie casting 5 feet past the gunnel into that first productive seam while the guide rows their ass off to keep the boat in position, watching the newbie froth the water like an over-trimmed Yamaha 225 Outboard—still expecting to nail the big boy. That same master of the fly who will put down all the fish in the river for the rest of the week, who then turns to the guide to ask, “Dude, are you sure you tied on the right fly?”

It’s at that very moment the modest and meager guide, on this first date with Sir Isaac Walton, might conclude that the day has become a Gordian knot—along with Isaac’s tippet—which can only lead to the pervading and reverberating question:

Why in God’s name would anybody do this?

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