Jeep® Sporting Destinations

The World's Greatest Angler

by Jim Fergus

"Those who are considered to be the world's great anglers would consider much of the fishing he does unglamorous."

The greatest anglers are sometimes known to very few people.

I have a friend named Barney who is one of the world's great anglers. He will never be recognized or acknowledged as such -- except by me -- because he's an unassuming fellow. Those who are considered to be the world's great anglers would consider much of the fishing he does unglamorous.

You would never catch Barney, for instance, at a fancy bonefish camp in the Bahamas, fishing for tarpon in Costa Rica, or trout in New Zealand. You would be far more likely to find him on a suburban pond near his home in south Florida, fishing for bass or panfish. You might on occasion find him out in the ocean thereabouts fishing for kingfish or dolphin.

In this regard Barney is more of an everyman angler. That is not to say that Barney doesn't travel to fish, or that he doesn't fly fish when the opportunity presents itself. Indeed, a large measure of being one of the world's great anglers is versatility, the ability to adapt to different styles and techniques. Barney has that ability in spades.

I have fished with him in many different kinds of water, from sea to creek, for many different species, from sailfish to shell crackers and, somehow, he almost always catches more fish than anyone else does. He is mysterious and unobtrusive, as he never seems to be doing anything particularly different.

Although Barney is by no means a stylish fly caster, and although trout fishing is not his true forte -- in his heart, he's a bass fisherman -- on any given day, I'd put him up against any trout fisherman on any river. On more than one occasion on various western trout rivers, I've seen him outfish his guide. He simply has that ineffable ability to read water and think like a fish -- the true earmarks of the great angler.

On Idaho's Wood River, I once watched as Barney fished behind another angler. This fellow was clearly an experienced fly fisherman, had all the right gear, was an exquisite caster, and worked the pools with thorough precision. He tried several different flies, from nymphs to dries, but with only modest success. Now and then he caught a fish, but he really had to work for them.

Barney was trying to be polite and not follow too closely on his heels, but when the fellow got finished with each respective pool and moved on to the next, after a short waiting period, Barney would begin to fish the vacated pool.

He wasn't nearly as fine a caster as the other man, but he started catching fish immediately. Indeed, he caught four or five trout out of each pool that the man had just worked so thoroughly minutes before. Big trout, too.

Now, I should just mention that Barney has a secret fly to which he attributes his success on western rivers. I will not speak in print the actual name of this fly. Suffice it to say that -- like Barney himself -- the fly is a distinctly unstylish affair that looks like it might be more suitable for catching panfish or bass, rather than trout. In fact, many fly fishing purists wouldn't be caught dead with such a thing in their fly box.

After listening to Barney laud the praises of this particular fly, I last year tied one of the monstrosities on the end of my leader in front of an Orvis-endorsed guide in Colorado. He looked at me aghast, as if I had just impaled a large nightcrawler on my hook.

"I would never fish with a fly like that," he sniffed.

"Oh yeah?" I answered, "That's just what the guides in Idaho said the first time they saw my friend Barney using this fly. Then he outfished them all. One day he caught over a hundred trout on the Lost River -- three times as many as his guide."

"Pretty soon word was out and all the guides were secretly bumming these flies off Barney," I said. "He had dozens of them. In fact, it was the only fly in his box; he had it in two colors and all different sizes. Trust me, you'll be begging me for one of these flies before the day is out."

But I must admit that my bravado of that day notwithstanding, Barney's ugly fly has never produced for me nearly as prolifically as it does for him -- yet another confirmation that his angling skills are a more elusive and complicated matter than merely having the right fly.

This day on the Wood River, for instance, as Barney fished behind the expert angler ahead of him, I was content to sit on the bank and watch as he caught fish after fish. He fished that fly with virtuoso versatility, breaking all the rules of traditional fly fishing in the process.

He fished it dry, he fished it wet, he dead-drifted it, he dragged it against the current, and he skittered it across the surface of the pools like a bass plug. That particular technique elicited savage attacks from the trout, as if even they were offended at the trespass of this hideous creature in their river.

By the third or fourth pool the fellow ahead of him, who couldn't help but notice all the fish that Barney was catching in water that he had just fished, finally quit, exiting the river in clear disgust. I could tell from the dirty looks he gave us that he thought Barney was cheating, maybe using salmon eggs or some other kind of bait.

As if to confirm his suspicions, the man couldn't leave the river without stopping to watch Barney fish for a moment. He sidled back along the bank to where I sat watching. Perhaps he hoped, as I always did, to pick up a few pointers, to identify and commit to memory -- once and for all -- the mysterious techniques that comprised Barney's rare talent.

"What is he using?" the man asked me, and I told him.

Then, as if on cue, Barney hooked into a particularly fat rainbow that doubled his rod and tore line from his reel. Now the man no longer looked angry, but genuinely puzzled.

"Don't worry about it," I assured him, "It's not just the fly. This man just happens to be the world's greatest angler."

Copyright © 1999 Jim Fergus. All rights reserved.

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