John Gierach: Interviewed

Interview by Matt Coudayre and James Robles

John Gierach is

• The author of the cult-classic “Trout Bum” and the new “No Shortage of Good Days”
• The angling voice of his generation
• And a badass

Which group cultivates the most contemplative-looking beards, fly fishing authors or psychiatrists?
Definitely fly fishing authors—psychiatrists tend to over-groom and come off looking prissy. As a fashion statement we prefer the un-pruned shrub approach, leaving the impression that we haven’t so much grown beards as just permanently forgotten to shave. In my case that’s not far wrong. I shaved until my sophomore year in college, but only when I felt like it, which was usually no more than once or twice a week. As far back as high school, I had a permanent five o’clock shadow and always looked hung over, even when I wasn’t, so I finally just decided to let nature run its course. I haven’t seen my face since 1967.

Were you much for tipping the bottle on the water?
Rarely when I was actually fishing (not counting the odd nip of something on a cold day), but afterwards was another story. Frankly, I drank too much and occasionally became a danger to myself and others. Once I burned off half my beard when I passed out while blowing on a campfire. And, being a child of the 60s, I sometimes ventured into other mind-altering areas. I eventually quit everything piece by piece except for coffee and tobacco. I could see that I was hurting myself and, more importantly, as a writer I decided I wanted to keep what was left of my faculties intact.

I’m not sorry for any of it and I remember parts of it fondly—other parts I don’t remember at all. I think it’s fair to say that if I hadn’t straightened myself out a little, I wouldn’t have had a 40-year and counting career as a writer. It was either Gary Snyder or Ken Kesey who said that drugs—and you could include alcohol—are a useful way to “cast off the moorings and drift out to sea, but sooner or later you gotta row the boat back to the dock.”

You cover snobbery and etiquette in the new book—how’ve they changed in those 40 years of fishing?
I don’t think snobbery has changed at all. It’s simply an attempt to make yourself look good, not by being good, but by denigrating others. You know: I’m better than you because I—fill in the blank—catch bigger fish, only use bamboo rods and dry flies, fish private water where riffraff like you aren’t allowed. It’s a character flaw or maybe even a pathology. It has something to do with insecurity and unresolved feelings about your mommy.

Rudeness has also always been with us, but one difference is that where it was once based in selfishness, it now often comes from ignorance. Forty years ago most fly fishers had grown up hunting and fishing with men who had also done it all their lives. We had good instincts about etiquette if only because our fathers and uncles had beaten it into us. If you first learned about fly fishing from a guide on a crowded tailwater, you may have started out with a flawed view of courtesy. It’s like getting your first lesson in personal space on a crowded elevator.

Well, which is the greater threat, mommy issues or the sport’s increasing popularity?
Rudeness isn’t so much a threat to fly fishing as it is a threat to the culture in general. Half the world already thinks we’re a society of assholes and we’re well on the way to proving them right. The only thing you can do is try not to be one of them.

Increasing popularity is a catch 22. More people fly fishing makes for a larger and more effective constituency for conservation, but crowds put a real strain on fisheries. Trout aren’t naturally as selective as they’ve become in some crowded tailwaters—they’ve been trained to be like that by too much fishing pressure. I’ve seen tailwater fish that are so hysterical they’ll refuse naturals. You wonder how they get enough to eat.

I try to sniff out more obscure or more remote places that aren’t hit as hard: the kind of thing Thomas McGuane calls “second class waters.” The bargain usually amounts to trading fish size for solitude (although there are enough exceptions to the rule to keep you on your toes). It works for me because I don’t consider fly fishing to be an “extreme” sport.




When I do go to big fly fishing theme parks, I try to remember that I’ll be playing by different rules. For instance, the fishing will be more technical and I’ll be breathing other peoples’ exhaust all day. If I know I’m in a mood where that will piss me off, I go somewhere else.

In No Shortage you describe what it means to take someone fishing—what’s the worst hosting experience you’ve had?
I took my friend Jim Babb to a fairly remote little trout creek in the mountains near home and lost him. We were leapfrogging upstream and I just lost track of him. At first I thought he’d gotten ahead of me, but I busted half a mile upstream and he wasn’t there. Then I ran all the way back to where I’d seen him last and he wasn’t there, either. Turns out he’d taken a fall bad enough to bruise his thigh bone and was in too much pain to keep fishing, so he’d hobbled back to where we’d left the truck. That’s where I finally found him—looking apologetic. For a while there it was the classic nightmare. Whether you’re a paid guide or just a guy taking someone fishing, you want to come home with the same number of people you left with.

Give it to us straight—do you have groupies?
A friend says that instead of groupies I have “groupers:” middle-aged guys with pot bellies wearing “Spawn till you Die” T-shirts. That said, I’ve had a long and checkered career.

Alright John, last question. What makes you tick?
Coffee. Thomas McGuane novels. 7’9” bamboo fly rods. Bob Dylan (“Tangled Up In Blue”). Spring snowstorms. Akira Kurosawa movies. Blue-wing Olive hatches. Checks from publishers. Pickup trucks and chain saws that start on the first try. Soft porn. 14’ spey rods. Brook trout. Medium-rare elkburgers. Jim Harrison poems. Dry firewood. Mick Jagger (“Start Me Up”). De Havilland beaver floatplanes. Independent bookstores. Ed Engle’s pork green chili. Labrador. Good fishing dogs. Drift boats. Canvass rucksacks. Alice Munro short stories. Grizzly hackle. Seven months of fishing followed by five months of writing. Sharp-shinned hawks. Bacon and eggs. Jerry Garcia—may he rest in peace.