25 minute read
THE ISLAND
AWAY FROM THE CROWDS AND INTO THE BUSH, ANDREW HARRISON AND HIS SON RUARI FIND THAT, IF YOU KNOW BOTH HOW TO PERSEVERE AND WHERE TO LOOK, THE REWARDS JUSTIFY THE EFFORT.
By Andrew Harrison
If God ever gives the earth an enema, he will stick the tube in at Colenso in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).
Once a thriving, sleepy village, site of one of the famous battles of the Anglo Boer War and recently supported by a decommissioned power station, it is a shit-hole of derelict buildings where goats and cattle feed on plastic and ‘dopping’ (drinking) is the town pastime. Fortunately, once clear of the trash heap and travelling thirty clicks down a dusty dirt road, one glimpses authentic rural KZN before you hit a ‘track’ - not for low-slung cars! The island is only an island when the Tugela River floods and then it is inaccessible except on foot. Even in the dry months it’s a difficult passage. A boulder-strewn, dongaridden track passes for a road that traverses a nature reserve to the chalky-grey river hemmed in by towering rocky cliffs to which stunted trees, aloes and baboons cling precariously. The river is also home to the iconic Natal scaly. After a number of forays on the Umkomaas River where the fish were feisty but of no great size, the fish of the Tugela were prize. American novelist and obsessive trout fisherman, Jim Harrison, once prospected the Yellowstone in Montana 92 days in succession. He observed; “If roosters lived in rivers, no one would ever fish for trout again.” The same can be said of this freshwater ‘bonefish’.
No matter the size, the athletic ability of a Natal scaly outstrips that of any trout, wild or fat ‘stockie’ found in local KZN waters. Add some spectacular scenery and you are in fly-fishing paradise.
That awkward moment when the swimming pool goes brown.
The isolated camp site on the island is a circular clearing bordered by logs under the spreading branches of a haaken-steek (an acacia thorn tree whose Afrikaans name means ‘hook and prick’). It is also situated in a wild life reserve where recent sightings include a leopard. Our only visitors were a wild donkey, a tank of a black pig no doubt hunting the provisions of the unwary, and a nightly visitation from a herd of wildebeest (gnu). My first trip to the Tugela, accompanied by my regular fishing partner, son Ruari, was more an exploratory expedition than a full-out hunt. The river at this point runs wide and deep, the long pools bookended by shallow rapids and the banks lined with reeds that made casting difficult, if not impossible. Wading over round, slippery boulders was a risky business, resulting in numerous dunkings – not unwelcome with the temperatures in the upper thirties.
Green about the ways of these Tugela fish, we hunted up and down stretches of likely water prospecting pools and the deeper water that we were able to reach, tempted by swirling fish infected with lock-jaw. It was hard-going under a merciless sun and, mostly, a fruitless pursuit. A couple of hand-size fish were scant reward for two days effort, crosseyed from watching the strike indicator. On our second visit we discovered a path along a cliff face made by the local bovine population that gave access to a swift, deep run. Flipping into the rushing water under some overhanging reeds proved to be a goldmine resulting in a fish almost cast-for-cast, one heading straight up the rapid like greased lightning and an inevitable snap off.
A walk down stream looking for new water disturbed a monster croc sunning itself below a second rapid. Suddenly standing waist deep was not such a good idea! Round three. The rapid, so productive on the previous trip, was fishless and after a fruitless hour or so the consensus was to walk the opposite bank, where the going looked a little easier, and to head up river for new water. Following cow trails through the thorn thickets on tribal land got us to the head of a likely looking rapid where there were some mighty swirls at the tail-out of a long, slow stretch. My first cast folded like one of those stretchy coiled-spring toy sausage-dogs as the fly came loose from the bushes behind me.
It wasn’t pretty but in a split second the line ripped through the water and I was left holding a lifeless rod and a fly-less leader.
Second cast missed the bushes but the result was identical and the words of a mate who had spent his formative years farming in the area rang in my mind. “Bugger the fancy leaders, Boet. Use 12lb mono.” The tail-out proved a honey hole and once we got the hang of it, a few nice fish came to the net before the bite went dead.
Many hours later, with the sun headed for the horizon, we made for camp sporting farmer’s tans, mine red rather than brown.
There was still time to prospect a likely pool among the rocks of one rapid that we had by-passed on the way up stream. Ruari was soon into a fish that gave notice that it was not going to give up easily. It zig-zagged back and forth, not quite into the backing as the pool was not long enough, and some hefty pressure and rocks thrown into the tail end of the pool, prevented it from heading over the lip of the rapid and a certain down-stream long-line release.
After a lot of rock-hopping, obscene language and guessing on our part, the fish eventually jammed itself into a pocket of reeds. Much blind swishing with the net and wet testicles finally rendered a monster barbel. Not what we were hoping for but it got the blood pumping.
Months later, round four and winter was seemingly behind us.
The temperatures were uncommonly warm heading into August but the first night was brass monkey weather. Tough bastards that we are, we survived and the mercury rocketed for the next three days.
Believing that we had finally unlocked the mystery, we hit all our previously productive spots. Up and down, slow water and rapids all proved fruitless. Dispensing with the obsequious ‘bobber’ surprisingly resulted in fewer hookups with ‘Africa’, but the fish were not fooled. A disconsolate trek back to camp in the midday heat alerted us to shouts from across the river and we settled down to watch a fellow land fish after fish while his partner, prospecting a different channel but only 30 yards down the track, went fishless. “This is a honey hole. Move!” were the bellowed instructions.
Practicing good manners, we continued on our journey to camp.
Next morning, ignoring protocol, we bolted for the same run only to find a horde of children from the lodge up-stream bombing the water with lead and worms. Thankfully their breakfast bell was more enticing than fish not tempted by what is usually a deadly bait. Once quiet descended, the run produced fish after fish, just as the day before. Later, working up and down other rapids and pools, nothing! So now we face another puzzle. Just when you think you have the fish sussed, they prove even more difficult to tempt, or to find. Fishing the gin-clear water of the uMzimkhulu later in the month, it became obvious to Ruari that many stretches of likely looking water were fishless but schools were congregating in certain pockets.
I suppose the ninth law of fishing is, “Prospect and you shall find’. Who knows what the first eight are? That’s why we love it!
FUTURE PROOF
WHILE DIVING WITH TIGER SHARKS, AVOIDING NORTH KOREAN MISSILES AND SUPING DOWN THE AMAZON ARE ALL PAR FOR THE COURSE IN JESS MCGLOTHLIN’S CAREER, PERHAPS THE GREATEST CHALLENGE SHE’S FACED IS HAVING TO SPEND MONTHS ON END IN HER APARTMENT IN MONTANA. WE CAUGHT UP WITH HER TO DISCUSS FLY FISHING PHOTOGRAPHY, WRITING, TRAVEL AND MORE.
Photos. Jess McGlothlin
In praise of self-sufficiency and a diverse skill set, the late science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein famously wrote in 1973 that, “specialisation is for insects.” He went on that, “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.”
While I have no doubt that Montana-based photographer and writer Jess McGlothlin could probably plan an invasion, butcher a hog or pitch manure if she needed to, within the fly fishing world she already has the kind of varied skill set Heinlein coveted. That has in part made this bizarre pandemic period (aka, ‘The Great Pause’) slightly easier for her to endure. At only 33, Jess has already racked up enough experience across broad facets of the industry to put pretty much anyone to shame. She has worked in fly shops in Montana and guided for steelhead in the Pacific North West. She’s worked in comms for brands like travel specialists Yellowdog and an industry colossus like Orvis. As her career has progressed and evolved she’s racked up impressive credits and bylines. She’s shot for major brands like Yeti, Orvis and Costa. She’s also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Journal, Gear Junkie, Outside Online, Big Sky Journal and plenty of other titles, ticking all the boxes from mainstream news to outdoor publications. Along the way she has also been the communications director for AFFTA (the American Fly Fishing Trade Association), and she even did a season as a camp manager on the Ponoi in Russia, following in the footsteps of guys like Tim Rajeff of Echo Fly Fishing and Keith Rose-Innes of Alphonse Fishing Company. We spoke to her about the places she has been, the things she has seen and her advice for anyone wanting to carve out their own path in fly fishing.
ADAPTATION
In a normal year (remember those?), Jess spends more time on a plane or in foreign countries than she does at home. That was by design. Then the pandemic came along and fucked things up for everyone. “I did a shoot pre-Covid for Orvis in Southern Chile. After being off the radar completely for two weeks, I showed up at the airport in Coyhaique, turned on my phone, looked at news and found that the world had essentially ended. I was on one of the last flights out of Chile to get back to the States. In the week I got back I had nine international shoots cancelled, basically my income for the year. So I came back from what had been a fantastic, really cool shoot and was greeted with this new reality of, ‘Ok, you don’t have anything coming in now for a year.’ 12 months later we are at the year mark and the same thing is happening in 2021. I’m very lucky in that half my business is writing, half is photography so I’ve transitioned and really pushed into my hunting industry clients to do writing for them. Right now I have a company based here in Montana who have a hunting GPS app and I run all the written content for them. I’ve copywritten professionally in the past, I was with Orvis for a few years writing their content and I enjoyed it, but going back to copywriting full time is a different mindset. I have to fight to keep myself engaged in that right now. I have an almost 500 square foot apartment here in Missoula that I got because I was not going to be home very much, because I am normally travelling for six months of the year. Spending a year now, by myself, in a small box, has been enlightening. I’m looking forward to getting back on the road, getting my normal travel schedule going and not writing hunting content 30 hours a week, but that’s allowing me to pay the bills right now so I am exceedingly grateful for it.”
CONFLUENCE
There are few people who switch between shooting and writing and feel comfortable doing so. For Jess, the writing came first, while the photography came about out of necessity to partner the writing. Being able to do both has opened up a world of travel and allowed her to tackle some amazing gigs. She started young. “My first published piece was in a kids’ magazine at age eight. I was that kid running around with two notebooks in my back pocket, so technically writing came first. I never looked at my life and said ok, I want to be a fishing writer/ photographer/photojournalist. There was a story here in Montana about a hydro-electric dam they proposed to put in at Quake Lake which is right outside of West Yellowstone. It’s a very historic, wonderful region and a great fishery and I was I think 19 at the time, living in Bozeman. Like many 19-year-olds do, I got righteously pissed off about the dam and said I am going to break this story, because I knew if people knew what was happening it would not happen. Russ Lumpkin who was then the editor of American Angler, looked at the first draft and said, ‘Yeah, this is an interesting scoop and we want it, but we won’t run it without photos.’ At that point I was working three very disparate jobs – I was selling guns in an outdoor store, I was training horses and I was selling lingerie in Victoria’s Secret. I was covering all my bases, but I was dead broke. I think I budgeted $60 a month for food so the rest of my money could go into buying a good camera. I then snuck on to this job site where they were building the dam, got the photos and American Angler ran the piece. That was a lightbulb moment for me, that these two things can go together to actually accomplish something. Two or three years after the piece ran, it was
Post-work drinks for the guides and staff at Headhunters fly shop on the Missouri River in Montana.
used in a District Court hearing to turn down the dam, which was a funny full circle moment. Now, shooting and writing often go together. I do work where it’s only shooting or only writing, but my happy place is going on a shoot and combining the two.
THE REAL MCCOY/MCGLOTHLIN
Like any niche, there’s a lot of snark within the inner sanctum of the fly fishing. Social media allows us to see everyone playing in this space. That means running commentary from industry insiders about who is the real deal, who is fly-by-night, who is merely ‘a shill for Big CBD,’ and who is a free-loading trustafarian. It’s not great, but it’s perhaps an understandable reaction to the rise of thousands of overnight Instagram influencers, ambassadors and selfproclaimed ‘Public Figures,’ all scrapping to get a piece of the shrinking budgets of the brands that play in this space. To be taken seriously, you have to have staying power, demonstrable credentials and experience, and (ideally) a little modesty. You have to be able to both walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Paying your dues is essential. Jess says, “The way I set about my whole career was that I wanted to get in and learn the gritty side of the fishing industry. So at one point I was the assistant manager on the Ponoi up in Russia. I managed a guide team and I learned a shit-ton. It was fantastic. Then I worked in a fly shop job here in Montana for a season and then I worked out on the Olympic Peninsula so I could learn steelhead fishing. So I have kind of been a weird little bird running around focused on gathering skills. It’s been very valuable, because when I show up at a lodge now, I can legitimately say, “I have guided and I have helped out around a lodge.” That makes the lodge staff and the guides take a deep breath, because they know I won’t be a pain in the ass. Photographers in particular can be seen as especially painful people to deal with. I am doubly eye-balled because I am a photographer, I am a woman and I am an American. I originally wanted to be a conflict photographer and I actually contracted with the US Army for a bit so my style is very documentary. What happens happens. If something doesn’t happen, well too bad, it’s off the shot list. I very rarely pose people or tell them what to do, which makes it fun for the guides.”
HOME Montana
“I live in Missoula, Montana, but there’s a town about three hours north called Columbia Falls. It’s a blue collar town, close to Glacier National Park. That’s home essentially. I am 33 now and when I added it up, I have moved 27 times. We moved a lot as a child and I have continued to
move as an adult, but I keep bouncing back to Montana so I keep claiming Columbia Falls as home. But honestly home is a very relevant term. You don’t get homesick if you don’t have a big familial home, which is a great thing in this job, because home is where I have my camera and my notebook.
AWAY
“What I do is a business. At the end of the day the fun, glamourous shooting out in the field is 5 or 10% of my time and the rest of it is whacking out emails and invoices and doing taxes. I also spend a lot of time trying to do the research to see who might be pivoting into our industry and how I can work with them.”
Russia - “I was on the Ponoi for just one season. It was brilliantly educational in terms of the clientele of that lodge - very high-end. It draws in the Russian oligarch type and a lot of Brits come in too. It was good for me to see at a young age, that, ‘Oh this is a side of the industry we don’t see in Montana fly shops.” I met some fantastic guides too, many of whom split their time between there and the Seychelles. I helped manage the guide team and run helicopter supply schedules. In a camp like that you are a Jack of all trades. I did not get to fish much, but still got my first Atlantic salmon there which was epic.” Samoa - “I did a trip with Jonathan Jones (aka Redbeard) which was a shoot for Yeti. It was super challenging. We were in the Apolima Strait between the two islands of Samoa. I, probably naively, hopped into the water with my underwater housing to shoot a mahi up against the boat and what turned out to be a tiger shark came up and bumped me from underneath. Then I was caught between staying there and playing dead or swimming back to the boat. What do I do? I got back to the boat fine, but that was just day one of a ten-day shoot where
Scenes from Jess’s travels both at home in Montana and Idaho and in far-flung destinations like Anaa Atoll in French Polynesia.
each subsequent day I had to be back in the water doing the same thing. It messed with my head. That kind of set the tone for the rest of that shoot. What could go wrong, did go wrong. We had weather, I got sick, the fishing was shit and one of the guys who was meant to come over with Jonathan to be an angler and a model got stuck in New Zealand in customs. We just had to take it a day at a time. Luckily Yeti was kind enough to let me couch the story for them on the idea that ‘Hey, sometimes you travel around the world and it’s not what you think it is.’ I was really relieved about that, because it’s sometimes tough to find editors who let you tell the truth of a story. They want everything to be glorious and nice and that’s not always the case.” Belize - “I’ve been to Belize several times. It’s marketed really well to Americans, is relatively cheap and is easy to reach from the States, although it still takes two days from Montana. If you’ve never fished salt before it’s a good place to go. The first time I went there was for a commercial shoot with Orvis in 2014. I’ve got a good relationship with El Pescador Lodge and was down there when they first reopened after lockdown. They are a good client and it’s an outstanding relationship. I know the guides and they know me so they relax. We can go do weird stuff like pushing the boat through mangroves to get a tarpon. If they are relaxed, it makes for a much more organic experience, especially with the camera. You don’t want people tight and anxious and upset. You want them relaxed, laughing, smiling and having fun because then you get those shots.” Sweden - “This was an amazing trip up above the Arctic circle. I actually lived in Southern Sweden in my late teens working in the equestrian industry so it was interesting to go back and see the fishing side. This time I went with Swedish Lapland Tourism and we partnered with some lodges to showcase what an exceptional grayling fishery they have there. The brown trout and the pike were very good as well. Swedish Tourism were actually shooting a video about me while I was shooting my stories, which was like a creative Inception. The brilliant thing was it was mid-summer so there was no night and we would be up fishing at 2 or 3am. Ted the videographer would do all my interviews early in the morning out on the water when I was too tired to be nervous. You’re fishing, you’re outside and you just get that sort of, ‘life is good, I don’t care’ mode going on.” Japan – “Through the Adventure Travel Trade Association, I connected with a guy who is a very passionate fly angler on Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. I flew out there and spent a week with him, fishing and exploring and it was an epic trip. It was so fun to be out fishing and then they have the onsen, the hot saunas and baths, so every night we would come back to the lodge at like 4 or 5pm
and I would hit the onsen for a couple of hours before dinner. It felt very luxurious compared to a lot of these trips. It was at a time when North Korea was firing missiles over Hokkaido so we had a couple of missile alerts go out which was fascinating. Other than the missiles, we also had a typhoon pass through that week which killed fishing for a few days. I waited up and took my underwater housing around this village and shot photos in the typhoon in the rain and the wind. I am sure the locals thought I was insane, but it made for some really cool pictures. The fishing was amazing despite the typhoon. Huge rainbow trout holding in pockets in small rivers and then have char that turn a golden champagne colour because of the sediment in the lake.”
Australia – “I had a consulting gig with Tourism Australia to see how they can best market themselves to a fly fishing audience in the USA. I hit 11 airports in two weeks and still feel like I only saw a fraction of Australia. I saw the very top end for saltwater fishing and then went down to Tasmania for trout. I really want to go back and see more. It’s a fantastic place and a definite highlight so far. It’s very first world and not exotic compared to some of the places you can go, but awesome people, awesome fishing and just a cool place.” The Peruvian Amazon - “We were doing a stand-up paddleboard first descent of Amazon River tributaries so this was not overtly a fly fishing trip, even though I brought a couple of fly rods and got into a Pacu and a couple of other muddy water fish. The trip was amazing, but technically very challenging. We started at the cloud forest at 13000 feet and followed the tributaries all the way down until they joined the main body of the Amazon. It was me and 12 dudes and we would just shore up our rafts and paddleboards each night and sleep on the beach. The area we were going through, the Madre de Dios, is where a lot of the illegal gold mining happens in Peru, so at any given time I would be hiding the cameras and trying to cover up gear because we’d get passed on the river by dudes in a boat with AKs and a bunch of oil going to one of these camps. It was a really cool experience and a good way to see the jungle for the first time. Chile – “I met up with a friend who had a Chevrolet Astro van - I think he bought it for $800 in an alley – that he drove from Missoula to Southern Chile over the course of a year and a half with his dog and a raft. I flew down and met him and another friend and we just camped off the grid and explored Chile for two weeks. My friends, a guy and a gal, had never guided down there before so they knew the back alleys and what rivers we could go camp on and where. It was such a fun, random trip. Really cool brown trout fishing and we just were doing the quintessential, dirt-bagging, living in tents thing. I was with folks who were anglers, just having fun so it was really authentic.”
ADVICE
“The number one thing I tell people is ‘don’t be afraid of the work.” The biggest miss I see with folks coming into this industry is this mindset that, ‘ok I have a college degree in photography or creative writing and therefore I am a professional.’ I did not go to college for this. I got an academic scholarship for college, went for a week and left because I was bored as hell. I wish more people who want to get started in this look past the collegiate boxchecking and go get their hands dirty. The best thing I did for my career was the season on the Ponoi. Working in a fly shop was also invaluable. I was hustling rods and shuttling vehicles on the river and I had a camera with me all the time. I was sleeping in a cot in the corner of what was essentially a shed for eight months. It was not a glamorous thing but it was so much fun and I learned so much. Do the work so you can authentically speak to the industry. If you have done it and taken the educative steps rather than trying to parachute yourself in or taking some kind of short cut, brands recognize that honesty.” From Montana to the Ponoi, Samoa to Peru, whether Jess knew it or not before Covid struck, she had already futureproofed her freelance career by doing the work. From gruntwork to computer work, fieldwork and creative work behind the lens and the keyboard, no matter what the future has in store for us (save perhaps an extinction level event like a meteor), Jess will be out there pitching stories, bumping sharks and shooting epic photographs.
