guides

  "oh christ.  don't put that down.  dead lions very often get up, believe me."  that was glen cottar in 1971, in tanzania, at the conclusion of a hunt when i, exhausted from the tension, started to prop my rifle on the nearest bush.  glen was the latest and last of the famous cottar clan to professionally hunt in east africa - a family put out of business when kenya closed all hunting in 1977.  he was a mentor and became a great friend.

i've been very lucky in that regard.  many of the guys who have guided me on my hunting and fishing expeditions have become lifelong friends - and most of them have been world class.

first there was captain bob tarr an old eastern shore waterman who taught me how to bait a duck - with corn - to deadly result [for the duck].  then there was harry "the heron" elsey who could glide through a marsh like his namesake and one day, many years ago, helped retrieve a hundred teal which made the mistake of sliding down a little back water creek into our 20 gauge arms.

later, when i started fishing seriously in the salt came gil drake, whose family owned deep water key long before orvis and frontiers took over the fly fishing business.  some time prior, gil had moved to key west which was where i met him on the advice of guy de la valdene, a mutual friend.  gil, guy, tom mcguane, and others had pioneered fly fishing for tarpon - together with more exotic endeavors - out of key west in the 70s.  gil was not very patient with my untalented fly fishing technique and therefore passed me on to harlan franklin.  before that happened we fought an epic battle - four hours  - with a permit i hooked late in the day and lost in the black of night which gil - who saw it twice boatside - estimated to weigh 60 to 65 pounds.  that would have beaten, if boated, the world record by a substantial margin.  the only irony is that i had a take from a fish out of the same bunch that may have been 10 pounds heavier.  the shallow area on which these fish, and others, were feeding - just outside key west harbor - is now known as hawk's flat.

harlan taught my son and daughter to "throw at the white spots" on the flats, which often contained a terrifically hungry and excited baracuda who, once hooked, would leap in great greyhounding arcs, all the while glaring at us with its huge, black predator's eye...very satisfying for a young fisherman and for which i will be forever in his debt.  he and i specialized in permit - with the odd shark thrown in - and ultimately chased  bonefish on andros with andy smith.

andy, one of charlie smith's 27 children, is the consummate fly caster and bonefish guide.  his father created the "crazy charlie", an unassuming looking fly but one no self respecting, aspirant bonefisherman would be without.  andy and i fished together a lot.  i'll always remember his bahamian lilt on our first morning's meeting, "welcome to andros, hawk".  we never caught any really big fish, though i hooked a couple but we always had fun.  one day we went to the west side of andros, got stuck in the mud, saw a  big sawfish with its legion of little jacks in attendance, cast to a hundred small permit to no avail [as far as i know permit never eat - flies at least], and i was admonished not to jump overboard to cool off, "no man.  not here.  bulls here."  sharks, that is.  a wild, wild part of the world.

closer to home, on the outer banks of north carolina, i ran into rob pasfield.  we hunted false albacore in the fall with the rest of the small fleet of fly fishermen out of harkers island.  that fishing goes from dead quiet to crazy madness in a heartbeat as the brilliantly swift little albacore tear into the baitballs - and are gone before one can make the first cast.  one november i had a rookie join me for a couple of days.  he wasn't rigged when we left the dock - a cardinal sin in this type of fishing, hell any type of fishing - and had no fly at the end of his leader when we came upon the first school just inside the hook.  i had three fish to the boat before his shaking fingers finished knotting a clouser - and the fish disappeared.  rob didn't laugh until later.

sally and i flew out to kenya to visit cottar's camp a few years ago.  since we'd gone that far i figured oh hell, what was another 1500 miles so we went on to the seychelles to bonefish.  as the little prop jet dropped down over st. francois, an old coconut plantation gussied up as an exotic resort, i peered out the window at bijoutier its neighbor and the huge ocean flats that surrounded  the islands.  arno matthee met us the next morning and thus began four days of the most exciting fishing i've ever had.  i've written elsewhere of the adventures we had but two things stick out:  meeting arno who became a friend forever and the extraordinary tidal activity.  oh sure, there were fish of all kinds - and they were everywhere - but the water was like a live thing streaming off the flats so fast it left fish flopping on the bare sand, and as it returned climbing your legs like a silent slithery predator.  to sally, small in stature, it was frightening...me - i checked to see how far away the boat was and whether we could make it there before this wild thing engulfed us.

in the newspaper there have lately been stories of al-quaeda related somali bandits raiding in kenya, kidnapping and looting in an area east of the tana river near a town called garissa.  it is a part of the world claimed by both somalia and kenya, home of [in the old days] the shifta poachers who did so much to devastate kenya's elephants.  it is also the place glen and i hunted elephant so many years ago - the taru desert.  i wonder, my old friend - wherever you are - if anyone now there remembers us....