What Would You Do To Catch a Fish?

I am not by nature an adrenaline junkie. I take great pleasure in the “click” of a buckled seatbelt and have no desire to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Nevertheless, in pursuit of fish – little green ones or otherwise – I will take a few risks. That’s why this week I’m wading in bear-filled waters for trout, grayling and salmon. This will mark my fourth trip to Alaska, and third since 2019, and if you haven’t been there you need to go. Every American and every outdoorsman needs to see at least a small slice of our country’s greatest wilderness. To my way of thinking, it’s the most exotic place you can go without a passport.

It's not the only place I’ve courted danger. Of course, there were times as a twenty-something I foolishly took a 17’10” 1995 bass boat into waves that might’ve sunk a freighter, but that was just being a dumbass. More recently, I’ve sought out the issues. Those include fishing in Zambia for tigerfish, where we used a pontoon boat because the hippos have a tendency and ability to turn over anything smaller. It includes a nighttime caiman-hunting expedition in the Amazon where the native guides left us three gringos in the jon boat while they went off to lasso and tape up a full-grown brontosaurus, which they then deposited on the floorboards of our craft.

In reality, I think we are at only a minuscule risk of real injury in any of those circumstances. Our Alaskan guide, who had been there her whole life and guided since she was a teen, told us she’d been false-charged by a grizzly once. She still had all of her limbs and digits. Besides, we let her lead the way.

The only really dumb thing I’ve done is when our Brazilian float plane pilot told us midair that our water landing gear wouldn’t work and we had to return to the airport to fix it. A half-hour after landing, we were back up. The next day I caught 20- and 21-pound peacocks. Discretion may be the better part of valor, but sometimes the chance of a reward greatly outweighs an unknown risk.