As I mentioned in my last post, D and I went on a package saltwater fly fishing trip. I got a text from the fishing manager of the nearby Orvis shop asking if we would be interested in joining the excursion after another couple had to cancel.  We had been talking about trying salt and this seemed like a good way to get an introduction.  I guess it was, it’s just that neither of us really liked it all that much.  Full disclosure, we probably would have liked it more if we had caught more fish, who wouldn’t?

I get that other people like it, but I just found it all underwhelming. For me it didn’t scratch the fly fishing itch.  It also didn’t help that we weren’t in love with the lodge.  The lodge was clean, very well run and staffed by very nice people who sincerely worked hard to make sure people had a good time, but it wasn’t for us.  It was one of those all-inclusive places at which you ate meals together at common tables.  It kind of felt like you were on a cruise and not really in another country and D and I are very much not cruise people.

Let’s start with the group meal, the whole thing only works if everyone is on their best behavior and that never happens. On day one, I introduced myself to a tablemate and asked where he was from, he said Richmond, Virginia.  I said something like, “I’ve been there, it’s a great town (I always try to say something nice about where someone is from, because, why not?).” He asked me where I was from and I said Washington, DC to which he replied “Northern Virginia is not Virginia, I’m from the real Virginia,” to which I replied, “We live in DC, not Virginia.”  He than said, “that’s even worse.”

It takes a certain kind of person to insult someone to their face for no reason within five minutes of meeting them. I have absolutely zero patience for this kind of jerk and will ditch them unreservedly.  But for the moment, I was trapped at the table.  I switched to talk to fishing, where does he fish back home? He named some rivers where he fished for smallmouth bass, I mentioned that I fish the South Fork of the Shenandoah a lot and he informed me that “the largemouth have taken over the South Fork and there are hardly any smallmouth in it anymore.”  Like I said, I have zero patience for this kind of thing so I said, “what are you talking about? I fish it twenty times a year and catch hundreds of smallies, there are largemouth in spots, but the South Fork is a smallmouth fishery.” To which the jerk proclaimed, “the smallmouth have been pushed out.”

Jerks usually talk in pronouncements and often have nice spouses who you instantly feel sorry for. This guy was no exception. I refused to say another word to the guy, but engaged his long-suffering wife in conversation. She was very nice, interesting and was retired from important work that she talked about with passion (I’m not saying what it was because I want her to have some anonymity and peace). Jerk cuts her off and starts blowharding about some nonsense.  Sorry ma’am, but I can’t save you; I made the mistake of sitting next to him at dinner, but you made the mistake of marrying him.  For the rest of the dinner I physically turned away and talked to people at the other end of the table and for the rest of the trip I avoided the jerk with great alacrity.

When I’m on vacation, I don’t want to have to avoid people who tell me they hate my home town and are jerks to their wives. I don’t want to eat with them and I don’t want to have to work to avoid them.  There is something about the all-inclusive experience that attracts these kinds of people; people who are jerks to your face and then are puzzled why no one will talk to them more than once.

Now the fishing, we head out in a panga with our guide and here is where I get my inkling that I’m not going to like this kind of fishing. There is a lot of downtime, a lot.  First we are in the boat for an hour to get to where we are fishing, okay, I drive a long way to get to streams, but its’ weird to be on the water and still not be at the fishery.  Then we take turns to fish, which is weird.  You know what I like? Fly fishing.  You know what I don’t like as much? Waiting my turn to fly fish.

On a stream, D and I will fish a pool or two together and then one of us will head off to do their own exploring, coming together every occasionally, to compare notes. In a drift boat we are both fishing, but in a panga, you take turns and wait and wait and wait.  Some of the anglers on this trip were paired with guys who were all about getting their clients in to some fish and getting some early success; these guides took their sports to spots where they could blind cast and have a chance at a hookup.  Our guide was more traditional, for him fly fishing the flats is sight fishing and casting to specific fish.  Over three days we saw maybe six bonefish and caught a couple.  I would rate the experience in the Not Skunked Category in my system for rating fishing trips.  From worst to best, my categories are:

• It’s Nice Just to be Outside
• Not Skunked
• We got in to some fish
• We Had an Amazing Day
• If I Quit My Job, I Could Do This Everyday

The Guide was a good guy, but he had his program and if it wasn’t working, or if the sports couldn’t get with the program, oh well. After the second slow day with the guide, we were talking about maybe asking the lodge to make a change with our guide when something extraordinary happened.  We were finishing up the day, maybe hitting one more spot when the guide spotted a Belizean teen on a beach with an American fly fisher.  The teen was waving to the boat to come in to them.  Our guide knew the teen and we went over.

It turns out that the teen was the apprentice of a guide from town who had taken out this woman and another client (also a woman) from a local hotel for some fly fishing. The guide had left the teen and the woman on the beach while he took the second client into the mangroves for some fishing.  He had dropped them off at 8am and now, at 2pm he still had not come back.  They had been stuck on that beach with no shade, no food and no water for seven hours.  At one point, the teen had found a bottle of water floating in the ocean and the two had split it.  We gave them water and a ride back to their hotel.

The client who had been left on the beach was much more collected than I would have been. When we pulled up, she had the wherewithal to give us a concise update on her condition and a quick fishing report, “We’ve been here since 8am, our guide never came back with my friend.  I caught one small barracuda broke off a big bonefish on the rocks on a Christmas Island special.  That was my only fly.”

Now, that’s a bad guide, considering recent events and in homage to the gods of fishing, we decided to give the guide another chance and didn’t ask the lodge to make any changes. We had another slow day on the water and then spent the last dinner trying to avoid the jerk before scurrying to our rooms to pack.  Since we’ve been back, I’ve been monitoring the news from Belize to make sure that the second client from the bad guide hadn’t come to some bad end that would require me to reach out to the authorities.  Between the jerk at dinner, the waiting to fish and the rescuing of marooned anglers, like I said: meh.