by Scott Sadil
We were supposed to go fishing again this past spring. The trip was a makeup for one we had planned the previous fall which, come to think of it, was a makeup for another trip, one I couldn’t join because I had already bought a ticket to head that same week for the tropics.
The fall trip had fallen through because, unbeknownst to John, another mutual friend had already signed on – and the core group for these biannual visits to the Frying Pan, which I suspect everyone here has read about over the years, had, as Gierach explained, “an unwritten rule about not letting the thing get too big and unwieldy.”
So how would I feel about coming in spring – this year, 2024 – instead?
I’m not sure why it didn’t happen. I dragged Tamalita, my six-meter lugger, down the Baja peninsula in winter, heading up a whale-watching sailing adventure with my sweetheart and some friends. Somehow I heard, on arriving home, that John had had some health problems over the winter. Spring came and went, and as another fall approached, I got busy with local steelhead. When I arrived home today from another fishless outing on the Klickitat, I read that John had died.
There’s a lesson there I won’t belabor.
We met through writing. Jim Anker, who had just started Barclay Creek Press, got hold of John and asked him who was going to be “the next Gierach.” The way John later told it to me, the question sort of pissed him off. “It’s not like I’m finished yet,” he said.
Still, he mentioned my name. And when Anker contacted me, and he told me why, I was no doubt flattered. Later, when I finally met John, but before we started fishing together, he asked me what I had been doing up to now. “Writing,” I said.
“Makes sense. I guess there’s no such thing in this business as a flash in the pan.”
Steelhead and two-handed rods conspired to lure Gierach into my neck of the woods. He showed up for some of the last exceptional years on the mid-Columbia tributaries, and I think if they had continued, he may well have bought a place on the Klickitat. He loved the river, especially when there were fish in it. When we started having some lean years, I tried to entice him to visit anyway.
“I’m still getting fish,” I said, “just by poking my nose in here and there.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what you do if you’re a local.”
Once, in winter, I got John to come out to the coast, where I had a month-long writing residency at a groovy eco art institute. Unfortunately, just before John’s visit, the weather forecast went south. Storms. Rain. Rivers rising. Could we even fish? But by the time our guide finally canceled, John was already landing in Portland.
Still, between a couple of futile floats in classic Oregon coast winter weather, we had plenty of time to hang out and drink coffee in front of a woodstove, where I could return again and again to one of my favorite topics of discussion: How John Gierach made a living writing about fly fishing.
How he did it, of course, is right there in front of us each time we open one of his many books. It’s as simple as that. There are going to be countless well-deserved words of praise written about Gierach in the days to come. But the best I can do at the moment are these: Thank you.
Scott Sadil’s next book, A Matter of Style: Flyfishing into the Winds of Change, is due out in April, 2025.
