Table for Two—Outside, Please

What do you bring for lunch on the river? Through trial and error garnished with moments of instructive failure, I’ve learned that an important quality for a good, packed lunch for a day of fishing is akin to advice for growing up as a little brother: you’ll be okay if you can handle being shoved around a little. And don’t toss me in the water again—he said, looking directly at his big sister.

And lest we forget that we’re not uncouth barbarians, lunch should be tasty too! So now the list is 1) Durable enough to withstand a morning jostling around in my pack like a handful of Superballs tossed into the dryer, and 2) Palate-pleasing. Oh! And 3) Shelf-stable. Without refrigeration, you don’t want your lunch to portend a lower gastrointestinal emergency primed to ruin an afternoon—or a pair of waders. 

But sometimes, even the best-laid plans succumb to unforeseen forces conspiring against that lunch break, as if the Egyptian demon god Apophis—when he’s not breathing his screams and living on his own shouting—chooses to wreak havocon your lunch. Hello, PB&J sandwich that got smashed in my pack. I thought you’d fare better stacked among my fly boxes all morning. Sorry I confused “sitting on you” with “panini press”.

What did ancient people eat while they were out fishing, hunting, pillaging, and trying not to get eaten by apex predators?

Turns out the answer is salt. A lot of salt, and the stuff they smoked, cured, dried, pickled, and buried in the ground. I think they ate like RJK Jr. does now: a bunch of meat and “ferments.” Basically, stuff that you might not want someone cracking open while sitting next to you on a plane to the Seychelles. 

But I won’t delve into the long history of food preservation. Let’s just say that our ancestors didn’t have YETI coolers, so no one has dug up the Tupperware of Babylon. And I haven’t seen the History Channel feature Genghis Khan’s Chinese food containers of kung pao taimen.

What about a good ol’ turkey sandwich, Curtis?

In his autobiography, “My Life and Work,” Henry Ford said of his Model T, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black.” I think of that line almost every time I’m on a guided trip and I’m handed a sandwich: “So long as it’s turkey.”

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Please don’t get me wrong. I am beyond grateful for the meal and truly appreciate all the effort it took to procure this universally liked, unoffensively non-controversial deli sandwich before our early-morning meet-up time. There are myriad other tasks my guide handled while preparing to drag me around all day, so I’m not besmirching “Get Curtis a turkey sandwich” as part of that executed-in-the-dark To Do list. Size 16 Dark Lord, no. But I think the next time a guide kindly asks me the day before if I have any allergies or dietary restrictions, I just might say I’m allergic to turkey.

But I get it. Running a full-service fly-fishing guide outfit isn’t just a sport-focused service; it’s also a hospitality-focused one. And for me, given my own background in the food and hospitality industries, that hospitality part, frankly, has got to sit near the bottom of my list of “favorite parts of the job.” I don’t think aspiring guides realize that guiding also means dealing with daily moments of catering. “Oh, you like fly fishing and getting people into fish? Do you also enjoy being the busy omelet station chef at a hotel breakfast buffet while in your drift boat?”

Why don’t you pack your own lunch, then, Mr. Fussy Pants?

Totally fair question. And when I can, I do pack my own lunch. But when I’m traveling to fish and hiring a guide at my destination, bringing along lunch fixin’s is usually too impractical. And if I am able to bring food, there’s the awkward request to squeeze it into the guide’s cooler—smooshed up against the turkey sandwich they already got for me.

So, what’s for lunch, Curtis?

Here’s a selection from my ever-expanding list of what I pack for a lunch break in our awesome sport.

• Fried chicken: durable, shelf-stable enough, and delicious. Check, check, and check! A very passable, easy (read: lazy) substitute is the supermarket deli chicken tenders. And if I have cooler access, I’ll use the fried chicken or chicken tenders in a wrap with a spinach tortilla and a pre-packaged chopped salad kit that includes dressing. Add some dill pickle slices, hot honey, and chopped pepperoncini, or do it “California style” with sliced avocado, Roma tomato, and sprouted microgreens. Either way, you’re gonna need to schedule a nap before returning to the pocket water.
• Trout Bum charcuterie. Toss some sturdy crackers (like pita chips), a hard cheese or those wax-covered Babybel cheese pucks, and a nice, cured meat, like salami or prosciutto, into a zip-seal pouch (hopefully reusable), and you’ve got yourself a tasty portable meal that would be at home fishing in the Dolomites. Or bring whole salami to cut hunks off with a pocket-knife like you’re Hemingway taking a break on the Big Wood River. A small Honeycrisp apple will withstand a rough ride and is a nice palate cleanser for afters.
• Scotch Egg! If you’re unfamiliar, a Scotch Egg is a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat, covered in breading, and then fried into a salty, crusty little gem of deliciousness. Though they’re kind of weird—like if a chicken and Matty Matheson had a baby—they can also survive a bouncy day in a Scottish shepherd’s tweed jacket pocket. Durable and delicious.
• Leftover pizza. Wrap slices in foil for travel. Then, when ready, stick that package on a hot rock to warm up. Cooks faster than the near-extinct incandescent light bulb can undercook a cake in a late-model Easy Bake Oven.
• Leftover bacon from breakfast. Assuming there ever is any…
• Hot soup or chili. For you steelheaders, modern insulated thermoses were made for you. This assumes you can super-heat your soup or chili somehow and splash it into a thermos before you bolt out the door in the morning. Totally worth it if you can. Keep a spoon in your rain jacket.
• Radishes with nori lemon-butter. Invite me to go fishing with you. Tell me to bring lunch. I’ll show up with these radishes, Zoe’s Meats prosciutto, and some La Brea crusty bread. It’s my Thomas Keller Lunchable.

Fish hard, my friends. Just remember to fuel up well for the adventure and stay hydrated. And when you come off the water, check out Lance Gray’s “Foraging Angler” column in the magazine. Lance and Kirsten deliver on all the spots to hit after you’ve pulled off your boots and stowed the rods. I always have room in my life for people who lead me to get a little food on my face during a meal.