Bud: Wow! I like what they’ve done with the place. Well, here we are. California Fly Fisher was a constant presence in the California fly-fishing scene for thirty-one years and is poised now to play even a larger role in the sport. As the founder of the magazine and the person who helmed it for three decades, you surely have thoughts on where our sport is these days. Let’s go back to the beginning and start with the magazine’s origin story. William Randolph Hearst appeared to you in a dream and prophesied a vast publishing empire, beginning with a niche publication for California fly anglers—right?
Richard: Nope, dreams of empire had nothing to do with the launch of Cal Fly Fisher. My motivation was based on dissatisfaction, maybe tinged with desperation. I had reached my mid-thirties and realized that the career path I was treading no longer really engaged me. Probably a lot of people at some point come to this same realization about their own jobs, but obligations and responsibilities prevent them from leaving what’s become a rut. I was lucky, having nothing to hold me back from trying something wildly different, following a passion.
That passion was fly fishing. But how could I make it a living, or even better, a life? I used to visit newsstands every few weeks, flipping through the fly-fishing magazines and looking especially for stories on where to fish in California. Those stories were awfully rare. Hmm, I thought, perhaps a magazine focusing on fly fishing in California might successfully fill an ignored niche. After all, we’re the largest state in population, we have notable trout waters and an impressive range of warmwater and saltwater opportunities, and there already existed something of a fly-fishing culture, a history, unique to the state. These three aspects and some very basic market research and back-of-an-envelope arithmetic convinced me that the risk of launching a California fly-fishing magazine was worth taking. I had nothing to lose other than my savings, which weren’t much, and I figured I could find another job if the enterprise went belly-up.
The only difficulty was that I knew squat about publishing. Also, although I was a somewhat competent writer of reports and memoranda, I had no background in editing or graphic design. I couldn’t afford to hire anyone to provide this expertise or take on the responsibilities of selling ads and circulation management. I would have to fill all these roles, at least initially, and learn on the job, but this only made the challenge even more interesting. By the way, thank you, Bud, for saying yes when I asked you a few years later if you could help with the editing. Your assistance made Cal Fly Fisher a truly fine read.
So I worked darn hard, and happily, to make the thing succeed. Do you remember how you would feel on the opening day of trout season, elated and excited about finally getting back on the water? Pretty much every day as publisher was like that for me.
Bud: The magazine went through a lot of changes in terms of advertising, authors, and production values. What were the major challenges, how did you handle them, and what stayed the same?
Richard: Actually, from my perspective, the magazine hasn’t changed substantively over the years. Because it was launched on a very small budget, I had started with inexpensive newsprint as the paper and also a larger than usual tabloid format, which was the most cost-effective size for printers who deal with newsprint. I was hoping that the quality of the work I was publishing would override whatever connotations of cheapness newsprint might impart, and by and large, it did. The editorial mix over time stayed pretty constant between where-tos, how-tos, fly tying, and essays. It was a formula I personally found appealing, and it worked for other readers, as well.
The change that I notice most when looking at issues through the years is graphic design. I thought those early magazines were laid out well, but my eye now tells me otherwise. I think I finally nailed the goal of a good-looking magazine with my final issue. Print quality also improved as I learned the nuances of how web presses work, but it always fluctuated, especially when the printer’s press crew was facing a busy schedule. Quality control is one of the downsides of newsprint in comparison with gloss, but then again, the lower cost of newsprint allowed me to stay in business.
The primary, ongoing challenge was making sure I had enough interesting and useful stories to fill each issue. The second important challenge, and one related to the first, was gaining or at least retaining readership. There’s always attrition in readership for any subscription-based publication, but I’ve been humbled with how many readers stayed with Cal Fly Fisher over the years.
Bud: What stories are you most proud of, and what stories do you wish you had published, but didn’t? Also which stories do you wish you hadn’t printed?
Richard: I never turned down something I wanted to run, and everything I’ve run I both liked and believed had value for the readers. The stories I was most delighted to print were the literary pieces, the essays that help us see the world in new ways, and the stories that expanded our notions of what was possible with fly gear in California. If a submission dealt with an underappreciated species or type of water or a novel evolution in gear, tactics, or flies, I wanted to read it, run it, and fish it.
Bud: Your career as a publisher might lead folks to believe you’ve been focused exclusively on literary matters your whole life, but I happen to know you once contemplated a career in the military. So how did a kid growing up in the Sierra end up with a master’s degree from Harvard in city planning before getting into the magazine publishing business? What carried from that over into the career we all know about, and what still is part of your life outside that career?
Richard: Kind of sounds like I was living a pinball game, doesn’t it? But there is a thread to it all. This first part is critical, because it formed the foundation on which everything else followed. I spent third grade through sixth in Long Barn, which was and still is a tiny town on the west slope of the central Sierra at an elevation of five thousand feet. This was back in the 1960s, when our only attention-grabbing “device” was a television that received three stations. There were no organized activities for kids, so I began to read for pleasure. Yes, Bud, my whole life actually has been focused on literary matters—if you include comic books. Long Barn was surrounded by the Stanislaus National Forest, and my brother and I and our friends spent a lot of time in it, riding our Stingrays, building forts, and doing the things boys do when given the freedom to goof around without supervision. (For the alarmed parents who might be reading this, no one suffered serious injury, and the fire started by Chris smoking cigarettes was doused quickly by the Forest Service.) A little creek ran at the foot of the hill down from our house, and that’s where I learned to fish, using salmon eggs and Super Duper lures to tempt tiny trout.
Over the months, as my soon-to-be stepfather courted Mom, he and I would visit Lyons Reservoir, a short drive away, where we sat on a log and soaked bait for hatchery fish. It was there I saw my first fly fisher. The loop of line unfolding gracefully back and forth over the water, highlighted by the evening sun, absolutely entranced me, and I resolved to someday become proficient with a fly rod.
We moved to the Bay Area when my mother remarried, but we kept “the cabin” in Long Barn, returning to it on weekends and vacations. Life was now suburban, rather than rural, and fishing, which for me had become fly fishing, fell by the wayside to less solitary teenage activities. My brother and sister and I were expected to go to college, although I had no clue as to what I wanted to study or do with a degree. But I enjoyed games of strategy, so I applied to schools with ROTC programs, thinking I might pursue a career in the army. (Such was the logic of a seventeen-year-old.) Anyway, San Jose State took me in, and I did well in their ROTC program, but also realized that becoming commissioned as an officer was neither a certainty or necessarily what I wanted. What I loved was where I had come from, the mountains and forests, wild nature. So I switched my major from poli sci, which was a placeholder I had no interest in—ironic given my life’s later trajectory—to environmental studies. Our environmental problems are largely related, directly and indirectly, to land use, and this realization led me to graduate studies in city planning. Because reports and memos are the primary ways by which city planners communicate with decision-makers and the public, I was taught to write clearly and succinctly, and this talent helped give me the confidence to start Cal Fly Fisher.
I still find the subject of city and regional planning fascinating, and the knowledge and skills I gained through the profession have allowed me to advocate for fisheries and ecosystems. This advocacy picked up after I moved to Truckee because things were happening locally that could harm where I fished. I really believe that if one has the ability to make a difference, then one must step up and get involved. And, like starting a magazine, I enjoy the challenge. I guess I have a David-versus-Goliath complex.
Bud: Speaking of stepping up, some readers may not know that you’ve also had a career in local politics as a member of the Town Council in Truckee, as mayor of Truckee and as a member of the Board of Supervisors of Nevada County. How did that happen, and what did you want to accomplish? What did you learn from the experience?
Richard: My involvement in politics stems from wanting to protect Martis Lake, California’s first Wild Trout still water and a place I fished frequently, from the harmful impacts of three golf-course subdivisions that were proposed for development upstream of it. To make a long story short, as a concerned fisherman, I won a battle, achieving a commitment from Placer County and the Town of Truckee to monitor water quality downstream of the golf courses, but lost the war, in that not only nothing changed, but the lake’s eutrophication worsened over time, and its Wild Trout designation was removed.
Some folks, though, saw me as level-headed and thoughtful, so I was approached to run for a seat on Truckee’s Town Council. I was pretty much an introvert and had never considered running for office, even in my wildest dreams, but the possibility of doing good for my community was attractive, and I think I ran unopposed. I did well enough during my first four years that I won a second term and then won two more terms, this time as Nevada County supervisor for the eastern region where Truckee is located.
As for what I accomplished, much of the job, perhaps its most important part, was simply trying to make sure the town and the county ran efficiently, effectively, and fairly. My heart, however, and thus my focus, was largely in service to the natural world. The fact is, I’m an environmentalist. This was and is an explosive, divisive word, at least in western Nevada County, which is extremely conservative, so I never used it to describe myself while running for or serving in office. I like to think I was a pragmatic environmentalist in that I tended take positions that would win the support of a majority of my colleagues, but there were losses among the wins and accomplishments. One of those losses, pertaining to the management of Truckee’s groundwater and its impact on surface waters, still stings. Alone, I was unable to overcome the willful ignorance of agencies that should have been allies.
And as for what I learned, it was mostly along the lines of the hazards and responsibilities of holding office. You know, things like the friends you make in office are really not your friends, have the courage to speak up and the wisdom to shut up, know your values, and think of everyone as a neighbor and treat them as such. The lesson that was most important took me, as a self-starter, a long time to realize: don’t do it all yourself. Build coalitions to multiply voices, raise awareness, and enhance the power to persuade.
As an elected, however, it can be difficult to take a principled stand. You have to think about the long game, because your goals may require votes over time, which means you can’t risk alienating councilmembers or supervisors who have different values, because you always need two additional votes. I realized that for both instigating change and protecting what should be protected, working as a citizen advocate might be more effective than serving in office. Unlike an elected, an advocate needn’t seek compromise, isn’t heeled by bureaucracy, and can bang the drum long and loudly about what’s best, to which the electeds must or at least should respond. That’s how I started, and that’s where I am now, serving on the boards of the Truckee River Watershed Council and our local Trout Unlimited chapter.
I’m glad I got involved in trying to make a difference. Work remains to be done. The joy of the fight continues.
Bud: You’ve been fly fishing for more than forty years. What’s changed in your relation to it? And how much did publishing about fishing interfere with, you know, actually fishing?
Richard: Publishing didn’t interfere with my fishing. I can drive to the Truckee in about a minute, and there has always been time in the day when, if I wanted, I could get away at least for a little while to fish. But passions wax and wane, and there have at times been months when I didn’t feel the urge to wet a line. I suspect we all experience this. The trick is to know that what wanes will in turn wax again, and be open to it.
But also, my objectives when I fish have evolved. I don’t care these days about numbers or size or about whether I’m using the most effective technique. I want to feel the rod load and the rhythm of the cast, and I want to manipulate the line competently when it’s in the air or on the water. But even more, I’m just happy being out there in the natural world. It’s an astonishing place, not to be taken for granted, and as I’ve grown older, the wonder and amazement I feel about the living things with which we share this planet have only intensified. If you stay observant, fly fishing is a gateway drug to having your mind blown.
Bud: How are your filling your time, now that you’ve retired from the magazine?
Richard: My range of interests extend well beyond angling. I’m indulging in all of them now that every day is Saturday. But as you might guess, top of the list is environmental advocacy.
Bud: Tradition demands that I end every interview I do with the Silly Tree Question: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
Richard: Years ago, on the radio, I heard someone, a Scotsman, I think, say that the only freedom he needed was the freedom of a tree. I keep thinking about that comment. I sort of understand what he was getting at and sort of don’t. The value of longevity in place, maybe. The pleasure of being wholly who one is, with no expectation or desire to become someone else. So I’m not going to answer your question directly. Maybe just being a tree is enough.
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Rick Chapman’s work is held in many collections throughout the United States, including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the LA County Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, George Eastman House, and the private collection of Sir Elton John. Chapman’s portraits strive to explore that which ties us all together as humans, the essence of what is common in all of us. Humanity’s common ground is at the heart of Rick Chapman’s portraiture. His work can be found at www.rickchapman.com.
