The phone call from Andy Guibord came on a Monday in mid-January, around noon. His voice was breaking with emotion. “Have you heard the news? Bill’s been hospitalized. It’s serious.” The details became clearer over the next few hours. Bill Carnazzo had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke while home alone. Fingers were crossed, but the damage was likely irreparable.
The following day, he passed away.
I had seen Bill just a few days earlier, when he dropped by the California Fly Fisher booth at the Sacramento sports expo. We had talked a bit about his “At the Vise” column and about the impressive offer of a three-book contract he had just received. Bill grinned wryly, a sparkle in his eyes. You could tell things were going well. And at 71, he looked trim, fit, the very picture of good health — hardly a surprise, given his fondness for hiking into the deep canyons of the American River drainage. To me, he was a fly fisher’s fly fisher — thoughtful, wise from experience and observation, clearly talented, yet circumspect and unassuming. A skilled teacher. A natural writer. His death came as a shock to his many friends in California’s fly-fishing community.
As a tribute to Bill, you’ll find on this page his son Dominic’s reflections on fishing with his father, and elsewhere in this issue are Bill’s final “At the Vise” column and a “Good Fight” column that he wrote on an issue that threatens the places he fished: suction dredging. He was no environmental radical — Bill had served as a naval officer during the Vietnam War and later retired as a top-level attorney for the City of Sacramento — but he understood the importance of conservation if we hope to have healthy rivers and good fishing for the generations that follow us. His legacy deserves to live on.
Richard Anderson
Publisher and Editor
The Fisherman I Knew
By Dominic Carnazzo
As fishermen go, my dad was a master. Those who knew him as I did, who fished with him and tied flies with him, can attest to his wealth of knowledge and persistent mastery of angling skills. That being said, with us, it was never a question of seeking or attaining any kind of mastery. We were students of the art of relentless pursuit. But it was never just about pursuit, either. It was about attention to detail and keen awareness of your surroundings. It was positioning yourself streamside to turn over rocks and at the same time calculating the best possible route to “the spot.” It was the softness of your step into the water, the pinching of the hook barb while tying on your fly, the exactness of the knot, the art of the cast, the sensitivity in your fingertips for the feel of the hit, the quick and precise setting of the hook, the toils of the fight and the cautious finale . . . the landing of the fish. However, it didn’t ever stop there. It continued to the handling of the fish, the removal of the hook from its upper or lower lip, the gentle rocking of the fish in the water’s ripple to help reacclimatize it and lower its stress level when releasing it. It was cleaning your hands, resetting your view of the river, and then readying the fly for the next presentation.
There are memorable moments in the lifelong journey of a son and fly fisher…. days that are engrained in the mind forever . . . spots in time: honing our casting skills while walking the edges of El Piojo Reservoir in Hunter Liggett, California, casting a rubber-legged green foam spider that produced hundreds of the tenacious little black-and-red-finned bluegills. Summer vacation trips to Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and Oregon. Fishing the Blue-Winged Olive and Pale Morning Dun hatches on the Henry’s Fork in Harriman Park, Idaho, with its picturesque, windswept grassy plains separated by sparse wood-and-barbed-wire fencing. Moose and elk would wander in and out of their favorite watering holes as we waded silently nearby. The aspen-laden banks of the Madison River in Yellowstone Park and near the sleepy little town of Ennis, Montana. Days that turned out rainbows, browns, and even a few whitefish. The high-desert terrain surrounding the outskirts of Dillon, Montana, flipping hoppers on the deep-cut banks of the Beaverhead for monster browns. Summers just outside Roseburg, Oregon, on the wide cut, granite-strewn Umpqua River, home to some of the most beautiful, emerald backed rainbows and enormous steelhead I’ve ever seen. Ospreys lining the treetops, waiting for just the right moment to fall from the sky in the hunt for a meal. Those sunrise hatches that we’d always try to be up for — once he even helped me design my own fly for them: Dom’s Bomber. The warm afternoons throwing Muddler Minnows to the bubbling tops of the deep, jade-colored pools filled with jacks and lazy steelhead. And of course, the epic evening caddis and stonefly hatches that would sometimes look as though the water was boiling. He was always there . . . guiding me to the most favorable place and teaching about both the fish and the environment.
I have my own boys now, and Dad schooled them in the arts and crafts of fly fishing with the same patience and fervor with which he taught me. I would stand at a bay window at my mom and dad’s house and peer out as he would lean over the shoulder of my oldest son, Nicholas, giving him tips on how to hold the rod, cast the line, and present the fly. Those bass and bluegills didn’t stand a chance.
Fast forward to last year, when my mom and dad traveled to Idaho, where I live, for an end-of-summer visit. I promised dad at least one full day’s float, with me at the oars of my drift boat, and you could sense the excitement and eagerness as we sat and pondered our trip.
Blue skies with some billowing thunderheads in the distance and a light breeze from the west started the day off nicely. I had prepared lunch early that morning, loaded all of the gear in the boat, and off we floated. As usual, it didn’t take long for Dad to get a fish on with his patented BBFF (Bill’s Big Fish Fly). As the day progressed, I put him on all of the fishiest spots on the river. He landed some of the largest and most beautiful brown trout I had ever seen caught on that stretch of river, and I managed to snap a photo of the largest of the day just before he released it. How could I have ever imagined that would be the last time I would get to fish with him?
It was one of those extraordinary days, and he would go on to write about the purity of it: “Turnabout being fair play, there’s something awfully nice about being rowed about by one’s son on a brilliant big-sky day drifting a sparkling deep green river, with nothing but a proven fly between me and huge trout. Sometimes our frazzled world just seems to fall into a semblance of order and beauty, and what’s really important sorts itself out right before our eyes and quietly within our souls, and the rest is simply carried downstream and away by the shifting, passing currents.”
Donations in Bill Carnazzo’s memory can be made to the North Fork American River Alliance (http://www.nfara.org).
