Fly fishers are a vigilant lot. We’re always on the lookout for an ill-mannered angler who’ll spoil our fun—the guy who puts down the trout with 42 false casts, for instance, or the one who has no sense of personal space and sets up shop three feet from your casting arm. Those offenses are tip-of-the-iceberg stuff, really. The catalog of bad manners is frightfully long, and everyone has a favorite gripe they’ll be more than happy to share with anyone who’ll listen.
For me, it’s any talk of politics. If a fishing partner asks who I’ll vote for in the next election, I say, “Abe Lincoln.” I say that even if it’s a local election. Only a witless pal would plunge ahead after that.
The trout don’t care what party you support. They vote with their fins. If you think they made life easier for fly fisher Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, than for Herbert Hoover, a Republican, I suggest you see a shrink.
I learned to avoid politics when I lived in Alexander Valley. My fishing partner there was a grumpy prune farmer I’ll call Paul Deeds. Deeds got his news from the supermarket tabloids. He even read them at the store to save a buck. His taste in all things was simple and unrefined. He enjoyed sushi, but “only if it’s cooked.” He didn’t own a computer or a cell phone, relying on a landline; he only answered if you knew the code—ring twice, hang up, and ring again.
I met Deeds on the Russian. He’s a steelhead master and taught me the ropes. Soon we began taking road trips to fish for trout. That was a big deal for Paul, who clings to the valley like a barnacle. He worries his trees won’t bear fruit if he goes away. They’ll feel neglected, he says. This is clearly a case of magical thinking, but you can’t blame people for wanting things to turn out well. Every farmer is a magical thinker to some extent.
I recall a trip Deeds and I made a few years ago to the Middle Fork Stanislaus, the wild trout section below Beardsley Lake. It was early summer, and the river couldn’t be in better shape. After walking a half-mile or so from Sandbar Flat through the forest, we noticed a little hatch of BWOs and began picking up small browns and a few rainbows in the pocket water. None was worthy of a photo, but we had the stream to ourselves and took pleasure in the splendid sense of isolation.
Although Deeds may not be the most well-informed person, he’s never short of an opinion. The opinions are delivered with surprising force, considering they rest on such a shaky foundation. It’s best to regard them as passing clouds and not take them seriously as I made the mistake of doing when he pointed to the Middle Fork on our lunch break and said, “See that river? Have a good look. ‘Cause it’ll dry up when Governor Moonbeam sells our water to L.A.”
He was talking about Jerry Brown, then in his third term. “I doubt that’s what Brown has in mind,” I objected.
“I don’t trust him. He’s a Buddhist.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Ever seen a Buddhist with a fly rod?” He was delighted with himself, thinking he’d scored a point. “You know who’d be a great governor? Tom Hanks. Born in California, he’s eligible to run.”
“You don’t have to be born here to run for office.”
“Be that as it may. Ever wonder why Hanks always plays a good guy?” He paused for effect. “Because he is a good guy!”
We fished in silence that afternoon. I kicked myself for arguing with him. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. Deeds might be eccentric, but he doesn’t invest in any wacky conspiracy theories. He’s an original. And it doesn’t sound so far-fetched now, in 2025, to suggest Tom Hanks might run for office someday.
Our feuding ended when Deeds caught an 18” brown on a Parachute Adams as the light began to fade. Nothing restores one’s faith in humanity like a trout worth bragging about. I can assure you Deeds took full advantage, recounting his triumph at exhausting length on the drive home.
Never again have I tolerated any talk of politics on a stream. I imagine Jimmy Carter instituted a similar ban. If his guide had asked, “How did it go with the Shah of Iran?,” he’d plant his next cast in the bushes. Carter was an expert at casting, in fact, and took a few lessons from George Harvey of Penn State, who taught the first-ever fly fishing course at a university. He lost his favorite rod, a specially crafted H.L. Leonard bamboo, when a thief pilfered it on its way from Washington to Plains, Georgia.
Herbert Hoover put a hundred miles between himself and the White House as soon as he was elected, paying for 164 acres of land and the materials to build a rustic retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He settled on a site near the headwaters of the Rapidan River in Virginia, known for its native brookies. Hoover often ditched an Oval Office meeting if he heard there was a good hatch on the Rapidan.
He made creative use of the Marines, putting them to work as his construction crew and writing it off as a “military exercise.” Camp Hoover grew to include a lodge, cabins, mess halls, hiking trails, concrete-lined trout pools, and a miniature golf course. Later, he added a school for the kids living with pioneer families in the deep woods.
The river was too low to fish by early summer, but that didn’t stop Hoover from entertaining celebrities like Thomas Edison, Charles Lindbergh, and Winston Churchill. He loved having a hideout far from D.C. and the demands of his job. As a youth, he’d lived with his wife in remote mining camps for over 10 years, working as an engineer. His need for a space to reflect first developed there.
“Fishing seems to be the sole avenue left to Presidents,” wrote Hoover, “through which they may escape to their own thoughts and may live in their own imaginings and find relief from the pneumatic hammering of personal contacts.” The camp is located in Shenandoah National Park and is open to the public, with three of the original cabins still standing.
Reading about Hoover’s retreat almost made me want to run for office. How fine it would be to have my own little camp in the High Sierra with a bunch of Marines to drive off any trespassers and keep the best holes safe for me. I lack the excuse of too much pneumatic hammering in my life, only a desire for the peaceful solitude a stream like the Rapidan can bring. I have no trouble picturing myself trekking through the woods and casting to a rising native brookie.
In reality, though, I’ll spend my fishing trips camping or staying at the sort of budget motels that crop up like dandelions near rivers and lakes in the mountains, habitable places severely lacking in any luxury and often featuring one or more defect such as a bathroom door that won’t close properly or a lumpy mattress that makes sleep all but impossible. But that’s a small price to pay for having a trout stream in your backyard.
