Russell, Remembered

Stories from Friends, Admirers, and Fishing Buddies

Jim Adams

Russ — f isherman, writer, artist, fantastic chef, friend for 60-odd years, lived his life fully. But he had a trait I could not comprehend at first. Whether he was fishing, writing, or painting, he did not tolerate other intrusions. He partitioned his passions with a purity not often seen among ordinary folks. Drinks, food, drugs, and other earthly pleasures could take place only after he finished his fishing, writing, or painting.

Russ was also a consummate trader. He traded his paintings for cars, doctor’s work, or whatever. Money, which he seldom had early on, passed through his hands like water when he had it. He would make tremendous one-sided trades for items such as a Sunset Nylon-Dacron shooting head. When he had money, he would buy books by the Banker’s Box rather than one or two titles. He always felt that money was to be spent as soon as possible. When I visited Russ with Art Dollosso at Russ’s care facility during his final month, he never regretted anything he had done. His mind was as sharp as ever, but his body was failing him. He would have lived his life the same way if he did it all over again.

When I offered Russ’s book The Angler’s Coast in my 1983 catalog, I wrote: “My vote for the outstanding fishing book of the decade — not for the technological wisdom [although Russ has plenty of that], but for the sheer joy of fishing, of describing the ‘why’ in the fisherman’s lexicon.”

Russ, we all hope that your inordinate love of life in all its facets will continue in your new world.

Jim Adams is proprietor of Adams Angling, which specializes in reselling collectible and high-quality fly-fishing tackle and books.

Val Atkinson

I first met Russell Chatham in a narrow brick alley in Livingston, Montana. I was on a fishing trip with my girlfriend, Susan Rockrise, and we were taking a shortcut to the Murray Hotel to have lunch. We had just come from visiting his art gallery on Main Street and just by coincidence bumped into him carrying an armful of paintbrushes over to his studio. He was dressed in his proverbial bib overhauls, and although we’d never met, I recognized him instantly with his silver hair, crooked nose, and big smile.

He invited us in to see his studio, and we ended up spending the afternoon together talking, mostly about art and of course fishing. I remember thinking this was the way an art studio was meant to look — lofty ceilings with skylights and large north-facing windows. Big, thick wooden planks and beams.

He had paintings in various stages of completion spread out in all manner against the brick walls. There were more paintbrushes of different sizes than I’d ever seen, and the whole place reeked of turpentine. There was opera music playing in the background and piles of art books and fishing magazines everywhere. One thing that caught my eye was a absolutely huge pile of old repurchased Fenwick fly rods. He’d been collecting them for years.

A man of many talents, Russell was the essence of a true Renaissance person. Everything he did he put his heart and soul into. I’ve been an admirer of his work since coming to California in the early ’70s. In the beginning, it was his writings in books and magazines about life in the sporting world that captured my imagination. He poured his emotions into words so the feelings seemed to jump right off the printed page. Later, I came to know his paintings and even later his lithographs. Although Russ’s grandfather was Gottardo Piazzoni, a famous artist from an earlier time (who has a complete room at the De Young Museum dedicated to his paintings), Russell had no formal training, and everything he did he learned on his own through trial and error.

I remember an art opening he had in the early days after he had just started to achieve success as a painter. It was held at a gallery on Sutter Street in San Francisco. It had been well advertised in the Chronicle, and so many people showed up — by the hundreds if not thousands. The police had to close off the street. It turned into a paparazzi event and a huge party. There were movie stars from Hollywood, including Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda, and it turned out he sold every painting on display that day. It was a really remarkable event.

I’ve often pondered about whether he was a better artist or writer and concluded he was just exceptional at everything he did, whether it was writing, painting, book publishing, print making, and of course fishing. He even owned a world-class restaurant in Montana and caught a world record striped bass under the Richmond Bridge.

Russell may have laid down pen and paintbrush to spend time with the great spirit, but his many accomplishments will continue to inspire forever.

I really miss him.

Val Atkinson’s photographs have appeared in hundreds of fly-fishing magazines and books.

Steve Bodio

Russell Chatham and I had a natural affinity. We were both half Swiss-Italians, sons of artists who did not entirely approve of what we did for a living, fly fishers, bird hunters, shotgun nuts, and eaters. We worked very hard at things we loved and had no time for anything else. In the ’80s, I often stayed at Russell’s house in Deep Creek — he would give me that house, a Suburban, a gas card, and credit at the various bars and restaurants in Livingston, so it was even cheaper than staying home in New Mexico. He published my memoir Querencia after it had been rejected by Nick Lyons, whose sales agent said Querencia sounded Puerto Rican. Luckily Jim Harrison had possession of the manuscript down in Mexico and sent it to Russell, suggesting he publish it with Clark City Press, which I thought was going to be just a vanity press for Russell’s paintings. But it was a serious press where Jim’s daughter was the literary editor, and they published it with a relatively high advance, more than I would have gotten from Nick, and a painting.

Our styles were similar enough that my girlfriend at the time, Elaine Duffy, always called us “Two Guineas plumbing” after watching our hapless attempts at repairing a minor pipe emergency at Deep Creek. We were rather better at cooking collaboratively after he did me the greatest favor of my life by introducing me to Libby Frishman, also a professional cook as well as a manager at Patagonia, and a paleoanthropologist. We spent hours cooking elaborate things from his game larder and his legendary cellar full of great French wines with moldy labels. Not that the meals had to be elaborate. We still call duck roasted for 15 minutes in a hot oven “Chatham style duck. ” Perhaps the greatest compliment I ever had as a cook was when an emotional Chatham, overcome with delight with a meal he, Guy de la Valdene, Libby, and I were whipping up while stumbling over each other’s feet in Deep Creek (it included spaghetti with sweetbreads and perhaps a grouse or two), said that he wanted to build a kitchen with four stations so all of us could cook together. (I was particularly pleased to be included ahead of Jim Harrison in this hierarchy, perhaps because I am Italian?)

Of course he was one of twenty people who came to our wedding in Bozeman where he wept and said “If I had a wedding ceremony as beautiful as yours” — it was a traditional Church of England ceremony — “I might have stayed married!” “No, you wouldn’t” said Libby, kissing him on the forehead. He loved women too much in general to stay married to one in particular.

We stayed in easy touch for the rest of our days even when we lived far apart. We saw each other in Santa Fe a couple of times where he kept a gallery for awhile, but he never made it down to Magdalena despite some vague plans for fishing Elephant Butte for stripers. Eventually Parkinson’s slowed down my traveling and we didn’t see each other for several years, but we always had email and phone calls.

Before he fell ill, he intended to open a gallery in Point Reyes Station next to the studio of our mutual friend, Tom Quinn, perhaps the greatest painter of animals in our generation. For us to have our two favorite artists in one town filled us with delight, but it was not to be.

Among Steve Bodio’s books is A Sportman’s Library, a guide to essential fishing and hunting literature. His latest work (and first novel) is Tiger Country.

Glenn Brackett

I lost a good friend, a guy with true grit and a great zest for life, but oh my god he left me with a lot of great memories dating back to 1961, the Smith River kings and a cast of colorful characters such as Jack Horner, Karl Mauser, Jim Adams, Bob Weddell, and Bill Schaadt. We both liked “horse trading.” It started with Winston glass rods in trade for two of his early paintings, one of which was his beloved Tomales Bay, the place where he started and ended life. It furthered developed into two Winston bamboo trout rods I made for him in trade for his helping with the video Winston Waters. He wrote the narrative for Charles Kuralt’s narration. He was also figured in the video. Unforgettable and certainly a highlight in my life. Other trades like these occurred with his lithographs for Winston and Sweetgrass rods, and rods in trade for his written words and paintings right up to the present. Good grief, I just realized that Russ always had a rod on order. Almost 50 years we’ve been horse trading. The latest rod is on the bench right now and nearing completion, a 6-1/2-foot #2 pent. Makes my heart skip a beat that it will never be delivered.

Glenn Brackett has been building bamboo fly rods for more than four decades and is founder of Sweetgrass Rods.

Yvon Chouinard

Russell did a deal with us at Patagonia for secondquality lithographs in trade for lifetime clothing. For as long as I’ve known him he only wore overalls — even for fishing — so we got the better side of that deal.

About twenty years ago Doug Tompkins and I invited Russ to come along on a backpacking trip to the very remote Rio Claro River in Tierra del Fuego. The river was rumored to snake through old-growth forest of beech and lengua trees and have sea-run browns and big brookies.

Now Russell and his cronies, though they are fishermen and bird hunters, are not known to ever carry a pack or sleep on the ground. So he goes into an outdoor shop in Bozeman and tells the clerk, “Chouinard and I are going on a weeklong backpacking trip to Patagonia and I need a pack.” So the guy sells him the largest-volume pack in the store.

On the way down to Argentina he stops off in Miami and hooks up with a couple of lady friends and figures he better test the pack. The rascal got the two naked girls to hang off the pack while he stalked around the room. He did fine on the trip.

Yvon Chouinard’s Simple Fly Fishing (coauthored with Craig Mathews and Mauro Mazzo) was recently released in a revised second edition. His latest book is Some Stories: Lessons from the Edge of Business and Sport.

Art Dollosso

As with any story, it’s best to start at the beginning, and the beginning of this story takes place at Doug Merrick’s Winston rod shop at 475 Third Street in San Francisco. Doug and his first wife, Angie, and my mother were classmates and through their relationship he and I spent some splendid times together.

We frequently f ished the southwest side of the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge in the comfort of my 12foot Klamath boat that was built by my Uncles Ray and Albie in San Rafael. We used a 10-horse Evinrude. Russ, Schaadt, and Frank Allen fished from 8-foot reconfigured wooden El Toro sailboat prams that they would row. When not in use, the prams were chained to a Caltrans stanchion not far from the bridge. Russ gave the Caltrans workers stripers for the favor.

Russ caught his world-record 36-pound 6-ounce striped bass on June 21, 1966, hooking it below the south side of the bridge at the third light out from the Marin shoreline. That particular light was the brightest on the south side and was where all hell would break loose, with stripers slashing schools of anchovies and the seagulls piling on, too.

The striper was mounted and took up residence at Merrick’s shop and later migrated to Livingston, Montana, with Russ when he moved there. For a decade, the striper graced the north wall at Chatham’s Livingston Bar and Grille.

Ten years ago Russ moved back to Marshall in Marin County, describing Montana summers as “three months of bad sledding.” He lived on a ranch outside of Marshall and opened a small studio in Inverness on Tomales Bay.

Last year his body began to betray him, and Russ took up residence at a convalescent home in Petaluma and later farther south in Belmont. Others and I were frequent visitors. We’d walk around the redwood grounds and have lively conversations. Russ was eternally optimistic and hoping to return home. He let me see a dinner menu that he had prepared for a fishing trip with Mario Batali, the chef. Escoffier would blush.

In October, Jim Adams, Larry Kenny, and I were there for a Saturday afternoon visit. Russ told us two tales that bear repeating.

Yvon Chouinard, the climber, fly fisherman, environmental activist, and Patagonia founder was an angling companion of Russ. Whenever the two planned a day trip or an excursion, Russ always packed tin foil, salt, pepper, spices, and utensils on his person. Apparently Yvon delighted in getting himself and others in his party “completely lost and then making his way back to civilization by his own instincts.”

In the second story, Russ was visiting the McGuanes, Tom and his then wife Margot Kidder, when the three lived outside of Livingston. Margot’s sister, who lived in Seattle, f lew in for a visit. While being driven by a friend to McGuane’s from the Bozeman airport, the vehicle struck a deer head-on and the sister went into semi shock, according to Russ, and remained so when she reached the house. Russ thought he could help the situation by telling the sister he would take care of the deer, and she felt relieved. Russ located the deer, quartered it, took it to his home in Deep Creek, and had venison for the winter. He went back to McGuane’s and told all that he had taken care of the deer, and Kidder’s sister’s response was, “What did the vet have to say?”

In late September, Russ mentioned to me that his mounted striper should be donated to the Anglers Lodge at Golden Gate Park in the care of the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club, of which Russ had been a member. The Chatham clan graciously agreed. I presented the fish mount to the GGACC board of directors at their November morning meeting and drove down to Belmont tell Russ.

He passed the following afternoon.

Art Dollosso is a fisherman, winemaker, former police chief, and author of Where Trout Sing.

Willy George

As an avid striper and steelhead fly fisherman, I had already read Russ Chatham’s books, Striped Bass on the Fly and The Angler’s Coast, but I had never actually met the man face to face. When he walked down the Bethel Island dock ramp toward my boat, I immediately recognized him, since I had seen him interviewed in the f ilm Rivers of a Lost Coast. A friend of mine had said that another friend of hers would like to join us that day for striper f ishing. I didn’t know it was going to be the Russell Chatham, himself!

Chatham brought his own rods that day: vintage fiberglass with the recognizable Fenwick Eagle on the label. He used his own flies, too, mostly black, and readily caught some nice stripers in the first few spots. As the day warmed up, so did the conversation and the range of topics. At one point, I asked him about the rod he was using. He just held it out for me to cast. I was midway through slipping some line out to distance when he shared that I was casting the same rod he had caught his world record striper on back in 1966. I recalled he had landed that fish somewhere in north San Francisco Bay, and so I asked him for some more details. He said he was anchored early that morning in his boat, which in reality was more like a pram, on the Marin side of the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, third bridge light out, to be exact, when he hooked his beast. It weighed 36 pounds 6 ounces and eclipsed fly-fishing legend Joe Brooks’s world record 29-pounder that had stood for 18 years. I cast his rod a few more times and remarked how it had a lot of backbone, which obviously was a factor in his selection. We laughed about how he was doing just fine that day on my boat with 50-year-old fly rods and reels, despite the presence of all the high-tech gear surrounding us. He knew I taught casting at the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club in San Francisco and recounted how he had learned how to cast at those very same ponds. He said that a crusty old guy had put a rod in his hand and told him to come back when he could cast 100 feet. Chatham confessed that took him 10 years.

We enjoyed a gourmet lunch, thanks to our mutual friend, an extraordinary chef, and as the slack tide began to slow the striper bite, I suggested we try something different. I pulled out my black-bass rod and a deer-hair swimming frog, tied Dahlberg Diver style. I guided the trolling motor toward some heavy cover with a combination of interwoven tules and downed timber. Chatham would later say that he would have never intentionally cast a fly into that thicket. I made a presentation using an “under-loop” cast taught to me by legendary Delta Bass-N-Fly guide Kevin Doran. This cast, which presents the bass bug deep into cover without hanging up on the reeds and wood, is tailor made for largemouth bass habitat. As luck would have it, on my first demo cast, a bass exploded up under the diving frog, and with a fast hook set I brought her to the boat. Even though I explained twice that the largemouth bass aren’t always that easy to fool, Russ was visibly excited at what he had just witnessed and wanted immediately to give it a try — with his rod, of course. Since he had brought only sinking lines and fast-sink shooting heads, I stripped off a bass line for him use on one of his 8-weight rods.

With just a little coaching, Russ was able to start slinging the fly into tight cover. He was having so much fun hunting for bass using his newly learned under-loop technique that he missed his first chance at a grab when a bass sucked in his frog and managed to spit it out before he could react. We all had a good laugh over that gaffe. Eventually his casting accuracy, retrieving cadence, and the bass’s appetite all came together at the same time, resulting in success. Russ sported an ear-to-ear grin that never completely went away. We continued to hunt for black bass all afternoon. When I mentioned that the tide had finally turned and that stripers were back on the agenda, Russ expressed his desire to keep targeting the largemouths. He said that he hadn’t had this much fun fly fishing in years — and I believed him. At the dock, Russ thanked me for a great day and for teaching him yet another way to catch a fish on a fly. He gave me a man hug and then extended his closed fist. He dropped his signature fly, a Black Phantom he had tied, into the palm of my hand. A perfect thank-you to end a memorable day with a special man.

Willy George is president of the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club.

Nelson Ishiyama

From the Golden Gate casting ponds to the Russian to the Smith, Russ was always a formidable presence wherever he was. He started fishing here in the glory days on the coast and ultimately returned here to paint. I feel very fortunate to have met him, listened to his stories, read his writings, and admired his paintings. Russ may have moved to Montana for a while, but to me he’ll always be one of us, a California fly fisher.

Nelson Ishiyama is owner of Henry’s Fork Lodge.

Hal Janssen

I first met Russell Chatham in 1963. I was fishing for stripers with Myron Gregory at the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge. Russ was there with Bill Schaadt, whom I had met on the Smith River while we were both fishing for Chinook salmon. It was early in the morning, and Russ was not very friendly because he did not like it when someone new found out about his fishing spots. I later got Russ’s phone number from Bill and called him, letting him know I would not reveal to anyone our great fishing spot for stripers at the bridge. This phone call melted the ice between the two of us, and we became friends. We discovered we had many common interests.

About a week later I was fishing the Russian River and went into Grant King’s shop in Guerneville. Bill and Russ were there. We talked together most of the afternoon about fishing, f ly tying, sign painting, and pin striping, and I showed them some of my work. Our paths crossed again later on the Gualala River that evening at the hotel bar during dinner. The rest is history.

Russ was a very accomplished artist. He was multitalented, yet he was an unpretentious, humble man with great wit and humor, an excellent writer. Russ always had a way with expressing his thoughts and emotions in his books and writings. An incredible artist — his paintings speak for themselves. Russ still had a lot of dreams left to accomplish. He wanted to republish his own books and publish a book with all of Bill Schaadt’s artwork, among other dreams. I miss him greatly.

Hal Janssen, author of Stillwater Fly-Fishing Secrets, has been inducted into the Northern California Council Fly Fishers International Hall of Fame, the California Outdoors Hall of Fame, and the hall of fame for professional pin stripers.

hal — RUSSELL CHATHAM AND HAL JANSSEN, 2013.

Larry Kenney

I’d like to say I knew Russ well for years, but I only got to know him personally since he moved back to Marin. He’d decamped to Montana a couple of years before I started fishing California’s North Coast, and our paths mostly crossed in recent years at social and fly-fishing events. But I knew of him well before we met from stories he published in Sports Illustrated, Field and Stream, Sports Afield, and Outdoor Life, and later from his books The Angler’s Coast (1976) and Striped Bass on the Fly (1977). Russ is justly and widely praised as a painter and lithographer, but it’s past time to acknowledge that his outdoor writing is up there with the best. Grounded in Northern California angling, it’s deft, confident, unpretentious, eloquent, unafraid of calling out foolishness, and occasionally and delightfully profane. To appreciate all those qualities in one short piece, check out “The Great Duck Misunderstanding,” anthologized in Dark Waters (1988). It’s classic Chatham, on the relative value of sex and correctly prepared wild duck.

For a lot of us a bunch of years ago, Russ’s stories embodied (“mythologized” is perhaps a better term) what it meant to be a hardcore Northern California steelhead and salmon fly fisher: part angling addict, part outlaw, and a poor bet for a long-term romantic relationship. If, lacking the skill or the time or the commitment, we couldn’t be Russ — who rarely paid heed to the little guy that stands on most of our shoulders admonishing us to consider the consequences — we could at least give it a try.

A month before he died, Art Dollosso, Jim Adams, and I visited Russ at the memory care facility where he was living and were shocked at how frail he was when he greeted us. But if his expectation of living independently again seemed fanciful, and his grasp on the present weakening, his long-term memory and his thoughts on fishing, politics, and the environment were still strong and convincing. The four of us spent a couple of hours revisiting the rivers of way back when and the friends with whom he and sometimes we had fished or traveled or partied. Though pared down to the quick, Russ was still Russ. Leaving that day, we had hopes that he’d recover enough not to need 24-hour care. So much for hopes.

Russ was born in the right place at the right time, and if his last few years were difficult, he had it good for a long time. I’ ll remember him not just as an important artist, but as a great guy to talk to, as a skilled writer who chronicled an important period in Western fly fishing, as a gourmand and restaurateur, a fine fly

fisher who held the record for fly-caught striped bass for almost a decade, a world traveler, a hopeless womanizer, and a survivor of the best that the libidinous and pharmaceutically enhanced final quarter of the twentieth century had to offer. We should all be so lucky.

Larry Kenney is a contributing editor to California Fly Fisher, a fiberglass rod builder, and ex-president of Scott Fly Rods.

Tom McGuane

Russ Chatham was a great fisherman and painter but he may have been better company than either. He had an entirely original view of the everyday world and his observations were always worth waiting for. He was the best natural cook of my experience: he could look into anybody’s refrigerator and make a great meal from whatever he found there. Like other brilliant people, he was a little crazy. Long ago when he was broke and needed a loan to keep his electricity from being turned off, I happily accommodated him but he spent the money sending flowers to old girlfriends and accepted it when the lights went out. He led a feast and famine life, rich one week and broke the next. Neither seemed to mean much to him. With his unconventional approach to everything, and his indifference to personal and financial risk, he managed to get a lot done. Much of it will endure: neither Russ or his work will be forgotten.

Among Tom McGuane’s many books is his collection of angling essays, The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing.

Steve Rajeff

I was very young when I met Russ in the late 1960s at the GGACC ponds and recall he was a superb distance caster using a shooting head and mono running line. He would hang at Horner’s Corner casting the big glass rods of the day with polar bear hair striper flies, no doubt testing something to make it right for his nighttime sessions on San Francisco Bay. After he left the City, I bumped into him as a tackle sales rep in Montana, at Yellowstone Angler in Livingston.

A central figure in the Lost Coast gang, he chased salmon, steelhead, and striped bass with Bill Schaadt, Bob Nauheim, Frank Bertaina, Tush, Gary, Walt, Doc, Hal, Dan, Ben, Mel Levin . . .I fished in the lineup on the Gualala with him. His paintings and writings touched my heart, and I’m glad I had met him.

Steve Rajeff, winner of numerous American and international fly-casting championships, is a longtime rod designer for G. Loomis.

Richard Anderson

With Russ’s death, we lost a hugely talented individual, someone who was both icon and iconoclast, whose works have had a profound effect on many of us who care about where, why, and how we fish. If you have not read Russ’s writing, do so. You’re in for a treat.