I had plans to fish Piru Creek, in the mountains north of Ventura, with Yvon Chouinard, owner of Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company, as part of an on-stream interview for California Fly Fisher. But when I arrived at the creek for a preliminary visit, I found the once magnificent freestone stream — formerly as wide as a one-lane or two-lane road — reduced to a meager, sluggish dribble choked by invasive riparian growth. Designated a Wild and Scenic River, Piru Creek had fallen victim, like so many streams before it, to the manipulations of outside interests, in this case, the local water authority. It seemed irrational that the federal government could designate a watercourse as “wild and scenic,” then permit a local agency to restrict its natural flow.
I stood in the bulrush-choked creek at the old Blue Point Campground, grappling with the notion that this stream, which used to yield 30 to 40 fish per angler per day when my two adult sons were children, was now virtually unfishable. I wondered what a man like Yvon Chouinard, celebrated as much for his advocacy as a conservationist as for his innovative business model, would think of this. Many know Chouinard as a renowned mountaineer, as a philanthropist, and as the founder of one of the most forward-thinking companies in the world. But he is also a passionate fly fisher with a belief in simplicity and a fondness for the Japanese method of fly fishing called tenkara. And though he and I had to set aside our angling plans for Piru Creek, at least this time, we did spend a pleasant afternoon on the veranda at Patagonia’s headquarters discussing fly fishing, tenkara, and the simple life.
Yvon Chouinard was born in Maine of French Canadian parents and moved to California when he was six years old. He has been a Californian ever since, growing up in Burbank and later settling in Ventura, where Patagonia’s headquarters are today. His earliest memory of fishing was of his brother hooking a small pickerel and then handing him the rod to land the fish. The thrill of that first catch ignited in him such a passion for angling that as a young boy, he would secretly fish the ponds of the Toluca Lake golf course for bass and bluegills. He would often make his own bass plugs and poppers, displaying an early penchant for designing and fabricating, a trait that would propel him into the mountaineering gear business and, ultimately, the founding of Patagonia. When he was 16, Chouinard resurrected a 1940 Ford in auto shop and drove it to the Grand Tetons for one of his early mountain-climbing forays. He was sitting in a meadow by a stream, watching mountaineer Glen Exum fly fish. Glen was teaching his own son to f ish, but called Chouinard over to give it a try. He says he was instantly hooked and soon after acquired his own fly rod and reel. He has not stopped fly fishing since.
His fly rod has accompanied him on mountaineering expeditions all over the globe — to the Karakoram Range in Pakistan, the Himalayan Mountains in Nepal, and the Andes in Chile and Argentina. He has fished in Russia, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and even in places not typically associated with trout fishing, such as Uganda and Kenya, where the British imported brown trout (along with European football) to their colonies. Although he still pursues other rigorous interests, such as kayaking and surfing, Chouinard devotes more of his time to fly fishing with each passing year. From June through November, he’s usually “gone fishin’.”
Many years ago, after Chouinard had given a talk in Tokyo, he was presented with a package containing a long, segmented bamboo rod called tenkara. He didn’t know what it was or how to use it, so he stored it in his closet. He didn’t think about it much until years later, when he and an Italian friend, while on the Sesia River in northern Italy, saw a man in his eighties fishing with a 15-foot bamboo pole without a reel. While Chouinard and his friend, both accomplished fly fishers, were struggling, the elderly man was outfishing everyone on the water. On closer examination, they learned that the angler was using a line made of horsehair — 18 strands tapered down to 3. He was also using homemade flies tied on bent pins — an ancient, simple technique, but extraordinarily effective. It was then that Chouinard remembered the gift he had received in Japan.
The next season, he dusted off his tenkara rod and employed it on Wyoming’s Wind River. It proved to be remarkably successful. He caught 40 to 50 trout, each between 14 and 16 inches. Chouinard recounts the story with a smile, noting that catching a 16-incher on a tenkara rod is just as thrilling as it sounds.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that tenkara is limited to smallish fish. Chouinard knows of an older Italian man who landed a 15-pound trout on a on a similar kind of rod, and Chouinard himself has landed Atlantic salmon up to 8 pounds with a tenkara rod. How often do we tie into a fish of 8 pounds on California waters? Not often enough, but an angler doesn’t need to catch big fish to enjoy this style of fishing. California, according to Chouinard, has many streams ideal for tenkara, among them Mammoth Lake’s Hot Creek.
Patagonia sells tenkara rods, lines, and flies (as do other companies), and Chouinard cowrote, with Craig Matthews and Mauro Mazzo a book titled Simple Fly Fishing. While encompassing traditional fly fishing, it focuses on tenkara, its techniques, and its pleasures. The book is also notable in that it presents the philosophy of simplifying fly fishing.
Chouinard believes tenkara to be an extremely effective method for catching trout with a dry fly or nymph. With a tenkara rod, he usually fishes wet flies. His technique is to quarter a cast downstream and, as the line straightens, to impart subtle twitches as the fly ascends. The soft tip on the tenkara is ideal for this. Most people overdo the twitches, Chouinard says. You want to simulate an insect alternately pausing and struggling to escape its shuck on the ascent. It’s a simple, but deadly technique when done correctly. He believes the most important element in fly fishing is to impart motion to the fly. The second is the size of the fly. Form and color are less important.
Tenkara, besides being a very effective way to catch fish, is inexpensive and easy to master, compared with traditional fly-fishing equipment. Unlike traditional fly casting, tenkara casting is simple. Children become proficient in a about 10 minutes. Adults may take a little longer. Chouinard recounted a time on the Crow Indian Reservation when he was instructing a group of children how to fly fish with tenkara rods. He thought it ironic that the reservation children all season long watched guide boats drifting along the Big Horn, but could not participate in the angling due to the high cost of equipment and the steep learning curve. It occurred to him that tenkara might be their ticket. After some elementary instruction, he set up a small group in a shallow riffle downstream from a fly fisherman decked out in full regalia who was not having much luck. Chouinard’s final instruction to the children was to shout out when they had a fish on. After a couple of minutes, one of the children screamed with delight — then another joined the chorus, then another and another. After a while, the fisherman left the water, sat on the bank, and just watched, probably mystified, as the kids put on a show. Chouinard was standing next to the youngest child, a girl of about eight, who seemed to be having the time of her life, squealing with delight at her success. After a while, her grandmother took Chouinard’s place beside her while he assisted other children in the finer points of tenkara. He learned later that the eight-year-old’s parents were killed in a car crash the month before. Both were fly fishers. Perhaps the torched had been passed. Chouinard believes it is important to introduce children to fishing. At a minimum, it brings them out into the natural world, and as most of us would agree, there is something magical about water that contains fish — especially trout. Just as importantly, the future of our sport — as well as the preservation of the environment sustaining our fisheries — depends on children who will grow to become advocates.
Chouinard fishes with a tenkara rod about half the time that he’s on the water. There are many situations, however, that require the long cast of a traditional fly rod and reel — still waters, big rivers, ocean fishing, or when targeting large fish such as steelhead, salmon, or bonefish. Even then, Chouinard keeps it simple. In 2015, he limited his fly selection for the entire year to only one fly: the classic Pheasant Tail and Partridge. Whether using a tenkara rod or a traditional fly rod, he caught bonefish, salmon, steelhead, and of course trout on that one type of fly all year long. In the winter and early spring, he caught bonefish in the Bahamas and Cuba. In the spring and summer, he caught trout in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. In late summer, he caught salmon in Labrador and Iceland. In autumn, he caught steelhead in British Columbia. He tied the fly in various sizes, of course, and as a nymph, wet fly, and dry fly. And when tied on a dry-fly hook, tethered with a riffle hitch, it proved outstanding for steelhead and salmon, especially in slow water. (See the sidebar for Chouinard’s recipe for the traditional Pheasant Tail and Partridge fly.)
“A hotshot angler,” wrote Sheridan Anderson in The Curtis Creek Manifesto, “can probably do pretty well anywhere in the country armed with nothing more than a #16 gold-ribbed hare’s ear.” Chouinard has given substance to this proposition, demonstrating that an angler can do well anywhere in the world with the Pheasant Tail and Partridge.
Chouinard points out that he isn’t the first to limit his fly selection to one style of fly for an entire season. Others have done it before, and some use only one fly, period. For example, Art Flick used the Grey Fox Variant almost exclusively, while Jim Teeny has used the Teeny Nymph for decades. Chouinard chose the Pheasant Tail and Partridge because in his experience, when fishing a brace of different wet flies, the fish tend to favor the Pheasant Tail. Will he continue fishing this same fly exclusively? Probably not, he says. Doing so has already served its purpose by teaching him to be a better angler. Echoing this sentiment is stillwater expert Denny Rickards, who has opined that too many fly fishers seem to be engaged in equipment worship, while they should instead be focused on improving their skills.
Henry David Thoreau’s own rule was to carry as little as possible. In Walden, he urged the world to “simplify, simplify.” Not surprisingly, this is Chouinard’s approach to fishing gear. Carrying a tenkara outfit and one fly pattern is about as simple as it gets. In Simple Fly Fishing, he points out that British Columbia fly fisher and journalist Rob Brown had it right when he said, looking over a steelheader’s bewildering array of fly boxes: “When did the Green Butt stop working for you?”
Chouinard’s minimalist philosophy seems to reach beyond fishing and into his life. Although his company, Patagonia, is known for innovative products and high technology, he admits with a playful smile that he is in fact a Luddite. He doesn’t use a computer or cell phone. His initial communications with me were via handwritten letters and postcards, which brought to mind the words of Lin Yutang: “The wisdom of life consists in elimination of the nonessentials.”
Besides being a passionate fly fisher, Chouinard is a serious and dedicated environmentalist — an aspect to his life well covered in his memoir, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. (An updated version is to be released in late 2016.) In the book, he suggests not just the need to be concerned about the environment, but what can be done to save it.
Patagonia, for example, donates 1 percent of its revenue to environmental organizations. In fact, Chouinard and Craig Matthews created One Percent for the Planet, a designation for companies that have committed to donating 1 percent of their top line to grassroots environmental causes. Fourteen hundred other companies have come on board, although only 13 of the roughly thirty-three thousand fishing-product manufacturers and distributors have committed so far. In addition to his company’s largesse, Chouinard and his wife, Malinda, separately provide hundreds of grants to grassroots organizations dedicated to improving the condition of the planet.
His personal philosophy takes precedence over conventional business thinking. For example, he promotes the idea of keeping a product, such as a fishing vest, as long as possible, repairing it, rather than discarding it, until it cannot be repaired further, then recycling it. Although this line of thinking does not promote product turnover and additional sales, even for Patagonia, it does place a value on quality, and this inspires customer loyalty. Most importantly, to Chouinard, it is best for the planet. His company will actively search out those contractors and suppliers that produce sustainable, environmentally sensitive products made by well-treated workers. Chouinard emphasizes that the company puts quality first, before low cost and ontime delivery. So far, it’s working.
If fly fishing is to endure and thrive for our benefit and the benefit of future generations, it is clear that Yvon Chouinard offers a compelling way to proceed. Just as California Fly Fisher promotes the involvement of young people in the sport, Chouinard makes it a point to fish with young people whenever he can. As it was for him, it is the exposure to fishing that may ignite a life-long passion. We should all try to pass it along. These future fly fishers will be the advocates for the sport and for a better environment for their children and their children’s children. On top of that, we need to consider active involvement in issues affecting our waters and fisheries. We may not have the resources of Yvon Chouinard, but we can vote, write letters, and participate in other ways to protect our local lakes and streams. Chouinard asked me a very poignant question: “How many streams do you know that fish better now than they did twenty years ago?” Sadly, I had to answer, “None.” It doesn’t have to be this way. Perhaps someday even Piru Creek may return to its former glory.
Chouinard’s “One Fly”: The Pheasant Tail and Partridge
Hook: Tiemco 3769 (1X short, 2X heavy) or Dai-Riki 075
Thread: Dark brown
Rib: Copper wire
Tail: Pheasant tail end fibers
Abdomen: Pheasant tail fibers
Hackle: Hungarian partridge
Thorax: Hareline Peacock Ice Dub
Chouinard ties his own f lies. Here are some of his tying tips for the Pheasant Tail and Partridge:
- Counterwind the copper wire.
- Tie in the thorax last, pressing it against the partridge hackle before winding it. (The thorax is sparkly, to resemble an air bubble.)
- Wrap the partridge one and a half to two turns.
- A dark bead head can be used for a faster sink rate.
- You can use a dry-fly hook for surface action.
- When tied on a dry-fly hook, the fly can be skated with an upturned eye using a Riffle Hitch.
- Keep it simple.
— Jerome Buckmelter
