Exotic Fly Rod Fishing Adventures: Memoirs of an Avid Fly Fisherman

By Mark Del Frate

Follow the author on fly fishing journeys in exotic locations around the world. Hopefully, you are inspired to seek out your own adventures and create memories.

This memoir recaps some of the author’s most extreme fishing adventures while sharing lessons learned along the way. A lighthearted look at fly fishing through the eyes of an avid angler accompanied by color photos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Feb 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662933554

Book preview

Chapter 1.

In the Beginning

When I was young, my dad used to take me trout fishing with him for day trips in Northern New Mexico. He was a die-hard bait fisherman. I found that quite boring and used to roam the nearest lake shore or stream bank looking for frogs, minnows, crawdads, and whatever else I could discover.

Fishing with my dad

One time, when I was five or six years old, as my dad sat in his chair at a lake bait fishing, I asked him if I could wander down the lake shore to look for frogs, and he told me, Go ahead, but stay where I can see you. There was an old man sitting in a chair also bait fishing about fifty yards away, so I decided to go exploring in that direction. I didn’t find much, but when I neared the old man, I spotted a small rainbow trout just a few feet offshore. At that moment, I told myself that I was going to catch that fish, even though I didn’t have a fishing pole or net.

I went searching for a long stick that could reach out to where the trout was lying motionless near the rocky lake bottom. I quietly snuck up on the fish and slowly poked the stick into the water in the direction of the trout. All of a sudden, I could feel the trout thrashing against the stick as if it was caught on a fishing rod. I swung the stick out of the water and the trout miraculously came flopping out of the water and onto the shore. Somehow, I had poked the stick through a loop of monofilament line that had previously broken off and the trout still had the hook in its mouth. I dived on the fish and came running back to my dad to proudly show him what I had "caught."

Knowing that I didn’t have a fishing pole, he said, What do you mean you caught it? That old man gave it to you, right?

I insisted, No, Dad, I caught it with a stick! My dad was determined to catch me in a lie and teach me a lesson, so he said, Let’s go talk to that old man. He must have seen what happened.

I readily agreed.

When we got to the old codger, my dad said to him, My son said that he caught this trout all by himself. Is that true?

The old man stood up and said, "I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes! Mister . . . he did catch that trout!"

My dad walked back with me in astonishment, stunned that he wasn’t able to catch me in a lie.

That incident was the dawn of my quest to fish with artificial flies and lures. My dad gave me my own fishing rod, and I started using artificial lures on future fishing trips with him. Originally, he caught more fish than me, but I stuck with my artificial-lures-only method. Soon I was outfishing him, and he started becoming more interested in using non-bait techniques. As soon as I could save up enough money, I bought my first fly-rod outfit and a fly-tying kit.

When I got a good job, I tried to learn as much as possible about fly-fishing for trout by booking guided trips on the San Juan River, Colorado River, Green River, Bristol Bay Alaska, and private trout lakes in Eastern Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Northern California, and British Columbia in Canada. Since, then, I have caught numerous species of trout from the tip of Alaska to the tip of Argentina. I have also landed many other exotic species on the fly: salmon, char, tiger muskie, bonefish, tarpon, peacock bass, golden dorado, payara, and tiger fish, among others . . . almost exclusively on a catch-and-release basis. The following are some of my favorite fly-fishing experiences.

Early photos from my fishing career

Chapter 2.

Trout Don’t Live in Ugly Places

Before the advent of the internet, I used to research faraway exotic locations gleaned from magazines and other print material. When I would receive brochures in the mail, I would walk across the street to my neighbor Dick’s house and show him these far-flung destinations. We went on many fishing adventures together, and his famous saying was, I couldn’t possibly leave before first thing in the morning. Regretfully, he was one of a handful of friends that fatally fell victim to COVID. This chapter is dedicated to him.

Early in my fly-fishing career, I used to organize trout-fishing group trips with my fishing buddies where I would work out all of the travel, lodging, and angling details in advance. Some of these noteworthy highlights include the following anecdotes.

* * *

I arranged a float tube fishing trip to some private trout lakes at a huge ranch in Southern British Columbia. We brought along battery-powered radio headsets so we could communicate while fishing scattered out in the large lake. My friends Robb, Dick, and Marc were with me on that trip.

Dick was older than the rest of us, so we called him Uncle Dick. He would often doze off in his float tube, and when I would see him do this, I would press the Talk button on my communication device when I would hook a feisty Kamloops rainbow so that the screaming drag on the reel would be broadcast to his headset. Instinctively, he would pop awake and raise his rod tip, thinking that he had a fish. He would doze off again, and then I would hook another fish, and then I’d push the Talk button again, and zzzzzzz would be broadcast again. Finally, he caught on and looked around to see me laughing at his expense.

Radio headset float tube fishing in British Columbia

Robb radio headset fishing

On that same trip, Robb, Dick, and I were fishing a part of this same lake where the three of us were spread out around a rocky point in the lake. These old radio headsets would work great across the water, but wouldn’t work that well when you tried to broadcast over a land obstruction. From my float tube, I was watching a mother moose giving her baby swimming lessons along the shore. Soon they got out of the water and started to walk across the point of land that ended at another cove in the lake around the corner where Dick was fishing.

I radioed Robb, who was at the point between Dick and myself, and told him that the moose were heading toward Dick. Robb could hear both Dick and myself, but Dick and I could not hear each other because of the land mass obstruction between us. So Robb says, "Uncle Dick should be