I harbored reservations about flyfishing guides until I became one. Usually, these feelings of uncertainty swam to the surface as I stood waist-deep in a Montana river, casting fruitlessly above a riffle that remained—to my 23-year-old eyes—fishless. The dip and splash of oars would direct my head upstream, and there the guide would appear, framed between a corridor of green leaves and reflected cottonwoods. Her arrival inspired a mixture of resentment and awe—resentment because she was about to spoil my fishless riffle, and awe when she promptly caught good fish out of it.
Part of me was envious, but an even bigger part was clueless. David James Duncan writes: “Ignorance is one of the most crucial pieces of equipment any fly fisher will ever own.” I wasn’t lacking in ignorance. My earliest experiments with rod and reel left me looking at the river like it was a
