To Fish or to Fight

By Steve Shoulders

For thirteen years, Sloan Davis had lived the good life in the jungles of Venezuela running a peacock bass fishing camp. His business provided enough money to buy his daily rum, and little else.

Sloan's easy life changes one fateful day when crooked National Guard officials show up demanding money on a regular basis, just for the privilege of staying in business.

Sloan does not take kindly to extortion, of course, and this is the hilarious, action-packed story about how he and his crazy friends risk everything to hang on to their business and avoid deportation at the same time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Shoulders
• Release date: Jun 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452463957

Steve Shoulders

Having owned and operated fishing camps in Mexico, Cuba, and Venezuela over the past four decades, Steve has become famous for his storytelling abilities, which are usually humorous. Steve enjoys fishing with friends and family from his peacock bass fishing camp in Venezuela, where he currently lives with his wife and four children.

Book preview

Foreword

I was first introduced to Steve El Ombro Shoulders by my good friend and angling partner Charles Hammontree way back in 2007. He invited me to Lake Guri and the fishing lodge of Headwaters Fishing Club to sample the wonderful Peacock Bass and Payara fishing it had to offer.

The first words Steve said to me as I climbed up the path to the camp were Welcome to HFC, even though you are a Brit! Now that’s my sort of guy and we have stayed best friends ever since! I come and see him at least three times a year and the only thing that changes is the amount of wrinkles on his face. He still complains, the same each time I see him, about his knees, his wife, his dogs, his bad choice in friends.

How would I describe El Ombro to a perfect stranger? Well, firstly Santa Claus comes to mind, but I suppose no one has ever met a Santa who drinks so much whisky and rum, smokes too much and has a voice like someone walking on a gravel path!

However, that apart, he is probably the same shape as Santa, has the same head and facial adornments of white hair and a beard and is one of the kindest men I have ever had the pleasure to meet. If he owns it, he will share anything with you, even his best rum!!

Steve will do anything if you need help, even lend you his wife! (Mind you, if you asked him, he’d say that he would give her away freely, never mind lend you). I’ve seen him let children wrap him round their little fingers and when he’s around a pretty woman, ignore him as he’ll swoon and talk gibberish and that’s even without the dreaded drink.

This gentle giant always has a twinkle in his baby blue eyes and will give time to anyone. My Dad was so like him in many ways, except way better looking!

Steve El Ombro must be the wittiest man I have ever spoken to and if you ever think you can out-do him in that department, you’re in for a short drive. His repartee is astonishingly quick, even for an old guy! He can pull your chain till you’re all crying with laughter, but woe behold the man that messes with him. He is a great friend who I would hate to have as my enemy. Yup, I think I’d like El Ombro on my side when the war breaks out!

I started to read all of Steve’s fishing stories he had written over the years. He managed to put them all together for his faithful followers to read and, between the installments of ‘The Fisherman’ and ‘Jimmy Thudpucker’, as a Brit, I think I now know how to speak American and act American in Venezuela. If I wasn’t laughing I would be rooted to my chair. This man needs to write a full-on, 350-page thriller and I’d love to be the action hero. He makes them sound so cool. You know the sort, good-looking, tall, muscular . . . gets laid by all the ladies etc., guns blazing and all that. Maybe less of getting shot though, but definitely count me in, Steve. The job’s mine.

Steve makes the best camp host I have ever had on a fishing trip. He will keep you enthralled about his past life and his future dreams for hours, if you let him get away with it. In Central and South America, if it’s there, he’s seen it, if it moves, he’s done it, if it had a bar, he’s been thrown out of it.

He accuses me of using his lodge like my second home. Well, I just love it there. I am made to feel like family and for that, El Ombro, Mi casa es tu casa, siempre.

Steve, put pen to paper a bit more. I am having withdrawal symptoms for my next installment.

—Steve Townson, The Fish Finder

Steve Townson, The Fish Finder (and one of the few survivors of the Farewell Night 5-lb. Pork Chop served at Steve’s lodge)! [e-mail]

Chapter 1

Hangovers that Kill

Some people might say that I lead an ideal life, what with me living in Venezuela and making my living fishing for peacock bass. Right now my major decision in life is whether to vomit all over myself and my hammock or try for the railing of the veranda. Maybe an anaconda will come and eat me before I make my choice. I know I would feel better.

Senor Gringo, your coffee is ready, yells Ana Maria at a volume that has birds taking to wing seven miles upriver. For thirteen years Ana Maria has worked for me and she has yet to call me anything other thanGringo. If they ever have a Ms. International Bitch competition, she should win hands down. She is fifty years old, widowed, can’t cook worth a damn, cleans house only when it becomes hazardous for her to move from the refrigerator to the television set and the last time she ironed a shirt for me was the day she interviewed for the job. One thing that can be said for Ana Maria is she is an equal opportunity employee. She hates everyone and everything.

Swinging my legs out of the hammock, my head feels like it has been placed under the wheels of a dump truck and the contents of the truck deposited in my mouth. I don’t remember the Gran Reserve rum having this particular flavor last night.

People are always commenting on the majestic beauty of equatorial sunrises with the birds singing and the fragrance of the tropical flowers hanging in the air. After the first few thousand sunrises, the only thing that sucks worse is Ana Maria’s pancakes.

God, I’ve must have put my sunglasses here somewhere, I mumble. Ana Maria, where in the hell are my shades, I ask, while not really expecting an answer. Unfortunately, this time I get one. She speaks about my ancestry, condemns my social graces and finishes by telling me my fly is open, but not to worry because dead snakes don’t hunt. Three hundred machine gunned words and not a fucking one about the location of my sunglasses.

Gracias, Ana Maria, you’re too kind to me.

Oh no, I just remembered I have ten eager fishermen awaiting me at my fishing camp next door. I know I met, talked and drank with them yesterday, but for the life of me I can’t seem to recall one name. I need to start using nametags like they do on cruise ships.

A quick shower, a half a tube of toothpaste, a quart of eye drops, four aspirins and I am prepared to meet the day. Wrong! Nothing learned in your early education can prepare you for handling the egos of the people that come on these exotic trips. First, they are normally high level executives or successful businessmen used to having their way in things. Second, because they are financially independent, they believe they can take allowances with people without retribution.

Since I have a give-a-shit factor of a minus 470, I get along fine with them all.

Entering the camp compound, I never cease to be amazed by the fact that it is still standing. Thirteen years ago, my employees and I built this camp out of trees and morichi palm fronds found nearby. The camp I saw when I first arrived was uninhabitable. None of us knew exactly how to build one of these structures, but since I had no extra money to spend bringing in an expert, we winged it.

The camp consists of a main dining and bar area 100-feet long, 30-feet wide and 15-feet high. On each side of this building there are three private churuatas that sleep two, with a private bathroom in each. I got tired of the fishermen waking during the night and urinating all over my flowerbeds. All structures have walls made out of what we found close by, lots of rocks.

The general opinion expressed by my clients is that it will never be featured on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens, but it has atmosphere, whatever in the hell that means. Probably that it is better than sleeping on the ground.

Six of my ten clients are already slurping hot coffee and planning their days fishing strategy. Experience has taught me not to jump right in their conversation until I have a chance to check out their predawn attitudes. A surly tourist can be dangerous before sunrise.

As I try bravely to pour myself a cup of coffee without shaking so bad I spill half of it, a tall, lanky, redheaded man gets up and ambles over. I seem to remember him trying to suck the bottom out of a gin bottle last night. I think his name is something that starts with the letter M.

Hey, Sloan, Carl Thomas here from Tulsa.

I have got to remember the nametags.

Morning, Carl. Did you sleep alright last night? I asked, knowing by the look in his eyes that two hours might have been the most he could have had.

Shore did. My friend, Jerry Don and I are ready as rain to go get us some of them big fish. What type of baits did you say to use when we was talking last night?

Hell, I don’t remember meeting him, much less talking, but I told him, Throw anything in your tackle box and as long as it lands in the water, you have a good chance. Never let it be said I give bad advice.

Trying to extricate myself from the conversation, I moved off slowly toward the kitchen. Luck is something other people have, because before I could get to the kitchen door I hear, Sloan Davis, you sorry son of a bitch, what you been doing since we were here last. I know that voice from somewhere, but my recall abilities only extend to the past five minutes.

The last thing I needed was what I found standing in front of me when I turned around. Cecil Big C Davenport is the one person I would avoid at all cost, anytime, anywhere. Cecil, or The Big Cocksucker as I like to think of him, owns a chain of fast food restaurants all over the Southeastern states. He likes to think of himself as the greatest thing to happen to women since the AAA battery, but at 5-feet 4-inches, 230 pounds, he reminds me of the Pillsbury Doughboy with sunburn. Cecil has been a customer of mine for seven long excruciating years. I can’t stand Cecil because he is one of those small men who constantly have a cigar burning in his mouth the size of a cruise missile. Cecil likes to get right up close to have a