by Jeremy Devries

Created on: April 04, 2009

From Behind the Oars is the viewpoint from which I spent the last 15 years of my life. This was a position of great enjoyment followed by incredible disappointment, a position of pride as well as embarrassment and a place of teaching and learning all at the same time. Sometimes this all may have happened within half an hour. During that 15 year span I made lifelong friendships as well as several enemies and the environment was always changing. It was these constant changes that kept me coming back for more; a new friend, a tough fish, a big fish, a gorgeous spring day or the leaves falling into autumn. One thing remained the same from behind the oars; none of my clients knew a damn thing.

Now that may sound downright rude, but it still doesn't change the fact that none of them had a clue what is going on minute to minute during the day. As a river guide for trout on Montana waters there were some things that I just couldn't say. "You're the worst fisherman I've ever seen. I've seen 80 year old women in the Thanksgiving Buffet move faster than you. There is absolutely NO way in hell you will ever catch a fish without me."

Oops, did I just say all of those things out loud. In fact, wait a minute,.. I think I just wrote them down on a piece of paper and I'm hoping to have it published. I guess the ultimate goal is that someone else would actually like to read it. At the risk of all my past clients feelings, I am going to blow the lid off this thing!

In 15 years of guiding I have seen some amazing things. Many people have certainly inquired about all the HUGE fish I've seen caught. You know I'm talking about. The River Runs Through It scene where Brad Pitt swam through the water to land the rainbow of a lifetime. His fly rod was doubled over, water was rushing over his head and he triumphed with his untiring determination to never lose.

Fact of the matter is, I've probably landed over 36,000 trout for my clients. That is a conservative estimate of 20 trout/day X 120 days/year X 15 years. The number of truly spectacular trout I've landed for clients is relatively small. How small? Like 10. In fact, the other day I had a client land a 25 inch brown that weighed 6 pounds on a digital scale. Now the average client would have usually remarked, "Hey, that's a pretty good one!" I could have thrown up. "No sir, that is a trout of a lifetime!"

I expounded on my numbers of trout landed trying to put his brown in context. "The fish you just caught ranks number 5 of over 36,000

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