A Fishing Guide's Origin Story

My guiding career was launched with lies. Or—at the very least—unwarranted exaggeration. I was working as a cashier at the time, at the Grant Village Marina in Yellowstone National Park.

The marina was operated by the now-defunct Yellowstone Park Company, which hired college students and retirees from all over the United States to serve the summer tourists. At Grant Village, the company’s offerings included boat rentals and guided fishing trips. There were three guides in residence: Dave, Tom, and another guy who shall remain nameless.

As I remember it, the job application featured a pages-long list of skills. For each skill, candidates were required to rate their own level of expertise. I’d filled it out with as much confidence as my eighteen-year-old self could muster—and was rewarded with a position behind a cash register. Dave and Tom were returnees from the previous summer, so their qualifications were beyond reproach. But the third guide endured a difficult first week.

For one thing, he appeared to have trouble handling a boat—especially near docks and pilings. He also lacked a rudimentary knowledge of knots and tackle. But what provoked the most keenly felt suffering was a tendency to sunburn. That, and a predisposition to seasickness.

He was leaning against the counter one morning, his cheeks and forehead visibly peeling, when I asked how he was enjoying the job.

“I made a mistake,” he admitted. “I thought working as a fishing guide would be really cool.”

Because I thought the exact same thing myself—and could clearly recall the numerous questions about prior experience on the job application—this statement puzzled me.

“You mean you’ve never been a guide before?”

He shrugged and then—although I wouldn’t have thought it possible—further reddened. “You know that list of skills?” he asked, anticipating my next question.

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I nodded.

“Well, I gave myself the highest rating on all of them.”

By the end of the shift, Dave and Tom had concocted a plan to present to our supervisor. They didn’t call out our coworker on his deliberate campaign of misinformation. Rather, they argued that the marina would run more efficiently—and avert a potential health crisis—if he and I traded places.

In those days, Yellowstone’s population of native cutthroat trout had not yet been decimated by invasive lake trout. In June, spawning cutthroats filled the tributaries in such numbers that grizzly bears could grab them with their paws. Later in the summer, an excursion to Eagle Bay or the Flat Mountain Arm could feel like a visit to Eden: trout with golden flanks and crimson cheeks, cruising the weed beds, everywhere you looked.

Trout were so abundant that park managers allowed a bag limit of two fish, no larger than 13 inches in length, per person, per day. With this bounty in mind, the marina staff kept a roll of aluminum foil and a toaster oven in the storage cabinet and a stick of butter in the beverage cooler. On the days when customers were slow to arrive, we held a sort of guide rodeo, a timed competition of fish-catching ability. The clock began the instant your boat left the dock—it stopped when you returned with a legal cutthroat. The winner celebrated by wrapping the trout in foil and baking it in the oven.

I was in heaven. The change in position—from inside the rental shop to outside—had changed my life. Every day brought new joys: eagles and elk, ospreys and otters.

One afternoon, my guests included a handsome family of three: mother, father, and a long-limbed daughter about my own age.

All of them were good anglers, but the daughter was particularly enthusiastic. While on my way to the cleaning station to dress their catch, I watched her strike up a conversation with Dave and Tom, who were relaxing on the dock after washing the rental boats.

Both of them were friendly and good-hearted, with a knack for the sort of banter that can keep people entertained between hook-ups. And both were showing unmistakable interest in what the daughter had to say.

I put down my bucket and joined the discussion.

“So,” I heard her ask, “what do you have to do, exactly, to become a guide?

Dave rubbed his chin and smiled. Then he launched into a long description of the practical knowledge and physical duties required for the job.

“But, after all that training,” he added, “every Yellowstone guide has to do one more thing.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Bite the head off a trout.”

She looked at Dave in disbelief, then turned her gaze on me. “For real?”

To my discredit, I nodded in agreement. Dave drove a Ford Pinto wagon with the head of a trout mounted on the radio antenna. So trout heads in general had recently achieved a sort of talismanic quality in my mind.

“Sure,” Dave said. “We’ve all done it.”

And then, before any of us could stop her, she reached into the bucket and grabbed a fish with one hand. I was standing so close that the crunch of teeth through bone seemed amplified somehow. The afternoon sun, which already felt warm and bright, glowed brilliantly.

With an admirable nonchalance, she turned and spit the head into the lake, where we all watched it sink in the clear water, trailing a diffusing cloud of blood.

I wish I could say that this would-be guide joined our crew the very next season. When summer ended, however, the federal government terminated its contract with the Yellowstone Park Company and closed the marina for good. The following year, Dave joined the National Park Service maintenance crew at Lake Village, about 20 miles distant, while Tom and I hired on as woodcutters in Mammoth Hot Springs, near the park’s northern boundary. Neither Tom nor Dave ever went back to guiding; Dave would eventually become a substance-abuse counselor, Tom a physician.

Sadly, I do not remember the daughter’s name, though I would love to know what she’s doing right now. In one fell swoop, she not only shamed and impressed me, but also demonstrated that being a guide is not essentially a matter of expertise.

I didn’t recognize it then, of course. That realization would require many more years of false starts and missteps. Because I’m naturally shy, it was always easier to hold a bit of myself back, to operate at less than all-in. But guiding is nothing if not an exercise in hospitality—the art of meeting people where they are, then accompanying them to a place they haven’t yet imagined. And to truly embrace this job, you must sometimes be willing to bite off more than you can chew.

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Peter W. Fong has been the head guide at Mongolia River Outfitters since 2006. His stories and photographs have appeared in Destinations, The Flyfish Journal, Gray’s Sporting Journal, The New York Times, Strung, and many other publications. His new book Rowing to Baikal (Latah Books, 2023) is the story of a 1,000-mile expedition from the headwaters of Mongolia’s Selenge River to Russia’s Lake Baikal.