STORIES
Life on the Fly
Raised on a pair of world-class fishing rivers in Montana and Alaska, Camille Egdorf is equally proficient with a rifle, splitting maul, and outboard tiller. Give her a fly rod, and she really shines.
“Never stand around with your hands in your pockets.” To this day, I follow my Dad’s advice. Be useful. Always bring something to the table. If you do a thing, do it to the best of your ability. Keep moving. That last bit wasn’t advice so much as the spirit of adventure I inherited from him.
These days, I feed my spirit by globetrotting with a fly rod, my dream since childhood. This fall I’m casting for rainbows near my home in Montana and planning trips to Belize and Kamchatka. Whether I’m stalking peacock bass in Brazil or bonefish off some South Pacific atoll, every journey reminds me how lucky I was to be raised by parents who migrate between Montana’s Big Horn River and the Upper Nushagak River in western Alaska.
My family’s Alaska camp, 100 miles from the nearest road, is every wild child’s dream. I played in the dirt, bathed in a tin bucket, shoveled down handfuls of blueberries and, above all else, fished. I return every year of my life.
As soon as the pontoons of my Dad’s plane touch the river, relief washes over me. I feel refreshed. At home.
We’ve got 50 miles of river to ourselves. In late spring, as the king and chum salmon make the 200-mile journey up from the salt, resident grayling and monster rainbows keep us busy. By July, the river churns with spawning salmon and dolly varden. (Upper Nushagak River)
I was a wild-haired six-year-old when I got my first flyrod, a 9’ 6wt Winston. Up to then, I fed breakfast scraps to the half-tame trout and grayling that schooled in the eddies near the cook tent. Our camp fish. Dad rigged up a white streamer to look like a piece of pancake. With a bullwhip flick, I dropped my pancake “fly” on the water and hooked a 25-inch rainbow that almost pulled me into the river.
It takes several weeks to prepare camp—loading and unloading supplies from Dad’s plane, cleaning outhouses, laying up firewood, rebuilding footpaths with river gravel, erecting tent frames. Daunting work, but we grind through it. All the camp work is done for a purpose—to make the fishing season a success.
Dad taught me to split wood as soon as I was big enough to lift the maul. I love losing myself in the physicality and flow. There’s nothing like the sound of that heavy blade cleaving a round of wood.
In the Alaskan bush, it’s always good to have a little grease monkey in you. The outboards at camp—two-stroke, 35-horsepower Evinrude and Johnson jets for shallow-water use—are older than I am. My parents keep them around because they’re simple, reliable and easy to fix.
I was raised to believe I’m capable of anything. I’m an only child. The camp guides were like older brothers. I grew up believing I could do anything they did. Maybe that’s why I’m so competitive.
The fish spawns bring out the bears, so I never head off in a boat or on a trail without my gun. It’s a .454 Casull lever-action rifle with an open site. Light but it packs a good punch. Dad gave it to me when I started guiding at age 18.
It’s always hard closing camp in the fall. It’s not so much the physical work. In a day, we can dismantle the shelters, fog the outboards, beach the boats, break down the cook tent and batten down all appliances and other gear in the wooden buildings. What’s hard is the bittersweet feeling that another season on the Nushagak has come and gone. Leaving, I know, is a reality of my migratory life. So is coming back.
When she’s not wetting a line in some foreign river or ocean, Camille Egdorf calls Bozeman, Montana, home. She grew up migrating annually to her family’s fishing camp in western Alaska, a 1940s throwback consisting of framed tents around a repurposed cannery shack. No roads, no cell phones, no people other than a dozen or so anglers. Only moose, grizzlies and a gin-clear river teeming with grayling, dolly varden, rainbow trout and salmon.