I’ve fished New Orleans once before, two days, post Katrina, maybe seven years ago. We stayed in the Roosevelt Hotel, home of the Sazerac Bar. The hotel had just reopened, but it was already a destination for wedding parties and conventioneers, and every time I’ve tried to get a room since it’s been full. The Roosevelt was what a good old hotel should be, rococo and redolent of a time when people traveled by train and came to New Orleans for business at the Port of New Orleans and with Huey P. Long and for the wildness, but perfectly restored and well-managed. We ate the best food I’ve ever eaten at Restaurant August, and didn’t feel bad about it because the chef, John Besch, hadn’t yet been called out for sexual harassment. We drank sazeracs in the Sazerac. We had the worst fishing guide ever.
I don’t remember the guide’s name, and wouldn’t tell it if I did. I’d asked a Houston shop for a recommendation. Their recommended guide was booked but he passed me on to this guy. Kris was there for a conference, and I fished the first day alone. It was March, maybe the worst time to fish Louisiana: windy and overcast. The guide picked me up at the hotel and drove to a place where I bought breakfast. It wasn’t anything special. His boat was in the shop–he had a Mitzi Skiff that seemed to be permanently in the shop and he was permanently and vocally unhappy with the boat and the company. He had borrowed a Hell’s Bay for the day. We got about a mile from the dock when he realized he had no gas and we had to turn around. He speculated the gas had evaporated.
He was from Florida, the Panhandle, and guided in Louisiana in the winter. He was a Florida guy. He told me a story about how someone in Florida had just caught a record tarpon, maybe 190, on some impossibly light set up: a 4 lb tippet, a 4 weight rod, a 4 ounce brain. I don’t remember, but the angler seemed to have fought it for nine hours and it seemed cruel to the fish and stupid. They could have hooked a rock with a 4 weight and had as much fun. At least the rock would have already been dead.
The Florida guy re-rigged my redfish set-up, cutting off a nail knot on fly line because in Louisiana the fish were bigger. I could have landed a tarpon on that nail knot. I did catch a redfish early the first day. It was the only fish we caught over two days. He wanted to take a picture and it took forever, me holding a dying fish while he changed camera lenses.
The second day when Kris went with us things got worse. He took the rod out of her hands to show her how to cast. There was a point where the forward gear on the boat wouldn’t work and the guide was banging on the motor with a wrench. I thought we’d spend the next five hours backing back to Venice. When he drove us back to the Roosevelt in his truck he drove and drank beer.
He was a young guy, and I hope he grew up smarter. What I remember the night we returned to Houston was Kris on the phone telling off the guide in New Orleans who’d made the recommendation. I’ve never seen Kris so mad, not even at me.