Cheers to 2024's Adventures... Good and Bad
Thanks to all of you who are following along on this little Substack experiment, and to those who have stuck with reading through the unplanned chaos of 2024.
Suffice to say, 2024 did not go according to plan. Those of you who know me know that I’m a planner. My Type-A self dives deep into business planning, from trip logistics for each shoot or hosted trip, to annually updated one, three, five, and ten-year evolving plans for the business. Things change—of course they change—but I like knowing the elements in play.
One element I had decidedly not planned for in 2024 was spending five months stuck stateside, unable to do so much as walk more than 50 yards, waiting for, undergoing, and then recovering from spine surgery. So many of you have been incredibly supportive—I know you signed up for this newsletter looking for fishing, travel, and photography content, so thanks for hanging in through this unexpected detour. As I write this I’m back in Texas, dealing with some setback in recovery, but life goes on, we adapt, and thankfully 2025 should start off strong with plenty of travel, fishing, and work on the books. Some good stories to be told in the year ahead, team.
But I’d be remiss to jump into 2025 (and trust me, I’m ready to jump) without looking back at some of the awesome people I was able to meet in equally awesome places this year. Meeting incredible people in strange places is my favorite part of this job, so let’s take a look back at some of the people and places which 2024 brought.
Friends in the Far Corners of the World
Thanks to everyone who was a part of 2024.
“We are all travelers in the wilderness of the world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
I’ll never stop being surprised about the people we meet in awesome places. Sure, not every person is a stand-out—there are a few folks over the past year I’d love to forget—but when we’re lucky enough to meet a stand-out soul in some random circumstance, it’s a wonderful thing. And a moment that makes the less-fun times (remember, what you see here online is the fun 5-10% of the job… the rest of it is running a business, sleeping on airport floors, and hauling heavy camera, fishing, and personal luggage around the world solo) seem like they all balance out somehow.
I was grateful to start 2024’s travels in Argentina, visiting Estancia Laguna Verde and the Golden Dorado River Cruiser for the first time, and making friends I’m very eager to see when I return in a few weeks to both locations with hosted groups. Argentina felt an awful lot like home, and I can’t wait to spend more time there. It feels like I get to go home and visit friends now, and the idea makes my heart happy.
After Argentina came a logistically rough trip in Baja in March that still produced some memorable images and a few scars.
In the spirit of getting back on the horse I was right back at it, speaking at the Travel Goods Show in Las Vegas in March and then heading to Fish Colombia in the Darién Gap. I spent a few days wandering the streets of Medellín solo before heading to the coast, something which I highly recommend… it was a wonderful introduction to Colombia.
The Darién caught my attention on that first trip, which brought my first yellowfin tuna on the fly and the story material for a feature piece which just hit the streets in the winter issue of The Fly Fish Journal. It’s a wild part of the world, and a wild fishery, and a place where it would be easy to get lost. I was intrigued.
So intrigued, in fact, when the opportunity came to head back in early May, just two weeks after my first trip, I jumped on it. This time it was a fly-fishing industry group heading back, and I was eager to get into the fishery again with a savvy group of fly anglers. Back to Colombia I went, for what turned out to be one of the most fun fishing trips of my life. We fished hard. I made images. We danced on the boat to local music and ate mangoes fresh from the tree outside camp.
Another wild, good, and happy experience in a place the news reports would have you believe is a no-go area.
I’ll be back in Colombia in May with a hosted group, and can’t wait to share this fishery with the group.
June found me back in Montana, photographing the wedding of one of my best friends. I don’t usually shoot weddings, but Jake and I have been friends ever since we were both shop rats working at Headhunters Fly Shop on the Missouri River in Montana in 2013, and he was marrying the love of his life. It was a ranch party—the best kind of Montana wedding—and for once in my life I got to wear a dress while shooting an assignment.
Two weeks later I was back to central Montana, photographing a private client commission. Jake was one of the guides, and I was excited to see my friend work a job at which he’s incredibly gifted. My back had been acting up for a few weeks (old injuries are a beast) and one wrong step with a heavily-loaded camera bag on the second day of this commission shoot ended up being the straw which broke the camel’s back. I ruptured a disc in my back, consequently derailing the eight remaining international shoots I had scheduled for the year.
My travel schedule went from busy fishing and client shoots to six weeks of failed conservative medical care in Montana, two months in Texas for surgery with a specialist, and now an ongoing recovery. Life is weird, and sometimes our carefully-plotted plans go awry in a big way when we least expect it.
But we deal with it and move on with life. Ten weeks post-op I was in Belize, shooting for a lodge client and managing to get into a few fish of my own. This tarpon, caught on the last fishing day on a ten-weight fiberglass rod, felt incredibly good. I went back to the lodge room every night to ice my back like a little old lady, but at least I was working. And holding a camera and a fly rod again.
The last few months have been an intensive physical therapy and gym period, and while I’ve a very long way to go, I’m back on my feet and slowly healing up. And very grateful for it. My social circle at home in Missoula has been a group of six gentlemen—the youngest of which is likely 70—who all show up at the gym around my same pre-dawn timeframe every morning. We chat in between sets and cool off together on the track, and it’s been a wonderful highlight to just listen to their stories and tales. A poignant reminder that good stories are everywhere, if only we look
2025 is shaping up to be a marathon. You can look forward to more fishing, travel, photography, and writing content as we get back to our regularly-scheduled programming, and I’m just as ready for it as you are.
Thanks for joining me on the ride, and here’s to a fresh new year and the adventures ahead. There are more images to be made, more sunsets to watch, waiting for the light to drop just right, and more fish to be caught.
And a massive thanks to all the anglers, guides, lodge owners and managers, transfer drivers, logistics coordinators, and everyone both in front of the camera and behind the scenes who makes this complicated travel and work schedule possible. Thanks to everyone who let me stick a camera in your face this year, or in years prior. Y’all are absolutely the heroes here—thank you for all you do, and here’s to continuing to configure that puzzle a little more each year.
“There was nothing to do but wait. It is always like this for naturalists, and for poets—the long hours of travel and preparation, and then the longer hours of waiting. All for that one electric, pulse-revving vision when the universe suddenly declares itself.” - “The Moon by Whale Light”
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