Last Chance

Remembering a time when the legendary Joe Brooks helped me become a fly fisherman.

By M. Robbins Church

February 13, 2023

“So what’s so great about Joe Brooks?” challenged a burly teenager who I assumed was a shop helper in Jim Poor’s Anglers All fly shop in Littleton, Colorado. “I was fishing just downstream from him once, and I caught as many fish as he did.”

Jim and I stared at each other in astonishment across the counter. Neither of us knew what to say. The young man had just interjected himself into our pleasant conversation about my Richmond, Virginia, neighbor and fly-fishing mentor, Joe Brooks. Barely refraining from shaking his head in dismay, if not disgust, Jim shared a look with me, conveying that such a remark deserved no reply, and picked up our chat where we had left off.

It was late June 1972, and needing some fly-fishing supplies, I had driven to Jim’s shop from nearby Louisville, Colorado, where I had been living since November. I had taken a year off after college to work at a U.S. Fish and Wildlife research lab in Denver and to take some post-graduate classes at the University of Colorado. Far from my Virginia home, my work had paid off. That fall, I would start graduate school in aquatic ecology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

I was about to head to Henry’s Fork on the Snake River in Idaho for the Fourth of July to fish with friends from home: Bert Lindler, whom I’d met during high school, and Harrison O’Connor, whom I came to know from our college dorm. Bert was already at Henry’s Fork, working that summer for Will Godfrey at his fly shop in Last Chance. Harrison and his wife, Moira, would drive down from their rented cabin in Montana. We would gather there because of one man — Joe Brooks, the pioneering fly-fisherman whose books, columns and photos lifted the curtain about the sport and helped popularize it for the masses.

Joe and his wife, Mary, had touched each of our lives. For Bert, me and our close friend Marvin Williams, his influence started when we were teenagers and received our first lessons in trout fishing and angling etiquette in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Maryland and Virginia. After our freshman year in college, Joe arranged summer jobs for Bert and me in Sun Valley so we could fish nearby Silver Creek. Later, Joe would land Bert a job with Godfrey on Henry’s Fork.

I first met my neighbors Joe and Mary in 1965 when I was their paperboy. Marvin, my grade-school friend and neighbor who did yard chores for them, introduced me to Joe, who promptly gave me my first fly casting lesson — his large right hand enveloping mine over the grip of the rod as he showed me the rhythms of the cast. After that, Marvin and I were frequent visitors to their nearby, tidy home, as we helped Joe get ready for trips in his basement office and tackle room, or sat as invited guests at small evening parties where Joe screened some of his fishing films, or just dropped by unexpectedly to say hi. Joe never turned us away.

Joe introduced us to trout fishing on Big Hunting Creek in Maryland at the annual campfire of the Brotherhood of the Jungle Cock, where both Marvin and I caught our first trout on one of his favorite Orvis bamboo fly rods, the same rod that Mary would give to Marvin after Joe’s passing. Joe took us to the Rapidan River in Shenandoah National Park, a stream that will always be our home waters.

I introduced Harrison to Joe during our first year of college. Just before Harrison graduated, Joe gave him a list of streams to fish, along with notes on each, for when he ventured west with his new bride. Their first summer out West, Harrison and Moira were driving by Henry’s Fork at Last Chance when they spied Joe and Mary rigging their fly rods by the side of the road. They hit the brakes, walked over to say hello and stayed for several days, as Joe and Mary insisted on showing them the fishing.

Such acts of generosity by Joe were not unique to our small circle. Scores of anglers, especially young anglers, were blessed beneficiaries of such gifts (often unexpected) through the years. And the ripples of his kindness, ranging from opening career paths for now famous angler/authors to waders arriving unexpectedly in the mail for young fishermen in need, continue to spread in waters around the world.

My trip across Wyoming during the summer of 1972 was frustrating. I had pinned the accelerator to the floor of my ’66 VW bus, fighting buffeting headwinds and crosswinds to travel several hundred hard miles at a whopping top speed of 50 mph, praying not to get crushed by a wind-blown Winnebago. Strike, my English Setter co-pilot, was curled up in the front passenger’s seat — hanging with Dad, trusting the process.

When we finally made it to Henry’s Fork, the place was bustling. Fly-fishing was taking off, and the river was stocked with anglers. I found Bert at Will Godfrey’s shop. Guiding with Will, Bill Mason and Dexter Ball, Bert held junior employee status — working in the shop and filling in when guides ran short using Will’s unspectacular but functional aluminum jonboat.

Joe and Mary were already at Last Chance when I arrived. Joe was advising Harrison on prime fishing spots and approaches, and Mary helped Moira, a novice fly fisher. In between duties of inscribing copies of his new book, Trout Fishing, Joe fished daily with Will. Except that one day he asked to be guided by Bert — the student getting an unforgettable chance to shepherd the master.

By the time I arrived, Joe’s fishing time was booked, and I had no chance to share the water with him. I floated the canyon with Bert one day, fished the Firehole River with Harrison and Moira another, and went solo a few times. I caught up with Joe and Mary during impromptu group visits in their motel room in the mornings or evenings.

Off the water, all seemed fine, but when Joe was fishing, it was clear he was not himself. His legendary casting faltered; he misjudged fish, and, once an extraordinary multisport athlete, he had increased difficulty entering and exiting drift boats. More concerning was that he was taking his nitroglycerin with increasing frequency, sometimes just to get through a morning’s outing — his angina worsening by the day. We all noticed it but never said anything. Joe knew what was around the bend but moved toward it with grace. He had told Bert that he hoped to die with a fly rod in hand, facing upstream. He was where he wanted to be.

Despite his lagging health, Joe was still Joe — always helping others and looking for the best in people. When he introduced me to Will, he noted pointedly that I was “headed back to the University of Virginia in September to teach.” That was accurate, as I had teacher assistant duties to cover as part of my graduate work, but I was far from being on faculty. Nonetheless, I glowed in hearing Joe speak of me with pride.

My time was limited. I had to return to Colorado to finish my lab work. I don’t recall saying goodbye to Joe and Mary. I must have done so on my last evening after dinner. I’m sure it was neither prolonged nor emotional — a tight lines, see you next time sort of parting.

The following day, right before leaving, I was standing outside Godfrey’s shop with Bert and Dexter when I saw Joe and Mary drive by, headed north. I asked where they were bound, and someone said up to Yellowstone National Park to fish the Firehole. As the car passed, with Joe riding shotgun, he turned and gave us a long, solemn look, one that haunted me as I drove back to Colorado. One that haunts me still.

For three halcyon years, 1967 to 1969, I had traveled from summer jobs in Sun Valley to Livingston, Montana, in mid-September to fish with Joe and Mary before heading back to Virginia for school. There, they walked Bert, Marvin and me onto both Armstrong Spring Creek and Nelson’s Spring Creek; showed us the Yellowstone River; arranged for guides at Dan Bailey’s Fly Shop to escort us on informal outings to favorite fishing spots; and brought us along to delightful dinners at Dan’s house and at eye-widening Paradise Valley ranches. One day, Joe put away his rod and typewriter and guided us one on one.

In 1972, however, such a trip to Livingston was impossible for me — I was headed east, not west. A rented room awaited me with a family I knew on an old farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Strike and I were headed home. I planned to see Joe and Mary in the fall during the Thanksgiving break, after they had returned to Richmond.

Late that September, I was called away from my books to the family phone in the upstairs hallway of the old farmhouse. Marvin was on the line. Mary had just called him. After fishing Nelson’s Spring Creek one last time, Joe had suffered a heart attack at their cabin at the “Island Resort” in Livingston and died while being airlifted to the Mayo Clinic. I was stunned but not surprised.

Even if I could have afforded to travel to Livingston for Joe’s funeral, I could not get away. I was emerging into the early, hectic days of a new life. I said my goodbyes from afar. Life rushed on: school, marriage, divorce, a cross-country move to Oregon. One event followed close on the heels of another. Serious fishing lapsed for years, then reignited with Pacific Northwest steelheading. And it was then that I started a delightful correspondence with Mary Brooks that continued until she passed in 2004.

It wasn’t until I drove through Livingston in September 2007 on my way to a dog trial in Wyoming that I paid a long-overdue visit to Joe’s and Mary’s graves. I booked a room and a day’s fishing at Nelson’s Spring Creek — my first day fishing there in almost 40 years.

Nelson’s had claimed a special place in Joe’s and Mary’s hearts. Dan Bailey introduced them to Edwin Nelson and the family creek in 1952. For the next five years, Joe and Mary rented Edwin and Helen Nelson’s rustic one-room bunkhouse on the ranch for three months each summer to fall — trout heaven in Paradise Valley. Joe and Mary fished there every year until Joe died.

Before checking in at Nelson’s, I stopped at the quiet graveyard nearby, where Joe and Mary are buried. It took a long time to find their graves — set in an out-of-the-way spot near the edge of the cemetery with a view of the Yellowstone River beyond. I stood there for a long while, feeling as self-conscious as the first time I visited the couple in their home. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. Thoughts flooded back, overwhelming the moment, as my gaze drifted from their grave markers to the snow-dusted Absarokas rising behind me, then down to the river, bordered by cottonwoods tingeing to gold.

I closed my eyes and saw Marvin, Bert and me streamside with Joe and Mary, everyone busily rigging up, tying on flies, us boys paying close attention to Joe’s quiet, sage advice. All of us basking in Mary’s radiant smile. When I opened my eyes, I was alone under the high Montana sky. An autumn breeze rustled the grass along the valley road, and in the distance, the Yellowstone flowed.

When I arrived at Nelson Ranch, I was lost in memories and couldn’t form a sentence uninterrupted by tears. Mary Nelson gave me the time I needed to gather myself. She knew where I had been. If we had not just met, I’m sure she would’ve given me a hug. Because of Joe and Mary, we were already family.

The Brookses are never far from me. I feel them when I release a fish, when I relinquish a favored hole to the next angler coming down the trail, when I pause at dusk on some Western river in late September to follow a graceful brace of ducks whispering their way upstream into the coming evening. They will always be with me.