Why You Need a Fish Dog
Talk all you want about so-called “advancements in fly fishing” — ozone hole-depleting fluorocarbon leaders, boron rods with price tags equivalent to your monthly mortgage, and now waders with front zippers so you can relieve yourself while never having to vacate your coveted spot on the river…
Forget the fancy gear! What you really need to catch more trout, salmon or stripers is to get a good-tempered dog, the kind of dog that encourages you to get outside fishing all year long … a fish dog.
[Sandy the Australian shepherd helps dad row the drift boat. Photo: Duncan Roe]
A good fish dog doesn’t mind hanging out in the driftboat in section Aof the Green when it’s snowing so hard you have to shovel the boat acouple of times to keep from sinking. A good fish dog keeps you warmwhen your 
30-degree bag gets wet two days into a “summer” backpack tripinto the Winds and you’re piled up drinking bourbon and playing cardsin the tent while a nasty storm rages outside. A good fish dog alwaysleads the way, rustling up bears, cougars, rattlesnakes and skunks. Agood fish dog doesn’t call you out when you recount the day’s triumphswith inflated sizes or quantities.
Fish dogs with the wrong attitude or lineage dash headlong into fragilespring creeks, bark annoyingly at water birds, and probably aren’tathletic enough to balance on the bed of a pickup during long,washboardy approaches. Lesser fish dogs are better left home on theporch or at the parlor — they’re too sissy for ticks, foxtails, andporcupine quills.
Superior angling hounds will kiss your catch as eagerly as thosecelebrity TV bassmasters. At the mere sight of rods and waders, they’llleap into your travel rig and pack themselves invisibly into thesmallest corner to avoid 
being left behind. They’ll go for days withoutproper food, subsisting on Slim Jims and potato chips, lapping uptipped-over camp beers. A proper fish dog has completed his or hercritically important role when, at the end of another fish-filled day,the fire’s burning low and the angling brotherhood/sisterhood isfilling an imaginary calendar with more fish and more fish dogadventures…
[Kissing the catch photo by Matt O’Conner. All other photos by Casey CEO Sheahan.]