“After the Man”

“Yeah, I think that’s why they’re so special and why it drives me crazy because I can be on the beach for a week or two and throw a hundred flies and not get one to eat. And then you change something up just a little bit and you’ll get one to eat. It’s just amazing. I mean I don’t know how to describe it.

A really nice fish is a 30-pound fish. 40-pound fish plus is a fish of a lifetime. You know if you get lucky enough to get that 60- to 65-, 70-pound fish you’ve got the bragging rights for the rest of your life.

It was right here in Baja several years ago I missed a shot at a 20-25-pound roosterfish. Just a devastating, devastating experience. So I pretty much asked everybody I knew who the best guides were. The resounding answer was Baja Anglers and Grant Hartman. I first heard about Grant almost immediately upon coming down here to East Cape. At that time, we’re talking the turn of the century, you know you could drive the beach from from Los Frailes to the lighthouse and it never even occurred to us to see other fly fishermen let alone other anglers of any kind. But one of the few people that was fishing the beach really hard was Grant.

‘Kind of crazy, this gray-haired beard guy listening to Rage the Machine, drinking beers the beach, supposed to be guiding something’s wrong with this guy man, big time, something’s really wrong with this guy.'”