Day four: Barney’s Ladder

Although each guide has his own individualized, recognizable physical features and each one, certainly, has his own, individual personality, all are easily identifiable as belonging to the same Indian derived race and they all seem to possess the same admirable traits when it comes to their job performance. They all are shorter in stature than the average USA American, have dark, suntanned complexions, straight black hair, dark eyes, and each is uniformly dressed in shorts, tee or sweat shirt, and bare feet.

Each one that I inter-acted with was uniformly intelligent and exhibited a high degree of self-initiative. Invariably they make a real effort, indeed, go to great lengths, to please their assigned clients, sometimes, in creative ways. They uniformly go about their guide duties, uncomplainingly, with great enthusiasm. Without exception, they appear to be well trained for their jobs and they execute them well. This day’s activities were destined to bring out all of these fine traits in a most demonstrative and positive way.

Larry and I had decided to fish together on the same boat for the day. When we arrived at the dock in the early morning Enrico informed me that, today, we were going to fish differently than I had become accustomed to during the previous days. He was busy tying a trailing rope to our boat, the other end of which was attached to the bow of an open aluminum skiff, approximately 16 feet long with a small outboard motor on its stern. Alongside our Nitro, the guide on the next Nitro was doing the same thing with a duplicate aluminum skiff. Today, we were going to fish as a team of two boats.

We met our companions to be for the day. They were two fishermen who were staying at the lodge but were not from our group of seventeen. They were friends, both from the southwest, USA. The older of the two was named Barney. He appeared to be in his late 30’s or early 40’s. As it turned out, Barney had been crippled from birth and had all he could do to sustain a hobbling walk, which he did, whenever necessary throughout the day, with no complaint and unfailing good humor. His friend was younger, appearing to be in his early 20’s and in fine physical shape. Both were enthusiastic, experienced bass fishermen. They each had natural, “regular guy” personalities and we all hit it off good, right from the start.

The two Nitro’s sped side by side up the river, at speeds in the order of 40 mph, each pulling its aluminum skiff behind. Barney’s Nitro had two native guides in it instead of the normal, single guide. After about a 40 minutes long run, sometimes weaving our way through small, scattered islands, we beached the Nitro’s onto the shore.