STRONGHOLD

One Man’s Quest to Save the World’s Wild Salmon

By Tucker Malarkey

On his first trip to Kamchatka, in the Russian Far East, the American conservationist Guido Rahr rafted down the Bolshaya River, the first of many adventures in what would become a lifelong obsession with exploring and protecting the region’s innumerable untamed rivers and their incomparable salmon habitat. Born and raised in Oregon, Rahr spent his boyhood summers chasing salmon migrating up the Deschutes River to the sandy beds where they were born. By adulthood he had become one of the world’s most accomplished fly fishermen, but his beloved salmon — beset by logging, dams and fish hatcheries — were in trouble.

As he is about to embark on his dayslong fishing trip down the desolate, heavily forested Bolshaya, Rahr gets his first good look at the rafts his Russian guide, Misha, has procured — cheaply made, with dinky plastic paddles, bad oarlocks and no life jackets. “We should be more concerned about bears,” Misha says. Was there bear spray in that case, or a gun? There was not. “Maybe there won’t be so many bears,” Misha shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve never floated this river.” Not the sort of thing you want to hear from a river guide, but Rahr learns to appreciate the Russian way of embracing fate, if not their way of catching salmon.

Near the end of the trip, the paddlers come upon a gaggle of off-duty submarine sailors fishing Russian-style, which is to say with heavy tackle and lots of vodka. They don’t know what to make of the Americanski with his laughably light fly rod and his menagerie of lures tied from feathers and bits of animal fur. To the submariners’ amazement, Rahr promptly lands a large salmon, at which point there is a burst of applause, followed by singing, toasting and rounds of vodka for everyone, even though it is 9:30 in the morning.

The Russians have never seen fly-fishing because it is a lousy way to fish, at least if you are primarily fishing for food, and in the Russian Far East — especially after the economic collapse that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union — procuring food is how most people spend the bulk of their time. The relatively weightless line on a fly rod is notoriously difficult to cast, the hook has no barb to hold the fish once it bites, and the tackle is so fragile that the angler has to chase after her catch as she reels it in, in order to avoid breaking her gear. But rich people love it, which proves to be Rahr’s ace in the hole. Concerned by incipient development and overfishing in Kamchatka, he helps form a nonprofit to protect the world’s last best salmon rivers (“strongholds,” he calls them) and begins raising money by persuading wealthy patrons to come fly-fish with him, so they can see the miracle of a healthy river for themselves.