No Fear

Larry Dahlberg is not afraid to catch fish the size of your boat.

By Stephen Wisner

Larry Dahlberg is not afraid. He is not afraid of trying things that have never been tried. He is not afraid of fish the size of an Olds Ninety-Eight. He is not afraid of floating a Venezuelan river in a hollowed-out log powered by a 30-horse Merc, casting 6-inch flies to 40-inch fish with fangs the length of his middle finger. He's not afraid to snub trout fishing purists and tie on a blaze-orange floating Rapala. He is not afraid of fishing a big gob of crawlers, if that's what it takes.

"Trout fishermen look at the world through a drinking straw," Dahlberg says to me at the kitchen table of his Taylors Falls farmhouse. "If I had to define purgatory, it would be spending eternity casting a size 20 Royal Coachman to 13-inch trout."

Before meeting Dahlberg, I really didn't know much about him. I had heard of the Dahlberg Diver and how it had revolutionized fly-fishing for bass, but I was primarily a trout fisher and had never fished with one. I am too cheap to pay for cable television and as such had only seen a couple episodes of Dahlberg's fishing show, "The Hunt for Big Fish," on ESPN. I was a little nervous about interviewing Dahlberg because I thought he'd want to talk about the finer points of bass fishing and my only question would be: "Tell me how you invented the Diver." I figured he would answer this question with a lengthy discussion on the art of tying bass flies with deer hair. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, I would go home with a half page of usable copy. I was as wrong as black shoes with a brown belt.

I have never been one to go gaga over fishing celebrities. I worked for a number of years as a guide on the Henry's Fork in Idaho and met many of the sport's big names. I found some to be likable and others bores. What I rarely saw in these people for whom fishing had become a career was genuine enthusiasm. Too often they talked about fly-fishing with the same feeling that a college English professor with 20 years under his belt teaches basic grammar.

Dahlberg is different. When he talks about fishing, he is animated. He stands up and acts out the setting of the hook. He runs into the next room and returns with slides of enormous fish and the tackle to catch them. When he describes the fight of a blue marlin, the veins in his forearms pop out as though he were doing battle with the beast right there in the kitchen. When he finishes the story, I want to fish for blue marlin. I want to tie a size 40/0 fly onto a piece of 80-pound-test tippet and cast fly line the diameter of an extension cord from the stern of a 38-foot boat. I want to feel the tug of something foreign and just plain big. If Larry Dahlberg tells a fish story and you would rather hear about the difference in emergence times for Drunella grandis and D. flavilinea, then check your pulse, pal, because you might be dead.

"The reason I'm successful in fishing," Dahlberg says, "is that I have spent my time trying to look through as many keyholes as possible. For example, I've learned more about fly-fishing from live-bait fishing than from all the fly-fishing books I've ever read. There's a whole world of angling possibility, a billion keyholes. Why look through one and stay there? That's boring." As a young boy, Dahlberg looked through two different keyholes. His grandfather fished with live bait for catfish and sturgeon. His father fished only for muskies with artificial lures. The two men refused to fish together. His grandfather let him come along; so, like most anglers, Dahlberg started fishing with bait. His father, on the other hand, believed that if a boy were to go fishing, then he should possess a certain amount of skill: If he could cast a muskie lure under the bar on the swing set and into a small box eight out of 10 tries, then he could go along--as a rower.

"I practiced," Dahlberg says with intensity. "All summer I cast that lure under the swing set until I was deadly--until I never missed."

Having passed the test, Dahlberg was allowed to row his father on the St. Croix. When Dahlberg wasn't pulling on the oars, he was casting night crawlers for the fish that made him famous--smallmouth bass.

"Most people don't realize that the history of fly-fishing for smallmouth goes back much further in this part of the Midwest than the trout fishing," Dahlberg says. "The Houston Club was operating in the early 1800s. There were people coming from all over the country to fish for bass on the St. Croix.

"I started guiding when I was 11 years old. A guide at the club had died, and my dad heard they were looking for a replacement and he knew I could row, so he said, 'Take the kid.'"

Because of his time bait fishing, Dahlberg knew that bass did most of their feeding below the water surface. At an early age, he began experimenting and bucking convention by having his clients fish with wet flies. The other guides frowned upon these tactics even though Dahlberg's clients were catching more fish.

"I was always experimenting, even as a little kid, I mean really little. I made all types of flies. I made jigs before they were available on the market. Made my own molds, cast the lead. People were always looking down on these things. They still do." At this point Dahlberg's wife, Marilyn, comes into the room with a picture of a 220-pound Nile perch that Dahlberg caught on a recent trip to Africa. It is the largest freshwater bony fish ever caught on a hook and line. The fish is huge. Absolutely gi-normous.

"The big fish has always interested me," says Dahlberg.

By his own estimate, Dahlberg has caught more than 50 line-class world records. Some of the fish topped established records by a couple hundred pounds. Because he lets his fish go and they cannot be officially weighed, you won't find Dahlberg's name in the record books. "I can show them to you on video," he says.

Dahlberg DOES NOT fish exclusively with flies. When he is fishing for a new species, he will often start with bait, just as he did as a child. Once he has figured out the species' feeding habits, he will progress to lures and ultimately to flies. For Dahlberg, fishing is a process. Find out where the fish are, figure out what they eat, then put in the hours, sometimes 18 to 20 a day, until you catch a really big one. Then catch an even bigger one.

Then you and your wife and your camera crew get on a plane and fly to a different location and start the whole process over again on another species. On television, Dahlberg looks as though he gets off the plane in some exotic locale, saunters down to the local fishing hole, and starts yanking out lunkers. We don't see the sweat. We just figure he has some kind of magic touch that can't be explained. The magic is just plain determination.

"I can honestly say I have caught more big fish in more places than anyone who has ever lived," says Dahlberg, when I ask him about the quality of the smallmouth fishing on the St. Croix. "I can just as honestly say that the waters I fished as a boy--the St. Croix and the Kettle--are the most beautiful and, when the fishing is good, when it is really on, are the most exciting."

Dahlberg then proclaims that, with the possible exception of the Atlantic salmon, the smallmouth should be considered North America's most prized game fish. I am about to defend the honor of the valiantly battling rainbow trout, but Dahlberg begins to describe the experience of casting a big deer-hair streamer underneath an overhanging tree, where it is inhaled by a 5-pound bass. He sets the hook, almost knocking his coffee cup off the table. He brings the fish to the boat and releases it. Then he catches another fish. Watching his theatrics, I realize that I cross the St. Croix several times each week. What am I doing living so close to such a resource and not fishing it? I want the hot smallmouth action. Don't get me wrong, trout are great. But this is new. This is different.

Next Dahlberg describes fly-fishing for muskies, a fish he considers the most challenging a fly-fisherman could face. "I can't tell you any sure-fire method to catch muskies," he says. "But I will tell you that if I can see them, I can catch them."
The key, he says, is watching the fish for the first hint that it has seen your fly. The instant, and here he is emphatic, the very instant that the fish detects the fly, you must begin your retrieve. If you hesitate, the fish will follow but not always take. If you start your retrieve at exactly the moment the fish detects the fly, you've got him. The fish of 10,000 casts is now the fish of one perfect cast.

We have been talking for quite a while, and I still haven't asked about the Dahlberg Diver. So I ask. Dahlberg says the development of the Diver began when he was helping his mother decorate the Christmas tree. As they were putting on Mylar tinsel, Dahlberg dropped some and watched it flutter to the floor. "I picked it up and dropped it again," he says, illustrating with his fingers the way the strands moved. "I thought to myself, 'That's a spinner.'" That, he says, was the origin of Flash-a-bou, now a standard fly-tying material.

Dahlberg used this new material to tie the Flashdancer, which he still considers to be one of the most deadly smallmouth flies. While guiding every day, he had ample opportunity to see his new creation in action. Smallmouth devoured it, and his clients were out-fishing the clients of the other guides he worked with.

Dahlberg next turned his attention to poppers. He noticed that a particularly big bass would often follow a popper but not take. His experience with the Flashdancer had shown him that when a fly was below a fish's line of vision the fish would take. So he began working on a deer-hair head, which would cause the fly to dive when retrieved and then float back to the surface when given a little slack. After several attempts he found what he thought to be a good design. He took his creation to the river where a 61Ú2-pound fish devoured it.

Later in the evening, Dahlberg shows me a video of the Diver in action on a trip he and Marilyn took to Venezuela. In the early part of the show, a shirtless Dahlberg stands in the bow of a 20-foot-long hollowed-out log, floating in the eddy of what would appear to be a class V stretch of white water. He is casting a 6-inch-long, bright orange Rapala into the froth, and no sooner does it hit the water than his rod doubles over and he hauls out a truly freakish fish. It is a payara. It is about 4 feet long and has the body of a coho, the head of a tarpon, and the dentition of a wild boar. I'm serious, this fish has fangs. Dahlberg catches two or three more of these creatures on the Rapala before he tries a fly. As far as the local guides know, no one has ever done this. A quick montage shows Dahlberg at his vice creating a Diver, which is a close imitation of a 6-inch-long blaze-orange Rapala. Back in the hollow log, Dahlberg casts the fly into the raging torrent. Strip. Strip. Bingo! The rod doubles over, and Dahlberg puts another notch in his belt.

When the video ends, I check my watch. I had planned to stay for an hour but instead I have been here three. I love to fish, but I have to admit that it is rare that I so completely enjoy talking about the sport as I have this evening. I have enjoyed it because I have never encountered an angler quite like Dahlberg. He is competitive, brash, and honest. He is the best at what he does, and this is in part due to the fact that nobody else is even trying. Above all he enjoys fishing.

I ask Dahlberg if he has any big-fish-that-got-away stories. He gives me a look as serious as lung cancer. "I never had any big fish get away--even as a kid. I caught 'em all."

Editor's note: Filming a fishing show in exotic locales poses risks--and not just the run-of-the-mill white water, piranhas, and crocodiles. Last May, while filming a segment on fishing for steelhead on the Kitimat River in British Columbia, Dahlberg was cited and fined $250 under a provincial regulation that "no person shall molest or injure fish." According to federal fishery officer Andy Lewis, Dahlberg played a steelhead at least 25 minutes, bringing it to hand several times before releasing it. Dahlberg said he delayed landing the fish several minutes, letting the fish rest behind a riffle, so that his cameraman could retrieve his camera from a distant boat and film the landing. The steelhead was then landed and released.

"Officer Lewis and I disagree not only about some details of the incident, but also over interpretation," Dahlberg said. "When we film the landing of a fish, by necessity we keep it under control a bit longer than we would if we were fishing only for sport. But we did everything we could to protect the fish in question. When the Kitimat segment airs in March on ESPN, the close-up footage will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the fish was never mishandled or unduly stressed and was released in perfect condition.

"Obviously, this incident is both embarrassing and distressing to me. Earlier in the year I had received the highest award for conservation from the International Game Fish Association for releasing dozens of potential world records instead of killing them for the sake of getting my name in the record books. I've devoted my 39-year career as a professional angler to the principles of selective harvest and the responsible, ethical management of all our resources, and I will continue to do so." Stephen Wisner spent six years working as a fly-fishing guide in Idaho. He is a field editor for Midwest Fly Fishing magazine. He lives with his wife and son in Eau Claire, Wis.

Stephen Wisner spent six years working as a fly-fishing guide in Idaho. He is a field editor for Midwest Fly Fishing magazine. He lives with his wife and son in Eau Claire, Wis.