The Flyfish Journal - The Flyfish Journal 14.4
PURE LOVE: Camille Egdorf McCormick’s Steady Hand
Words: Bridget Moran 2023-06-16 10:15:42
Deep in Alaska’s Wood-Tikchik State Park, Camille Egdorf McCormick prepares for a midnight run to a local “honey hole” where the bait balls are big and the arctic char are hungry. Photo: Matt McCormick
“It feels like my hand is burning…”
Sure enough, my hand was, in fact, burning. A 32-pound bull red was peeling across a channel deep in the Mississippi River Delta, taking with it 100 feet of line and a fair amount of my skin as Camille Egdorf McCormick and our guide, Travis Huckeba, looked on.
Louisiana redfish had been at the top of my short bucket list for many years, so when I was invited to join a group of incredible women at Journey South Outfitters in Venice, I nearly choked. The Mississippi Delta was and still is a mystery to me, and the thought of catching a massive marsh goldfish consumed most of my daydreams.
They say weather and water clarity are key for targeting reds—mild temperatures, light winds and slightly cloudy skies with some sun breaks. So naturally we were looking at 15-knot winds, frigid temps, high, muddy water and rain for the two days we had to fish. No problem.
On day one, I paired up with Camille. Camille is flyfishing royalty. She was born into a legendary flyfishing guide family, spending her childhood summers along the Nushagak River in the Alaskan backcountry. She started guiding at her family’s lodge when she was 18, and she knows the upper reaches of the Nush’ better than just about anyone. When she started training guides for the operation, Camille hand-drew a map of more than 80 miles of blue lines from memory. “New guides still use it to learn the layout,” she told me.
If they’re smart, they worship that map, I thought.
Travis had taken us on an hour ride to the fishing grounds that morning—about 17 miles from the marina as the roseate spoonbill flies. An infinite network of channels and narrows unfurled in front of us as we passed large container ships at the Head of Passes (the nominal mouth of the Mississippi) and flocks of white ibis in sheltered bayous. I felt like a cell flowing through the world’s most complex vascular system.
Travis stopped the boat and climbed the poling platform. Camille slipped off her boots and took her place on the bow. I sat in my little seat trying not to touch anything. She was fascinating to watch. She sighted fish hundreds of feet away and tracked them through thick brown water until placing her mullet perfectly in the fish’s periphery. She hunted them. Her casts were strategic and unfussy—sharp senses, lightning-fast reaction time and extraordinary accuracy combined with an ability to maintain momentum and focus until she made the connection. The fish she caught were comfortably north of 25 pounds and 40 inches from face to fork, yet she kept her cool, smiling and asking Travis questions about the life history of bull reds. Watching her, you might have thought that landing a 32-pound red drum was easy.
That’s how Camille unwittingly sandbagged me.
It was the end of the day. Camille had smoothly roped two of the most gorgeous fish in the delta. Any froth I had to land my own was overshadowed by the excitement and awe I shared with Camille every time she brought a fish to the boat, both of us eager to inspect the shape of their ocellated tail markings. When my number came up, I half-assed a few blind casts into a large, reeded channel and got lucky. A colossal bull ate my streamer less than a foot from the boat. Unfortunately, the only thing I was thinking about at the time was the swordfish ceviche waiting back at the lodge. You would think my brain might re-engage when that fish started screaming across the channel, but you would be wrong. As nearly all my line ripped through my right hand, Travis shouted at me from the platform, but it didn’t register. Then Camille howled, “let go!” and I let go. I slowly brought my left hand up to the reel. Camille shouted again: “Don’t touch the reel!” but it was too late. The handle slammed three knuckles so loud I think the entire Gulf Coast winced. The good news is I was still totally oblivious. Everything was happening in slow motion. I could hear the yelling, but in that moment I had very little use for the English language, or any language, really. For all intents and purposes, I blacked out. Like any good mother—a role that is relatively new for her—Camille patiently stood by and helped me find my way back.
Knowing exactly nothing about raising small humans, I later asked Camille what it felt like to be a mom. She seems so naturally maternalistic, and she radiates her love for her two-year-old son. But she’s also human. “I went through this period of mourning my old life before Deke,” she said, matter-of-factly.
In that “old life,” Camille hosted trips to world-class flyfishing destinations, fulfilling thousands of clients’ bucket lists. She ran jet sleds through rivers that only a lucky few have even seen. She proved herself and her work ethic time and again, squaring up to anyone who doubted her.
“I always did my own thing—what I wanted, how I wanted, where I wanted,” she said. “And that all just stopped.”
She admits that it all looks different now. There are so many things she wants to show Deke how to do and places she wants to take him. I can only imagine what she’ll teach him: how to field dress a bull elk; how to call a turkey; how to wrangle a redfish. Above all, she’ll teach him how to care for himself and for the earth.
On our trip to Louisiana, she reveled in her independence, but I know she missed her kid, who was back home with his dad, Matt. She snuck behind the collection of hungry anglers before our last dinner to FaceTime with him, and she was just beaming. Pure love. It was beautiful.
I saw then that though Camille’s transition to motherhood wasn’t at all seamless, it was still steeped in a kind of reward that only parents will understand. “Your life is never gonna be the same, in a good way,” she told me. “At times it might not seem like it, but it will always be good.”
As I sank into my redfish-induced blackout, Camille wrapped her hands around mine. Not in a sexy, Patrick-Swayze-teaching-pottery way, but in a here-let-me-help-you-before-you-break-something way. She tightened my drag and brought my left hand to the rod, settling the butt end in the crease of my hip. This snapped me back to reality long enough to immediately turn beet red. There was no recovering from this. I almost wished that the fish would snap off in the reeds so we could finish it off with a flourish. The nail in my coffin.
Sweet Camille didn’t give up. She spoke softly and coached me through the reeds without making me feel like a complete dumbass. Her enthusiasm was warm and hearty, which took some of the sting out of my recent kerfuffle. She was a settling presence, turning chaos on its ass and putting it back in line with steady repose.
We motored back to the marina as the weather threatened to turn grim. When we returned to the lodge (and that swordfish ceviche), I learned that it was Camille’s first trip away from Deke. Suddenly, it clicked. She had just “mommed” me. Despite my turn toward unadulterated mayhem, Camille had remained composed and intervened only when she knew I needed it (and was about to break my hand and/or lose all her gear). She wasn’t condescending—she didn’t once raise her voice, and I got to preserve my dignity.
As we packed up later to leave Louisiana, everyone a little dirty but well-fed and blissed out, Camille wrapped me up in a hug. She wanted to make sure I left with the fly with which I’d caught my first redfish. Despite my ineptitude, that fish meant a lot to me, and I told Camille as much. I had lost a good friend of mine in an accident the month prior. He had been overwhelmingly excited for me to go on this trip—maybe more than I was. That I wasn’t going to have a chance to regale him with the story over a beer at his dining room table back home was devastating. Camille understood this implicitly. She didn’t try to soften anything with platitudes. She was mindful of the grief. Again, her compassion made reality sting a little less.
Frankly, I’m a little jealous of Deke. That kid is going to see the natural world in ways most folks don’t even know how to dream about. He’ll test Camille harder than her most infuriating clients. He’ll probably land redfish smoother than butter, just like his mom, and he’ll be loved so damn hard. In my mind, Camille had always been this dogged, gritty hotshot with thousands of miles of rivers etched into every fiber of her existence. And of course, she is that and more. What I learned on the Louisiana marsh is she is also a tender matriarch with extraordinary intuition, someone who honors vulnerability and honesty. Camille is a born leader, but she’s still learning, in a good way.
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