A TROUT FISHERMAN IN HANOI - Gary Lewis

While I fished with the fly rod, my wife angled with a cane pole and a book in the other hand. A fish ripped the rod right out of her grasp and tore off into the lake. Now this wife of mine has caught oversize sturgeon, striped marlin and halibut so she is not unacquainted with big fish. But she had never lost a rod to a fish before. 

Fishing was the common language for Gary Lewis and this angler in northern Vietnam. Photo by Tuan Cao.

That day I decided to become a fly-fisherman… I knew it was one of the most important decisions of my life. I had been subscribing to Salmon Trout Steelheader for most of a year by that time, and I knew if I was to become a fly-fisherman it would change my life. I figured I would have to wear a funny hat and maybe even smoke a pipe, because that is what the fly-fishermen I knew did. I had been reading a bunch of articles by Frank Amato and I knew he smoked a pipe—and wore a funny hat. I was 12-years-old. It was on a Sunday, I remember it well. Sitting on the bank of a creek watching a white moth play over the dark water, a trout rose up and ate the moth, and that did it for me. That was the sign from God I needed. I was a fly-fisherman.

I bought a fly rod the next day and informed my friends that not only was I a fly-fisherman now but that they were going to be fly-fishermen too. I figured whether they smoked a pipe or not was up to them. One of those friends was Mike Tom and now there he was, sitting in the aisle across from me, this friend of 50 years, with his wife, Becky, and we were on an airplane headed to Vietnam—with a couple of 5-weight fly rods. Trout fishermen headed to Hanoi.

I wondered if I had brought the right tackle. I was to find out in the next couple of days.

COFFEE IN THE OLD QUARTER

Across the square from the Catholic church in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, Merrilee and I put our feet on a low wall and the owner of the shop brought us egg coffees. We were early and the city woke around us. Children in uniforms. Men in work clothes. Women in business skirts. On scooters. On bicycles—moms and dads and toddlers, sometimes four in a family on one scooter. A grandmother sat on the corner near us and received respect from passersby but not from her daughter-in-law.

 In Hanoi’s Old Quarter. Mike and Becky Tom and Merrilee Lewis listen to their interpreter wax eloquent about food and life in Hanoi. Photo by Gary Lewis 

I kissed my wife goodbye and our party of fishermen worked our way out of the city in a Ford Focus—Khanh at the wheel, my old friend Mike Tom in the passenger seat, Hoang beside me and Tuan, with the camera, dozing next to him. Big trucks, work vans, three-wheeled cars, cattle and motorcycles with trailers shared the road with us and there were always scooters to pass. A beep-beep of the horn and a flick of the turn signal and traffic flowed irrespective of lane markers and supposed direction of travel. Somehow there were no accidents.

FISHING FOR SNAKEHEADS

Khanh Ngo (right) caught this shad (or whatever it is) on a casting rod with a blade bait. Photo courtesy Mike Tom 

Khanh was 34, Hoang’s cousin, owner of a tackle shop in a city of 8 million people. Two hours later when we had pulled down a narrow lane and parked on a sandy spit, Khanh began to assemble fishing rods. Of politics he said he did not care a lick. He liked to fish, drive nice cars and share a good meal with friends.

Two other anglers arrived at the same time, and it became apparent they were our fishing partners for the day. They had the latest gear. Good inflatable boats—a rarity in Vietnam—and new spinning and casting rods with braided line. Mike and I strung the fly rods. We were fishing for snakeheads.

Hoang indicated the narrow bay and said we would fish there and then get in the boats. I managed to catch a redbelly tilapia and Mike snagged an old rope. Then we loaded up in the boats. Khanh stayed behind to fish from shore and I got in the raft with a 20-something fellow with a cowlick, a smart phone and no English. Mike climbed in with a young guy with a good haircut and a spinning rod. They never told us their names. It didn’t matter.

Don’t disrespect the fish. Photo courtesy Nguyen Hoang

Hoang and Tuan followed in a third inflatable with Hoang, who had never operated a boat before, learning how to run the electric motor and how to row to keep up with our faster boats. It must have been in his blood because he made the little boat scoot.

Snakeheads average 12 inches long and can reach 12 pounds or whatever. They run the bottom like catfish and eat like snakes, anything they can trap in the shallows and bite with that snaky mouth. And people eat them, although Khanh said we were letting them go today. If we caught any.

In a little cove, tucked against the shore I saw a bunch of minnows splash. Frantic tiny fish above the surface. Which could mean only one thing. They had been ganged up on by snakeheads and driven inshore. We got close enough and I threw a frog pattern while Cowlick cast a plastic frog with a small spinner. He cast onto the beach and dragged it into the water. A fish blew up on his bait, like a coho salmon on a twitching jig, but the hook didn’t stick.

We prowled the shorelines and learned the ways of these shallow water predators that can do almost as good on land as they do in the muddy water.

Adding three species to his life list, Gary Lewis fished in northern Vietnam in April.
He caught two different kinds of tilapia, which he could have gotten in the frozen food department at Walmart, and a snakehead, shown in this picture if you look hard enough.

Sometimes the fish don’t bite as fast as we want them to, and this was one of those days. Cowlick talked to Hoang who translated. “Slow down your retrieve. Cast into the brush. Cast onto the land.”

They knew we were trying. Fish blew up on our baits and we had a hard time hooking them, but Mike caught one and his guide hooted, and the guys started talking among themselves. They asked, through the translator, if we had more time, could drive 100 kilometers from here and fish another lake where there were peacock bass. “Much easier to catch.” And we knew we had made friends.

These guys were good anglers; put them in America on a largemouth lake and they could be tournament fishing the next day. They had the skills and fishyness. In the back bay I caught a snakehead, battling it out of the shallows to Cowlick’s end of the boat.

We lunched at a family campground on the edge of the big muddy. Noodles and beef and chicken. Sprouts and lettuce and mint with fish sauce. Washed it down with Coca-Cola. We looked around at our new friends and promised to fish with them again and said they were welcome at our homes, and we would take them trout fishing in America.

ANGLING IN THE COUNTRYSIDE

Next stop on the itinerary was Ninh Binh province, where we stayed in a villa in the middle of a valley of rice paddies. We rode bikes from the lodge to the villa to the restaurant, and just like we did when we were kids, Mike and I put fly rods across the handlebars. But we hedged our bets, and I procured a couple of cane poles with floats and single hooks and a pound of dough bait wrapped in a leaf.

While I fished with the fly rod, my wife angled with a cane pole and a book in the other hand. A fish ripped the rod right out of her grasp and tore off into the lake. Now this wife of mine has caught oversize sturgeon, striped marlin and halibut so she is not unacquainted with big fish. But she had never lost a rod to a fish before. And this fish must have been 15 pounds or more. A carp. Or a snakehead. Her eyes were wide. I found the cane pole where the fish had broken the line and it had drifted up against the bridge.

Next time we go to Vietnam, I’m going back to Hanoi. Next time I will take a 4-piece spinning rod with good backbone and my best spinning reel.

At the villa, a pleasant place to park the bike after fishing. Photo by Gary Lewis 

I will have a selection of weedless blade baits, stick baits and spinner baits. I guess trying to catch a big snakehead is like trying to catch a big brown trout or a largemouth. They will try to eat ducklings, and rats and anything else that waddles down to the shoreline.

Fish are not the same around the world. And snakeheads are not the same more than most. But fishermen are the same. And grandmothers and daughters-in-law are the same too, I guess. And we have something we can learn from each other. Like how to make egg coffee. And they might learn a thing from us about driving, but I doubt it.

Gary Lewis is going back to Vietnam to fish for snakehead and peacock bass. If you are interested in tagging along, email garylewisoutdoors@gmail.com