Anderson: Carter joins Bush, other presidents who fished and made a difference

When Jimmy Carter returns to Plains, Ga., a final time after his state funeral in Washington on Jan. 9, America will bury not only a president, but the most dedicated and widely traveled angler ever to occupy the White House.

Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1977 to 1981, died at 100 on Dec. 29 in Plains.

Beginning with George Washington, who cast a line both commercially and for pleasure, other commanders in chief who fished seriously include John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush.

The experiences of these leaders on lakes and streams impressed upon them the importance of land and water stewardship, furthering their support of conservation, which benefited everyone.

President H.W. Bush, for example, who regularly fished blues and stripers off the Maine coast of his Kennebunkport summer home, and who also passionately sought bonefish off the Florida Keys and the Bahamas, established a record six national marine sanctuaries during his administration.

Bush enlisted in the Navy at age 18 and was its youngest pilot when he received his wings. A lifelong bird hunter and angler, as a Republican president he established 56 new wildlife refuges, 14 new national parks, strengthened the federal Clean Air Act and in 1989 signed the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, protecting 3 million acres of wetlands.

A Yale graduate, Bush also loved to fish for largemouth bass, and in 1990 he invited four-time Bassmaster Classic champion Ricky Clunn to accompany him aboard Air Force One on a trip to Alabama to fish with Bass Anglers Sportsman Society founder Ray Scott, a close friend of Bush’s.

When the plane reached 30,000 feet, Bush called Clunn into his office, where Clunn found Barbara Bush folding laundry and the president with his tackle box opened on his desk.

“‘What do you think we’re going to throw? What do you think we’re going to use? Will this work?’” Clunn recalled Bush saying, not long after the former president died in 2018. “The phone rings, and he switches back. ‘Yes, this is President Bush. Ambassador so-and-so from Somalia, I want to wish you a Happy New Year and a prosperous year.’ Then he puts the phone down, ‘You think this will work here?’ Then there was another call. This went on for an hour.”

Carter’s environmental legacy is also far-reaching, and includes the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which in 1980 created or expanded 16 Alaskan wildlife refuges, 13 national parks, two national monuments, two national forests, two conservation areas and 26 wild and scenic rivers.

“It was not only the greatest conservation law passed in this nation but probably in the world,” David Raskin, the former president of Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges, told Politico recently.

As president, Carter, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, also signed the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act. Though controversial even among some Democrats, the measure was supported by his vice president and fellow angler, Minnesotan Walter Mondale.

Historians will debate Carter’s presidential legacy. But among those who fished with him or were aware of his dedication to fly fishing, there’s no doubt he took the pastime seriously.

“We often landed in the helicopter at Camp David,” Carter recalled in one of the 32 books he wrote. “(We) changed clothes while the White House press corps departed to a nearby Maryland town, and then secretly (we) took off again, to land 40 minutes later in a pasture alongside Spruce Creek in Pennsylvania for a couple of days of secluded fly fishing. These jaunts were among our best-kept secrets.”

Carter fished the green drake hatch on Pennsylvania’s Spruce Creek almost every year for 40 years.

“President Carter wrote five feature articles for Fly Fisherman (magazine), mostly travelogues about fishing in Tierra del Fuego, the Ponoi River, or Honduras,” Ross Purnell, the publication’s editor, recalled recently. “He was kind, humble, and always enjoyed swapping fish stories. But for him it was never just about the fish. He enjoyed the camaraderie of fishing with his friends or with Rosalynn, and he often combined diplomatic or humanitarian work with his fishing travels. And he was a constant defender of the environment.”

For 14 years, Matt Ramsey of Eugene, Ore., was a fly fishing guide on the Eg River in Outer Mongolia, which is sandwiched between Russia and China, It’s one of the few places where taimen, the world’s largest salmonid — which includes salmon, char, whitefish, grayling and trout — can be caught.

The world record taimen taken on a fly was landed in the Tugur River in Russia and weighed 115 pounds, 8 ounces.

In 2013, accompanied by Secret Service agents and a few friends, and on the cusp of his 89th birthday, Carter and his wife stepped off a vintage Russian helicopter in Outer Mongolia to fish for taimen for a week. Ramsey would be their guide.

“Taimen are very aggressive predators, but they can be challenging to hook and catch on a fly,” Ramsey said Thursday by phone from his home. “One reason is that we throw big flies that can be difficult to handle in the wind.”

Carter’s daily routine, Ramsey said, was to depart his and Rosalynn’s yurt early each morning for the camp lodge, where he’d pour a cup of coffee and work on the book he was writing at the time.

“At 8 o’clock every morning we’d head to the river and fish for 9 hours straight,” Ramsey said. “Despite his age, he was one of the toughest people I’ve ever been around. If he wasn’t going to catch a taimen, it wouldn’t be because he didn’t try hard enough.”

Casting a two-handed spey rod, which he had never done before, Carter landed a couple of taimen in the 30-inch class. Then he caught the fish he was after — a 40-incher — and Ramsey held the fish aloft, alongside Carter, while Secret Service agents and others prepared to take photos.

But the prized fish squirted from Ramsey’s hands.

“I chased it in the water and even dove head first under one of the boats, but I couldn’t get it,” Ramsey said. “There would be no pictures of the fish, and I could feel President Carter’s disappointment. ‘I’m sorry, Mr. President,’ I said. ‘Shake it off,’ he said.”

As Carter knew well, the fish wasn’t the point, anyway.

The experience was.

“During the most critical moments of my life I have been renewed in spirit by the special feelings that come from the solitude and beauty of the out-of-doors,” Carter wrote in his book, “An Outdoor Journal, Adventures and Reflections.”

Words to live by.

For presidents and everyone.