By all the rules that apply to the business of guiding, Mo Bradley should be working himself out of a job. Instead, the cheerful, talkative, unofficial ambassador for Kamloops trout finds his calendar is almost fully booked

Bradley, who retired from his Kamloops automotive business last year to devote himself full-time to the sport of fishing, has launched a unique guide service in the Interior. Most guides are secretive, carefully guarding the knowledge that makes them so valuable. The last thing a guide wants is to teach a client everything he knows. After all, if you do that, why would anyone need you?

Bradley’s approach is just the opposite. In fact, if you’re not interested in learning, he doesn’t want to hear from you.

Bradley holds a guide license, but calls himself a teacher. He offers a three-day crash course in the art and passion of fly fishing Interior lakes for Kamloops trout. If you don’t know how to cast and can’t tell a chironomid from a damsel fly, he’ll welcome you with open arms.

“One on one it takes me an hour-and-a-half to teach someone to cast adequately,” he says. As we talk he’s making plans for a student who’s about to use her fly rod for the first time. Her husband bought it for her, and threw in a lesson with Bradley.

“He loves fishing. Her thinking is, if she can’t beat him, she may as well join him on the water,” he says. “So I’ll teach her to cast this afternoon. Tomorrow I’ll take her out - and she’ll catch her first trout.”

Next weekend, she’ll not only be able to go fishing with her husband, but she’ll probably be able to teach him a thing or two.

Bradley’s crash course starts with a slide show on lake insects. After that, he takes his students to see an array of aquarium tanks he has that are full of lake weeds - and insects. There are chironomids, sedges, shrimp, damsels, dragons.

“You name it, I’ve got it in there,” says Bradley.

Watching how the insects move, feed and respond to temperature and barometric changes are an important part of the fishing course. And it is mesmerizing to peer beneath the surface and see how the world of trout works.

“People who have fished 20 years look at my tanks and are absolutely fascinated,” says Bradley. “They’ve never been eyeball to eyeball with a dragon fly nymph before. They just can’t believe it.”

On day two, Bradley gets his students (never more than two at a time) out in boats on a Kamloops lake. He teaches them how to handle the boat, how to anchor, how to read the water. He shows them what fly to use and, referring back to what they saw in the tanks, tells them how to retrieve the fly so it acts like a real insect. When they hook up, he talks them through the fight.

“Oh, it’s really something,” he says of the way people react when they hit their first fish.

Sometimes the anglers jump higher than the trout.

“I had a Japanese fellow out - I could see fresh air between him and the boat seat when he got that first one. Mind you, it was a big fish. About 8 pounds. He apologized later for almost sinking us.”

Bradley includes fly tying as part of the course if, at the end of a 10-hour day, the students have any energy left.

“That’s really something when people tie a fly at night then catch a trout on it the next morning,” he says.

By the time he’s done with them, Bradley may not have molded a complete angler, but he’s sure got them on the right track.

A lot of guides will tell you that the problem with Bradley’s approach is that it destroys repeat business. The graduates won’t be back because they have been taught all they need to know.

“That’s the way I thought it was going to be too,” says Bradley. “But it’s funny how it’s worked out. The people I had for three days last year are booking for a week this year.They want to learn more -I guess they just had so much fun doing it.”

I guess so.

The teacher can be reached at 250- 579-9097 or by writing: Mo Bradley/3558 Overlander Drive/Kamloops, B.C./V2B 6X8.