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  The Last Cast - Fishing Reminiscences. He's been called The Mouth That Roared, Dr. No, and the most opinionated opinion maker in all of the great, wild Canadian West. As a talk show host for Vancouver’s CKNW, radio giant Rafe Mair has carved out a reputation as a scathing, hard hitting interviewer who's ready and willing to take on the big issues and bloated egos that make the political world spin. When politicians visit his studio - which they must do because of his huge audience - they talk of “going into the bear pit” and they consider it a success if they get out with their hide still on. After listening to a Premier or leading cabinet minister scolded on air, you tend not to think of Rafe Mair as humble, charming or gentle. Rafe Mair is a raging grizzly, not a Teddy Bear. Well, think again. In a slim volume of prose quietly slipped into print by Hancock House, a small British Columbia publishing house, the real Rafe Mair is exposed. In his book, The Last Cast -- Fishing Reminiscences, Mr. Mair pushes away the microphone, turns his back on politics and takes us wandering along the trout streams that run through his life. As it turns out, he's a delightful companion, who writes with passion about his love for the art of angling - and who takes neither his writing, nor his sport, nor himself, too seriously.
He relates this story, from a winter trip after searun trout on the Sunshine Coast, north of Vancouver: ``We decided to fish at Grantham's Landing, just a mile or so from the ferry terminal. The tide was high, which was perfect, and as I walked down into the water I saw the ferry pull from the terminal. At that very moment, I tripped over my own feet and fell in. Right in. Head under, the whole nine yards.'' Mr. Mair then relates how he got changed into a spare set of clothes -- and promptly fell in again. What really bothered him about this was not that he'd made a fool of himself, but that he was forced to sit, shivering in the car, while his fishing partner caught trout after trout. There are some pretty good fishing stories here, particularly from his adventures in New Zealand where he goes every winter to try his skill on famed waters like the Tauranga-Taupo. “It was a beautiful, warm late summer day,” he writes, “ with the small puffs of cloud punctuating that special azure blue which is the sky of New Zealand. The overriding sound was the cacophony of cicadas in the hot sun, a noise which becomes so much a part of your environment that you don’t hear it until you think about it. Then it is deafening. . . “We walked and sort of half-fished, half-daydreamed up river, through my favorite pools and runs with nary a sniff.” He writes about idling by the river, fishing run after run without success, and then stopping for a leisurely lunch. While he and his wife Wendy relax, he notices a trout feeding, deep back under the overhanging branches of a tree. It is the type of trout most fly fishermen would overlook, if they were working the river hard. Often Mr. Mair, like most of us, would blow the chance at a fish like this, by hanging his fly up in the tree. But he stalks this one with skill and finesse, and makes the right cast. “What followed was a marvelous display of angry Rainbow trying to get free. One, two three times she jumped and then ran for the fast water leading into the deep pool and jumped again. “In ten minutes it was all over - there she was, with her beautiful girdle of many colors, lying at my feet. I gently removed the fly and sent her back on her way.” The Last Cast isn’t great literature, but Rafe makes you feel like you’re there, soaking in the heat of a summer’s day, listening to the concer of the cicadas - and cheering him on as he makes a great cast to land a 3 1/2-pound trout. And he nullifies any criticism of his writing with this comment: ``I will never write like Haig-Brown, Grey, or Farson, but I offer this humble effort as a bit of light reading for those who know experts and buy their products - yet stumble along, trying to improve a bit, not measuring up too well with the experts yet still understanding the one essential truth - Fly-fishing is a hell of a good way to spend one's leisure hours.'' (The Last Cast is published simultaneously in Canada and the United States by: Hancock House Publishers Ltd., 19313 Zero Avenue, Surrey, B.C. Canada. V4P 1M7. Hancock House Publishers, 1431 Harrison Avenue, Blaine, U.S.A. WA 98230-5005.)
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He candidly admits to being a bit of a klutz, at times terrifying trout and innocent bystanders by fishing with all the grace of a water buffalo.
