Fly Fishing Insider Podcast
Soul River Inc. runs fly fishing trips it calls deployments: veterans and inner-city youth travel together to waters under environmental threat, from the Florida Everglades to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The youth research the threat and teach it streamside; the veterans mentor, deliver a daily life lesson, and stay involved long after the trip ends.
Chad Brown is a US Navy veteran, photographer and creative director who founded Soul River Inc., a nonprofit that brings combat veterans and inner-city youth together as leaders for environmental justice.
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What does Soul River Inc. actually do?
Soul River Inc. merges two groups that rarely meet: combat veterans and youth from the city, most of them kids of color. On the water the veteran builds the young person's confidence and leadership, and in return the young person gives the veteran a reason to push forward. Chad Brown describes the exchange as iron sharpening iron, and says the fishing is the vehicle rather than the destination.
How did fly fishing help Chad Brown recover from PTSD?
Chad Brown was diagnosed with PTSD after Navy service, lost his job, and ended up homeless in Portland, Oregon, after four or five years on heavy medication he describes as walking around like a zombie. A fly shop happened to sit behind where he was standing; he bought his first rod, hooked a salmon within a cast or two, and felt the medication seem to ooze out of his pores. His doctors then wrote him a prescription to fish more, tapering his medication as long as he kept up group therapy.
Why does Soul River Inc. call its trips deployments?
Soul River Inc. borrows the war term deliberately. The organization identifies places in the US where fresh water, wildlife or public land is under threat, treats that place as ground zero, and deploys teams of veterans and youth into it. Those deployments have run from the Florida Everglades to the Gila River, into Mexico, and up to the Arctic Circle on river runs of 200 to 300 miles.
How does the mentoring work on a Soul River deployment?
On a Soul River deployment the roles invert daily. The youth present the research they have gathered in a classroom held on the riverbank, and the veterans sit as students. After that class, one veteran takes 30 minutes to an hour to deliver a life lesson, and every veteran on the trip is expected to prepare one. The relationship carries on at home in Portland, with veterans continuing to take the youth fishing.
Why does Soul River Inc. keep going back to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the place Soul River veterans call home, and Chad Brown has worked alongside the Indigenous nation there for more than eight years. The sensitive ground is the area the government labels 1002, the calving and birthing grounds where the caribou migration begins. Drilling there would break the migration and, because the people of that nation are the people of the caribou, break a way of life with it.
What does climate change look like on the ground in the Arctic?
There are no trails in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, so the saying is that however the land speaks to you is how you walk it. Chad Brown says a half-mile bushwhack under a 30 to 40 pound pack leaves anyone huffing, because the permafrost is melting and the tundra now moves underfoot like a waterbed. He has watched the village he partners with relocate, and the caribou migration route shift from one year to the next.
What gear does Chad Brown fish in the Arctic?
Chad Brown fishes the Arctic as a spey angler, usually a six or seven weight on a 13-and-a-half-foot spey rod. Pressure is low enough that almost anything moves fish, from streamers and leeches to top-water patterns. He reaches most often for streamers in fuchsia, pink and purple, and says grayling will come up and take on the surface when conditions line up.
Key takeaways
- Soul River Inc. structures trips so the youth teach and the veterans listen first, then each veteran delivers a prepared life lesson of 30 to 60 minutes.
- Conservation starts with conversation: you cannot expect someone to defend water or wildlife they have never been given a reason to love.
- For grayling and lake trout in the Arctic, a six or seven weight on a 13-and-a-half-foot spey rod covers the water, and pink, fuchsia and purple streamers move fish.
- Arctic grayling will take on the surface under the right conditions, not just on subsurface streamers and leeches.
- The 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the caribou calving ground, which is why leasing it for drilling is treated as a cultural threat and not only a wildlife one.
- Mentoring a young angler needs no technique list: show up when you said you would, lead from the heart, and stay present the whole day.
