In his 71 years Joe Brooks lived three lifetimes. From his privileged youth to a broken alcoholic to one of the most revered sportsmen of his time, Joe’s life is as complex as it is inspirational. Few people manage to change themselves in any meaningful way. But Joe did and, in doing so, he changed the world of fly fishing.
He certainly did change fly fishing. Never met the man of course, but I did meet a few of the men he inspired along his long and fishy way, during my own Argentine travels nearly 25 years ago, namely Jose “Bebe” de Anchorena of the Rio Chimehuin “Boca” fame, the annually visiting great Mel Krieger and a couple of the small band of, elderly in the early and mid 1990s when I met them, Argentine brothers who became that country’s fly fishing pioneers – all of them instructed, encouraged and inspired by Joe Brooks in the mid 1950s. Together with “A River Never Sleeps” Roderick Haig-Brown of Britain then Canada (and still with us Lefty, of course), Brooks was an Angling giant whose like we won’t see again.