Fishing With Helen

The Rogue River at Jennings Point this late March morning is a shade of brown more reminiscent of the Mississippi than of one of the world’s great salmon and steelhead rivers. Having anchored her craft 30 feet from shore in less than two feet of water, guide Helen Burns, a bantam blonde clad in blue Gore-Tex rain paints and a blue sweater, is cautiously optimistic. “If we’re going to get any fish today, it’s going to be in the shallows,” she says.

She baits up four lines with anchovies, threading the bait carefully using a sliver of wood as a needle. “I used to crochet, but now I spend most of my knitting time making leaders and spinners,” she continues, feeding line out. “I feel for little pockets. That’s where I want to drop the bait—where the fish will pick it up.” A few rays of sunshine poke through the blanket of fog upriver to the east, throwing specks of light on the thick stands of western hemlock and madrone that line the riverbanks. Now, we sit back and wait.

The Rogue entered the world’s fishing consciousness in the 1930s as Hollywood celebrities cum outdoors people—among them Clark Gable and Ginger Rogers—discovered the river’s steelhead and salmon bounties. Rogers, a passionate angler, was featured in hip boots holding a fly rod on the cover of LIFE magazine (March 2, 1942), and owned a 1000-acre ranch on the Rogue from 1940 to 1990, where she entertained many of Hollywood’s elite. Celebrity anglers still ply the Rogue, but the river’s real stars are its finned visitors—especially the Chinook (or King) salmon. Fall Chinook can reach 50, 60 even 70 pounds (the world record fly-rod-caught Chinook was landed here in October 2002 by Grant Martinsen—a monster of 71.5 pounds).

Guiding on the Rogue has a rich and boisterous history. Pioneer guide Glenn Wooldridge would float clients from Grants Pass to Gold Beach, eating what they could catch and shoot and camping along the way. When roads extended below Grants Pass and upriver to Agness from the mouth, people living along the river turned their places into lodges, and visitors would no longer have to rough it. Women rarely ventured on the early trips, and heaven forbid that any woman would be guiding.

Today, there’s little doubt that Helen Burns is up for just about anything that the Rogue—or its mostly male inhabitants—can throw at her. When she turned 18, she set her sights northward, and got dropped off on the southern end of Kodiak Island in Alaska. “It was very remote country,” she says, refreshing our hooks with anchovies.

“I built a log cabin, trapped wolverines and mink, and worked on a 76-foot fishing boat, long-lining halibut.” (She was one of the first women to do so.) “My forearms would get huge during halibut season. When we’d come into shore, the crew would visit a saloon, and I’d get in arm wrestling contests.” As she recounts the old times, Helen bubbles with energy. She bounces from rod to rod, making sure our baits aren’t hung up. She points out a seal upstream, expressing concern that he doesn’t bother any prospective fish that might be considering our anchovies. Who cares about the fish, I think; I’ve got Helen!

In 1979, Helen visited Gold Beach for the first time. “When I saw Gold Beach and the Rogue, I said to my then husband ‘If we ever leave Alaska, we’ll come here.’” She ended up coming south in the late 80s with just her twin baby boys, and has supported them between guiding and an off-season job at the lumberyard. While some guides viewed Helen as an upstart—a woman who should remember that her place was not guiding fishermen—many wanted to see her succeed. “All the best guides wanted to share their experience,” she recalls. “They wanted me to be good, and they treated me like a queen.” When the salmon runs are at their peak on a river like the Rogue, boats cue up and anchor one after another. One of a guide’s biggest challenges is to anchor their boat in the current among the other boats. It looks easy, but getting it right without fouling up anyone’s lines is tricky. “The year I started, there was an occasion near Elephant Rock when there were more than 70 boats anchored up,” Helen says. “When I pulled up, every man came out on deck to see what this woman was going to do. That was okay with me—I had the confidence that I could do it.” And she did.

And has done so thousands of times since.

After watching our rod tips bounce up and down with the current for another hour, Helen springs to the cabin, pops up one of the bench seats to produce a propane stove, and whips up breakfast. “Salmon fishing is hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of panic,” she says with a laugh. “That’s where breakfast comes in.” Soon we’re enjoying a scramble of eggs, sausage, peppers and cheese, buttered toast and jam and hot coffee. It hits the spot.

As she gathers up our dishes, Helen relates story after story. One concerns a charging grizzly she shot down at point-blank range. Another concerns an awkward angler in the lower Rogue. One of her clients hooked into a big fish, and it went right for the outboard of a nearby boat. “I yelled, ‘Pick your motor up.’ I was sure that fish would get tangled around his outboard and break off,” she says with a sparkle in her eye. “The guy tried to pick his motor up, and proceeded to fall overboard—and sure enough, the fish got tangled around the motor. Somehow we managed to fish the guy out of the drink, untangle the fish and land it. It was 42 pounds.”

There are more stories, including one of how a fish hooked by another angler once jumped and landed in her boat (“I threw it back in so they could land it themselves.”). There are also a few more fishing spots, but no luck. Helen’s enthusiasm isn’t dampened a bit. In fact, she’s just about the happiest skunked fishing guide I’ve ever seen. “For me, the best part of being a guide is sharing the beauty of the Rogue with my clients. Sometimes in the fall we’ll see black bear along the banks. Oftentimes there are bald eagles and osprey.

“But don’t get me wrong,” she quickly adds. “It’s wonderful to be a woman guide, pull into a slot on the river where other guys are fishing, and hook into a Chinook right away.”