Nolte, Miles
Miles Nolte
Miles Nolte was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. After college, he moved to Botswana, where he spent two years teaching and writing and occasionally casting streamers at tigerfish. In 2003, he used his savings to buy a place ticket to Bozeman, Montana, where for three years he fished 150 days a year. It was during this time that Miles cultivated a long-distance fascination with Alaska's famed Bristol Bay watershed. In 2006, he realized that the only way he'd ever get to fish Alaska was to work there, and his experiences doing so are recounted in The Alaska Chronicles. Nolte eventually returned to Bozeman, where he currently resides.
On September 20, 2007, Miles Nolte posted the final installment of his summer job memoir on The Drake magazine's Internet message board. For seventeen weeks, Nolte had used his laptop and a satellite Internet connection to transmit his semi-daily account of what it's really like to be a fly fishing guide on a remote Alaskan river.
Sitting in his tent above a river packed with migrating salmon and gluttonous trout, he wrote about anglers that he enjoyed guiding and others that he couldn't wait to get rid of. He described epic fishing days and days of bitter disappointment. He typed about wolves and eagles and beavers and bears. Lots of bears. There were periods of sunny weather and dry flies, followed by stretches of relentless rain, wind, and cold. And beyond the trials that nature doled out, Miles also described how overworked outboards don't always start, tents sometimes catch fire, and dysfunction often runs rampant among divergent guide and client personalities that are thrust together in a desolate and trying environment.
By the time Miles returned from Alaska, his online musings had attracted a loyal and vicarious following of anglers and guides from around the world. They praised him for his articulate candor, and they thanked him profusely for transporting them with each new post to a place they may have otherwise never reached.
Departure Publishing is proud to present The Alaska Chronicles, a fishing guide's memoir that originated and evolved in a most unusual manner. If you've ever fished Alaska, or if you hope to someday, this book will leave you with an insightful view of the outfitting business and a newfound appreciation for North America's most pristine and prolific coldwater fishery.
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"...a great read worth anyone’s time even if they have never fished."
-Frank Moster, veteran publisher's sales rep