Local fishing guide and author Frank Hume has been guiding fishing trips on the Current River and around Montauk State Park for the past 15 years, he says. Working only for tips, he says the smiles on the faces of those he guides makes it all worth it.
Hume was a regular at the Montauk State Park during his youth, and though his career drew him away from the waters of the Current River, he found himself being drawn back to where he felt most alive.
“My first job during high school was in Montauk State Park. My father wanted me to learn the meaning of the word ‘work’. So, for $1.65 an hour, I picked up the fish guts that were in galvanized trashcans throughout the park at three o-clock in the morning. We cut grass and weeded the park,” said Hume.
Hume said his later career at the state’s capitol gave him ample experience writing.
“I have 35 years in graphics and design from the Missouri house of representatives. I actually started the in-house bill printing process for the Missouri legislature in 1974,” said Hume. “After I retired and my children grew up, I found myself in a huge house in Jefferson City. I got tired of going down to the Eagle’s Club and getting into a rut, drinking beer and playing Keno, and there was no life involved. I said, ‘you know what, I want to climb off this barstool and go do what I do best.’”
Hume has spent the last decade and a half guiding anglers in the area. His latest writing is a flyfishing manual, “The Essential Guide to a Precious Resource: A Handbook to Flyfishing Montauk State Park and The Current River.”
“This reference should provide both simplification and understanding to the beginner along with weaponry for the more advanced,” reads the author’s preface of the book.
Hume says the book is not just a regular manual, but more of a “virtual float trip” along the Current River.
“Whether or not you flyfish, it’s kind of a crossover book where you learn how to flyfish, and there’s a topographical reading of the whole resource. I hope I give justice that the Current River deserves in all its glory. It also has a storyline, to where it’s not such a mundane manual of ‘how-to’,” said Hume. “Before you know it, it draws you in because of the storyline, and you’re learning as you go through.”
The book is a passion project for Hume, who says he wrote it out of love for the sport and to mentor anglers old and new.
“When I look at how many smiles I put on people’s faces, that’s all that really matters. That’s what I did this for. It’s for the love of the game, and to put a smile on somebody’s face. People don’t get it, that I sometimes do a lot, in fact I may go into the hole on this book, but I don’t care. You know? If it helps somebody else, what is that worth? I can look at the mirror at night and be happy with what I see,” Hume said.
According to the preface, the book targets the basic fundamentals of fly fishing which will be applicable well beyond the waters of the Current, and features information and insight that will benefit anglers no matter the skill level.
“We will launch our journey from the springs of Montauk and venture many of the runs and turns found downstream within the glorious current River. Look upon this virtual float trip as a scavenger hunt of clues and pieces to reveal a puzzle. Once assembled, it will reveal an angler’s map of treasure, filled with future rewards and lasting memories,” it reads.
“The Essential Guide to a Precious Resource: A Handbook to Flyfishing Montauk State Park and The Current River” by Frank Hume will be in the gift shop at Montauk Lodge by March 1.
