If I were to guess at the most impactful fish White has ever caught, I imagine in no particular order, that there would be three contenders. The first bonefish he caught in the waters around Abaco Lodge, the spot White owns in the Bahamas, must have been significant in the foundation of this cornerstone of his fly fishing empire. Then there’s the first Arapaima caught in the Guyanan jungle on the initial Indifly exploratories. That was a fish which launched Indifly, White’s favourite project, and confirmed the validity of the area as a fly fishing destination which could both protect the environment and sustain the local community. It looks like other destinations, like Lesotho, might follow. Perhaps the most impactful fish however, was a 20lb sea-run brown trout at Kau Tapen in Tierra del Fuego that White guided a client into, back in January 2005. The last, while a great fish, is on the surface not that remarkable, but its significance cannot be discounted in terms of the progression of White’s career. The client was Bill Ackman, a hedge fund investor and, at the time, a rank newbie to fly fishing who had rocked up at KauTapen with all the gear and no idea. He’d bid successfully for the trip at a charity auction. “First time fly fishing and he got a 20-pound brown trout, that’s a helluva way to start. At the end of the week, Bill said, ‘You should come work for me. You’d do really well doing what I do.’ You get a lot of offers as a fishing guide. People are always throwing things at you. “Come visit,” “Do this” and you never know how real that stuff is. I liked the guy and was intrigued. I finished my season in April 2005, got back to Wyoming where I was living and there was a box at my house full of finance books and a letter from Bill saying, ‘Read these books and give me a call.’” So White did. Booked for the summer, he guided, studied the books and spoke to his other clients, many of
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whom were in finance, about the offer on the table. People generally gave him one of three responses. 1. “Dude, you’ve got to go. How can you not take that opportunity?” 2. “Every chance those guys get, they come and spend their time with you. Why do you want to go be on the other side?” 3. The third was that, at the time there was a lot of stuff going on in the news and Bill Ackman was not viewed in a favourable light, so a few people were wary of White working for him at all. If one thing becomes clear about White, it’s that he knows, or has learnt, how to identify opportunities. This was a potential game changer. “I was guiding 250 days a year so, as far as guiding was concerned, I had it made. I had a killer job in Jackson Hole, all repeat business, I had a winter job in Argentina, but it also meant that I was 25 and I was never going to make more money than I was making right then. Ultimately, it was just a judgement call. I’d spent a week with the guy, I thought he was great. Worst case scenario was I don’t guide in Argentina, I go to New York for six months, I learn that I don’t want to work in an office or live in a city, I learn I don’t like finance and I come back and start guiding again. If that’s my worst case, then I’m good. And the best case was, I don’t know what happens. It’s a lottery ticket.” He took Ackman up on his offer and moved to New York to work for the hedge fund, Persian Square. A fishing guide with a degree in philosophy, he was the only analyst who had not been to Harvard Business School. The story has been told in publications like Outside Magazine and Forbes, ‘The Fishing Guide Who Hooked Hedge Fund Titan Bill Ackman.’ For those in finance, the hook is – what could this guy teach Ackman? From the perspective of the fishing industry White’s is an unusual story – what the hell could White learn from Ackman?
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