Fly fishing is Emmett Heath's heaven and the Green River is his god.
Heath got hooked on angling as a young teen while fishing with his father in Utah. It became more than a past-time or a sport and instead a state of being where he said he feels at “one with nature.” So it’s not too surprising he ended up making a living from it and becoming widely known in the fly fishing community as Dean of the Green.
Never miss another story like this: Sign up for a free newsletter to keep informed about the Colorado River and Great Salt Lake.
He earned that title for his encyclopedic knowledge of the river - its water flows, the rocks and insects, and his keen ability to read the river and find fish in this tributary of the Colorado River. Although he has a different take on which river is feeding the other one.
“I say the Colorado River is a tributary of the Green. The Green has more flow where they meet,” Heath said.
Listen to the story here.
Emmett Heath's wall of awards and articles (Sheri Quinn/UPR).
Heath lives in Dutch John, a town in Daggett County with a summertime population of about 200 people, with river guides making up about half of them.
“Everybody that drives here says ‘wow,’ Heath said.
It’s a place of pinyon-juniper woodlands, rugged red rock canyons and fierce winters where temperatures can dip to 40 degrees below zero. And even though the nearest shopping center is 100 miles away, Heath has called this small town “away from the world” home for 50 years.
“The main thing that fishing does is put you where you like most, in the mountains and the rivers. That’s what you love about it. You always want to be along the river, especially a guide,” said Heath.
Dutch John is catered to fly fishing on the Green River below the nearby Flaming Gorge dam.
“First off, we are in the prettiest river in the world. It’s so clear you can see everything. Makes it harder to catch anything but you can find ways to do it,” said Heath.
Heath almost chose a career in baseball or football and luckily for the thousands of people he has guided over decades, his heart landed elsewhere.
“I hate getting yelled at by guys that want to motivate you so I went fishing instead.”
In the early 1980s Heath and others noticed the Green River was untapped for guided fly fishing and that discovery set the course for its reputation as a world-renowned tailwater fishing destination.
“There really weren’t any good guides on the river until me and a bunch of guides just all saw it at the same time, the quality of the river, how empty the river was compared to the Madison, the Snake and all the other big rivers,” said Heath.
Working for Western Rivers Flyfisher, Heath became one of the first registered fly fishing guides on the Green River in 1986 and in 2016 after years of hard work he was inducted into the Utah Fly Fishing Hall of Fame.
“As far as being a guide you have to know everything. You can be a guide and not know anything but no one comes back to you anymore. So it’s really a lot of work and a lot of history knowing everything about the river.”
Emmett Heath's Dean of the Green back pack (Sheri Quinn/UPR).
The hardest part about guiding, he said, are the customers.
“Because they think they are all good fishermen but they are generally terrible fishermen.”
Before becoming a professional guide, Heath served in the Air Force as a guard protecting planes at a U.S. military base in Binh Thuy, Vietnam, where he was exposed to Agent Orange. He said that exposure eventually led to bone infections and then a heart attack while guiding on the Green river in the mid 1990s.
A group of doctors who were his devoted clients banded together to take care of him and transported him from a rural hospital in Vernal to the University of Utah hospital in Salt Lake City, where he awaited a heart transplant for nearly 4 years. When he finally got one, Heath said the guiding community knew about it before he did.
Fly fishermen on the Green River (Sheri Quinn/UPR).
“Phone calls went out everywhere. That makes it a fun thing. You know, guiding is a lot of fun,” said Heath.
He calls the Green River his “living friend” and it introduced him to a lot of other friends including celebrities such as Kevin Costner, Heather Thomas, Tiger Woods, Woody Harelson, and Jaimi Lee Curtis.
He said it was a special day when disabled war veterans floated with him and other guide crews, “It was therapy,” he said.
According to Heath, fishing on the Green River has not changed much over the years, there is still plenty of trout to catch and release. What’s changed the most, he said, is the amount of people - more of them.
“Because it’s literally the best river in the world. The insects, the chemical nutrients. It’s perfect,” said Heath.
