Last year I wrote about my one attempt to go flyfishing in Afghanistan. The entry began:

Afghanistan and flyfishing are not often linked in the same sentence. Afghanistan is not a destination touted by the outfitters who fly anglers to the exotic last-best-place-on-earth spots such as Russia's Kamchatka or Tierra del Fuego. But in the 1980s, when I was working with the Afghan Resistance in Peshawar, Pakistan, I heard stories about a "crazy doctor" who managed to sneak into the north of Afghanistan every year, escorted by an armed band of Afghan mujaheddin, to flyfish for brown trout. I ascertained that there were indeed brown trout, introduced in the 19th century by the British, in the cold streams of the mountains north of the Panjshir Valley where the Soviet occupiers had only minimal command and control. The doctor didn't sound too crazy to me. I had to try it.

Last week I received the following email:

The "crazy doctor" was not a doctor nor crazy...he was myself! I used to visit my adoption family somewhere in north Hindu Kush where trout were abundant in the 70's and 80's. I went back to visit them again since 2001 but there is no more trout around villages, they have been fished by explosives during the war. Now you must go far away in the mountains to have some chance to get one. One remark: brown trout have not been introduced by British, they are mentioned by Marco Polo and also by Herodote.

In further correspondence with the sender, Jean-José Puig, I learned that his first fishing trip in Afghanistan was in 1973, when it was a very different country, and the first brown trout he caught weighed in at twelve pounds. As for the origin of the brown trout, Jean-José wrote a book, La pêche à la truite en Afghanistan, in which he theorizes that the trout migrated from Europe in meltwater streams at the end of the last Ice Age.

Jean-José and I discovered we had a mutual friend. Since the 1980s I have known a beautiful French doctor, Laurence Laumonier, who is one of my life heroes. At great personal risk she went into northern Afghanistan repeatedly during the 1980s to work with the Afghan resistance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud as he and his mujaheddin fought the Soviets, and to treat the wounded in primitive cave clinics in the rugged mountains. Now it turns out that Jean-José became a close friend of Massoud’s in the 1970s and it was he who recommended Dr. Laumonier to Massoud.

I may never get to go fishing in Afghanistan, but I have discovered over the months that this little blog casts a wide net and hauls in some great catches.