Safe Travels Uncle Steve

I got the news that Steve Yatomi had died while sitting on a couch in the Outer Banks of North Carolina watching football.

It felt wrong. Given Steve’s character – and his outsized influence on my life – I would have expected to get it via passenger pigeon while chasing giant tigerfish in Africa, or through smoke signals while knee deep in Australian mud stalking a single wary barramundi. He was a pioneer, an explorer and most of all a people person.

I never would have expected that last categorization when my friend Dennis Shew first suggested that we travel to the Brazilian Amazon with Steve. At least back then, he was a terrible emailer. I got one-word answers and occasionally even some non-answers. But what he lacked in electronic skills, he more than made up for in person. To see Steve at his best was to watch him in a small customs shack between African nations, chatting with the kitchen help on a Brazilian houseboat, or holding court with the in-crowd in some semi-random foreign tackle shop. Everyone knew him, he knew everyone else, and they all loved him.

Nowhere was that more evident than on our 2016 trip to Africa where we visited five countries in three weeks. After two trips with Uncle Steve to Brazil, it didn’t take much for him to convince us to spend more than we’d ever spent to go on that African trip. The crazy thing is that he undersold the experience. Every day we saw something more incredible than the day before. On Thursday it might be crocs eating an elephant carcass. On Friday it would be a lion guarding a cape buffalo kill from jackals and hyenas while six or seven lion cubs sought shade under our safari vehicle, within arm’s reach.

On that same trip he introduced us to the guides and staffers and miscellaneous folks of interest who revered him. He wasn’t just in touch with the management of the lodges he promoted – instead, he was a man of the people, aware of everyone’s family situation, their personalities and how to bring out the best in them.

The last time I saw Steve was in 2019 in Manaus, Brazil. I was there to explore a new fishery with another outfitter and wandered into the Sucuri Pesca tackle shop to make a few purchases. Steve was holding court amongst a who’s who of Brazilian anglers and lower-case influencers. Even those who didn’t speak a word of English were hanging on his every utterance and hand gesture. The next day after going to the fish market I met up with Steve and his then-girlfriend Rita and went back to their Airbnb to hang out for a few hours. He cooked me a traditional Brazilian stew and told stories.

On several occasions since then, we talked about a trip to the arapaima fishery he’d pioneered in Guyana as a way to help the local economy and preserve the species. I’d pored over pictures he and his clients had taken in New Guinea, both freshwater and saltwater, and resolved to make that trip with him sooner rather than later.

But I waited too long. I never got to see those places through his particular lens, and I waited too long to tell him how much he’d influenced my own international fishing travel path. He was a beacon, showing me that I could make less money than I had practicing law and enjoy life more. I hope my days from here on out are a testament to his influence. We only spent a total of five weeks together, and yet somehow he changed my life.