OUT THERE: Once a controversial pastor, now gone fishing

James White was one of Colorado Springs’ most prominent ministers and activists, an outspoken liberal gadfly whose principled stands on social issues made his an influential voice in the community, and often a lightning rod for controversy.

That was then.

“My passion has gone toward fishing in the past few years,” explained White, 72, who retired in 2005 after 16 years as pastor of First Congregational Church - United Church of Christ, and is a guide at the west-side fishing shop Angler’s Covey.

“I love to get out there and have a good time and tell people about it,” he said.

For this minister-turned-fishing guide-turned-writer, fishing is all about the good times, the adventures, the people he meets, the conversations. He tells about them in a new book, “Round Boys Great Adventures,” published recently by Whitefish Press, a Cincinnati publisher of books about fishing.

This is not a rod-and-reel book. The best anecdotes actually have little to do with fishing, as White and his buddies, nicknamed the “Round Boys” — White describes them as “substantial dudes” — travel the Rockies in search of trout, to a soundtrack of Garrison Keillor and Paul Simon.

There was the time at Stone Lake on Jicarilla Apache Reservation in New Mexico when tribal police gave them a $2 parking ticket with a mandatory court appearance that required them to spend three extra days waiting for the courthouse to open. Or the time on the Green River in Utah when White had such a bad allergy attack — without medicine available — that he nearly died.

Most of all, White hopes people will appreciate the banter, the conversations he re-created through notes he kept of the trips. He decided to write the book after a friend read his notes and wanted to see more.

“I blame it all on a woman and her prurient interest in what men do on their fishing trips,” he said.

Stories aside, there is some practical information for anglers, as the book’s tone gets “semi-serious” in the appendix with instructions for still-water fly fishing.

After all, it’s the fishing that gives the Round Boys a reason to trek the West.

Said White, “It is the moment the fly is taken by the fish and you lift and all of a sudden there is something alive on your line. That is the thrill, that moment.”