Eric Clapton has often suggested he’ll retire from making music. If so, he should find plenty of success as a fisherman.
The guitarist as on a fly-fishing trip along Iceland’s Vatnsdalsá River on August 5 when he caught “no ordinary salmon,” according to his guide, Sturla Birginsson. The fish measured 108 centimeters—42.5 inches—and weighed 28 pounds, making it the biggest salmon caught there this season.
Birginson posted this photo of Clapton with the fish on his Facebook page. “Is there anything this dude can’t do?” his post reads.
According to Birginsson, Clapton had to run about one kilometer down the river once the salmon was hooked, as it kept swimming further away. The guide says the fish took half an hour to land.
Rumors of Clapton’s retirement have taken on a more serious tone in recent months. The guitarist announced in June that nerve damage in his hands was affecting his ability to play guitar.
“I’ve had quite a lot of pain over the last year,” he told Classic Guitar magazine. “It started with lower back pain and turned into what they call peripheral neuropathy, which is where you feel like you have electric shocks going down your leg. And I’ve had to figure out how to deal with some other things from getting old. Because I’m in recovery from alcoholism and addiction to substances, I consider it a great thing to be alive at all. By rights I should have kicked the bucket a long time ago. For some reason, I was plucked from the jaws of hell and given another chance.”
Clapton’s latest effort, I Still Do, was released in May. His next album is the concert recording Live in San Diego, which comes out on September 30 in a two-CD/three-LP package.
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Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World, a founding editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine, and a former editor with Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician and Maximum Guitar. Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.
