Had a recent conversation with a good friend about the upcoming fly fishing season.
(It always seems a bit strange to write the words ‘the upcoming fly fishing season’ after joining the ranks of the fish year round platoon years ago. My friend, on the other hand, hangs up the rod in late October and may not break it out until he can wrangle his way onto somebody’s boat headed to the Green or the South Fork of the Snake for some spring fishing in March or April.)
Said friend probably hasn’t spent even half a day walking and wading any water during the current century; he’s much more at home sitting in the front seat of a drift boat or our cataraft, glibly issuing pithy commentary about how the boat could and should be just a bit better positioned.
Said friend was anxious to hear about Jake is settling into Bozeman and what sort of networking I had accomplished so far here in western Washington. I lost count of the times he mentioned steelhead in one way or another.
Said friend, as you might expect, makes a big show of putting a single six-pack in the cooler and at least some of the time flashes a $10 dollar bill at the truck stop as my truck slurps down $100 in fuel.
I could hear said friend’s sphincter tighten when I professed my goal this year was probably going to be smaller waters, at least when fishing back in the northern Rockies. Native fish, finning in the smaller creeks, cricks and less traveled back waters, hold an increasing fascination.
Using Jake’s nifty brown landed on his 2 wt. yesterday as an example, I waxed eloquently about redbands in eastern Washington and / or western Montana, Yellowstone cutts in various haunts around the old neighborhood and even the little brookies on the upper Gardiner. My friend was neither amused nor interested.
His spirits rebounded a bit when we chatted about fishing the Missouri again (he hails from Black Eagle, one of the ‘suburbs’ of Great Falls, though he now lives in the morass that is Salt Lake City); we agreed that despite the busy fishermen days on the river, it does seem to have gotten better and better the past few years.
(And the Missouri is prime boat water; when I dream about catching big fish from a boat it usually looks we’re on the Missouri or maybe the upper Madison….)
Nothing against the float guys pounding the Madi, Yellowstone, Missouri and other big waters, it‘s just that the vision of that 8 inch, aggressive, naive as hell cutthroat bending a 2 or 3 wt. sounds like real fun about now.
And real fun can be hard to find these days.
(That’s an oft overlooked small water above – Nez Perce Creek in YNP from the bridge leading to the fisher frequented Fountain Flat Drive parking area.)
