On one hand, about this time every year, I start to genuinely miss the summer season.
Summer’s heat and 19 hours of light in the sky are but distant memories. So are the easy days of wading wet , exploring backcountry cricks and creeks and long, roasting drifts on the big waters of the Yellowstone, Madison and Missouri, chasing Trico swarms that look like smoke and evening Caddis hatches so thick you can hardly breath.
Some years the entry into winter is deceptively soft. October’s Indian Summer days occasionally slop over into November; there’s no meaningful snow until December and even then it can be pretty damned skimpy.
Other the other, some years winter slams in like your most despised in-law arriving a day early for their seven day holiday torture session visit, making you bristle at each contact and run for cover at every opportunity.
That said, winter’s cold does work some unquestionable magic as it sculpts ice art up and down the shoreline with anchor ice following as the cold tightens its grip.
Time on the water in winter brings an assault on the senses. Sure, it’s cold; sometimes damned cold.
But it’s quiet.
If the trees and bankside brush are snow-loaded it can be amazingly quiet, with even the river’s gurgle and rumble muted and distant. There’s no birdsong, no crickets or grasshoppers. There’s even less traffic on the road just over the hill.
Winter’s light, as far north as we are in Montana and western Washington, changes markedly during the short day season and brings a new face to familiar vistas.
And it’s a safe bet you’ll most likely be the only two-legged critter swinging flies or drifting a nymph rig in sight.
The biggest fish I’ve ever brought to hand on the Gallatin bit a shamefully large Hare’s Ear dead drifted one cloudy, sub-zero, late December afternoon. I think it surprised the hell out of both of us, coming late enough in the outing that if the run had proved fishless it would have been time to hit the truck.
Winter’s treasures are there for the taking.
