Autumn had brought us north to the Bighorn. We’d come from Southern Colorado. The aspen trees, fired gold by each successive day’s frost, had majestically signaled the end to our inaugural season of guiding. The endless knots and breaking wrists, the accumulated frustration of ten thousand fucked up weighted double 7x nymph rigs, and the narcissistic harangues of so many awful fishermen were finally behind us. The time was our own, the fish our own, and the probability of success only our own. It was nothing less than a piscatorial pilgrimage that Patrick and I had commenced together two weeks earlier, and from the beginning, Ft. Smith and the Bighorn had been our Mecca.
We’d been on the road two weeks before we finally arrived at Ft. Smith. Living in a proximity God had never intended two young heterosexual men to endure, sharing everything but tooth brushes and toilet paper, we’d made our way north fishing the Snake and Yellowstone along the way.
The jubilation of our arrival was short lived as the fishing reports came in crappy and we learned that the lake above Yellowtail Damn had recently turned over leaving the river amuck and full of grass. High winds were forecasted for the next day and our magnificent pilgrimage seemed to be sinking fast into a realm of mediocrity. That night we made quesadillas for dinner, eating in silence amidst a palpable frustration. In the tent, I’d lie awake listening to the howling winds as the side of my tent repeatedly hit me in the face. Patrick was beside me snoring. Thanks to the quesadillas, neither of us was contributing a pleasant fragrance to our small tent. However, it was the flatulence of a snoozing Patrick that broke my patience. “Fucker,” I said, violently jabbing my boney elbow into his rib cage. His huge frame easily absorbed the blow without awakening, yet the snoring stopped. Sleep finally came.
In the morning I emerged from my tent only to be met with the stinging good morning of a cold, gusting, drift busting wind. We rose as we had for so many successive mornings, yet with less excitement than usual. In silence, we readied ourselves and the boat for launch, Patrick drawing on his cigarette and I on my cup of crappy instant coffee, I think both of us considering a return to our sleeping bags.
We put in just below the dam at Fort Smith. As the winds gusted we finished readying the boat along the shore. The Bighorn’s waters seemingly flowed into the dam, pushed upstream by the winds. The put in was crowded with only a few, the regulars, a far cry from peak season. Patrick took the first shift at the oars, a position which on that day was wrought with frustration.
Every cast seemed futile. It was all I could do to get my line extended briefly beyond the bow of our boat before the wind would sweep it back into my face, busting all hope for a sustained drift. As we drifted through, past other anglers tucked up in the few protected bits of pocket water, our frustration grew. It seemed that the Bighorn, as bountiful and legendary as she is, did not want to be tamed, and Pat and I both had allowed a certain sourness to infect our moods as short drift after short drift went untouched.
what you fishin? asked Pat.
pink.
nothing else?
No nothing else. What’s the fucking point?
I might try gray, or chuck a streamer, he advised while simultaneously maintaining our course and packing a lip.
Fine. I dropped a gray Ray Charles underneath the pink and went back to work. Subconsciously hoping nothing touched his suggestion. The hit that finally came elicited nothing more than a there ya go. As I played the Brown trout the wind seemed to pick up even more as Patrick reached out with his net towards my fish. An unforgiving gesture which in the high wind resulted in us brushing right up against some of the thick brush along the bank. As Pat quickly sought to correct our position with a few powerful strokes, I was struggling to free my line from the bush we’d crashed into. The current and wind propelled us rapidly downstream as the line on my reel continued to spool out. In just a few brief seconds the inevitable pop of my 5 wt line giving out came and went and so did my first fish on the bighorn.
The thirty minutes that followed represent a low in my angling career. A complete dissolution of the camaraderie that binds one fishing buddy to another. The words exchanged between Patrick and I were to horrid to relive. I can only imagine what we must have looked like jammed up against the bank, hardly two miles below the dam, two young men standing face to face in a seventeen foot drift boat shouting unspeakable curses to one another with the sole intention of stripping the other of any shred of dignity that he may have left. Pittiful.
After we’d exhausted every bit of breath within our lungs, and I’d tied on a new fly line, which Patrick made me pay him 40 bucks for on the spot, we set back off of the bank. I, determined to not fish another second with the magnificent asshole that remained at the oars, and He, ready to take his big paw and rip my smart ass jugular right out. However, this didn’t keep me from getting my flies wet as we headed to our exit point. I mean after all we were still on the Bighorn, even though we weren’t talking to one another. It wasn’t long again before I hooked another fish. This one pulled much harder and to our delight felt like jumping. The trout that revealed itself was nothing less than one of the hulking monsters we’d come for. Patrick and I let out simultaneous yelps as I was connected with a beautiful Autumn Bighorn Brown.
After I’d landed the fish and exchanged a few high fives with my amigo, Patrick and I lunched on his boat, anchored on the riverbank. Cold Coors, cheese, meatstick and a lot of laughs as we watched the hawks ride the winds across the Big Montana Sky. Talkin about how far we’d managed to come and the girls waiting for us back East.
No comments:
Post a Comment