NONE OF US HAD any expectations of this journey other than it being an opportunity for three old friends to reconnect somewhat off the grid with fly rods and no family or work responsibilities. Our plans were as fluid as the three rivers we were headed to explore. We broke camp the first morning for a stretch of the North Fork Flathead River that, word had it, was running cold and had hungry rainbows and cutthroat. Considering the hoot-owl restrictions that prohibit fishing during the hottest parts of the day across the American West, we were thankful our desired water wasn’t on the list. The two-hour drive north put it well out of harm’s way. Barely 15 miles from the Canadian border as the crow flies, we pulled off a dirt road followed by our own giant cloud of dust and parked in a small lot near a bridge. The river sprawled in wide and clear-green bends and braids above the bridge, narrowed slightly to flow fast and deep under the bridge, and then wid-ened again as it disappeared downstream with the sun’s blinding reflection. Again Mike smiled and shook his head in disbelief. The man knows striped bass and the immense power and scale of the ocean as it berates the Massachusetts coast. What he was experiencing at that moment, however, was another kind of power and scale. One that existed for him only in the lit-erature of Thomas McGuane, John Muir or maybe Edward Abbey. A holy grail of big sky, big mountains, big rivers and big dreams. Deep breaths, a quiet mind, flyfish-ing and honest living. This was McGuane’s Montana and here Mike was waist-deep in it fishing for trout like they were stripers. One time while fishing together in Manchester, VT, Mike watched me tie on a #20 Griffith’s Gnat at my tailgate while my young sons traipsed off with their own rods rigged and ready for brook trout. “That’s why I stick with streamers and stripers,” he said. “I can’t see that tiny stuff and my beat-up fingers don’t work that way.” That day on the Flathead, at the gentle urging of Rich, which sounded something like, “Dude, you need to put that striper shit away and cast a dry,” Mike put his vision and dexterity limitations aside and tied on a small gnat of his own. After accepting some basic instruction from Rich and me, he promptly caught his first cutthroat—and then almost a dozen more. “I could die happy right now, boys,” he said. “Amazing. Just amazing.” THE ROAD TO HELL is bet ter paved than the final mile-and-a-half dirt track that led to the River Junction Campground at the conflu-ence of the North Fork and the main stem of the Blackfoot River. “It’s an adventure,” Mike reminded us from the back seat. With no cell service and no way to check avail-ability other than surviving the drive, we went all-in on an open campsite at the first-come, first-served Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks site. Our luck held. The one available space had been vacated just hours earlier. The Blackfoot was a river that had occupied my imagination since I learned to flyfish over two de-cades ago, but had represented a piece of my family history that had simmered in my blood since I first learned about it as a child from my dad. My paternal family tree has roots in Winnipeg, MB, where my French-Canadian great-great-grand-father lived with my Blackfoot great-great-grand-mother. Her Native family lineage extended west across southern Canada and south into Montana. I didn’t expect any visions or a spiritual awaken-ing, but our arrival at the banks of the Blackfoot put me fully at ease. Even with the persistent cacophony of the river’s current and birds in the willows and pines and a steady pre-storm wind blowing down through the canyon; even when falling asleep that first cold and rainy night wrapped only in the surprisingly warm Amtrak blanket that I put in my duffle (since I failed to pack a sleeping bag); even when a stun-ning bull trout grabbed my swung streamer from a deep, fast run, slid calmly into the belly of the net and returned just as calmly to the current as Mike watched the whole scene unfold; the quiet in my head and chest was complete. 066 MONTANA
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 15.4: Page 64
