The marketing crackerjacks of the 1980’s fast-food industry must have been elk hunters, because the glorious return of the delectable McRib always coincided with family pilgrimages to elk camp.
That was about the only time my dad and I would eat the stuff , but and I began to associate the “Golden Arches” as a route to outdoor adventure.
As the torchbearer of a family tradition, I maneuvered the truck and boat trailer through a tight drive-through lane, even though a mechanically pressed slab of “rib” and onions, slathered with BBQ sauce, was absent from the menu. Still, I intercepted a Happy Meal and two Quarter-Pounders with cheese. I would most certainly regret the latter, likely in the very near future, but the boy, Sawyer, was happy and our little road trip was off to a positive start.
Before Sawyer’s first foray down Montana’s Blackfoot River could begin, I had to tend to the business of peddling fly fishing wares at a vendor upstream from the put-in. During the commute Sawyer barraged me with the usual line of questioning, all beginning with the query “Hey dada” Between conversations on monster trucks and super heroes, we discussed the rules of the river; stay seated, wear a life jacket at all times, and if you fall in, point your feet downstream. He eventually wearied of our tête-à-tête, as I maintained one eye on the road and one on the river.
Our timing was perfect; the atmosphere had settled into a period of high pressure, and the river adjusted from blowout-brown to a moss-hued flow. Three fingers of wet bank and a yard of clarity showed the river on a steep drop. When I was a fishing guide in Oregon, we called this favorable state “steelhead green,” a condition makes persnickety fish especially grabby.
I called my buddy, Metcalf, and after a rendezvous we ran the shuttle. Then we dropped the boat in the drink and Sawyer settled into the safest position in the front seat, next to his pal, Skookum (our 10-year old Brittany) a bag of munchies and several varietals of gummy products within arm’s reach. I’d been waiting to dust off my father’s steelhead rod and I admired the craftsmanship by renowned artist Dave McNeese as I ran a modified shooting head through the guides. The last time I was home I had asked my dad if I could “borrow” this rod. He begrudgingly agreed, though we both knew his steelheading, and for that matter all of his fishing days were behind him. The fly choice came from Metcalf’s box, an articulated, white streamer with the kind of heft needed for 40-foot shots at the bank, and a retrieve through the target zone.
We pushed off with Metcalf [standing between the knee locks] in the bow and he settled into a comfortable rhythm, landing the big streamer consistently in the column of clarity a few feet from the bank. Sawyer’s face and hands were coated with cheese dust when we neared a particularly interesting section of river. Anticipation and concentration intensified among the crew, save one, with his face still buried in a bag of snacks.
Metcalf’s line tightened and after a reasonable tussle, a fine representative of Salmo Trutta slid into the net. The fish would’ve taped around the 20-inch benchmark if we’d measured it; a trophy for this particular watershed. The next bank produced a juvenile bull trout with big aspirations. It is not uncommon to encounter a char while streamer fishing the Blackfoot, a stronghold for this native species, but landing any bull trout on the heels of a brown signaled a swap between oarsman and angler.
It had been 20 years since I’d cast dad’s old steelhead rod. It was married perfectly to the streamer line, effortlessly picking up the gaudy pattern and delivering the fly with accuracy, testament to the good graphite of the 1980’s. In those days, rod companies stuck with materials that worked.
I tossed a streamer into the soft pillow created by a car-sized boulder and no sooner had the fly settled the a bull trout bum-rushed it. The fish rolled, went airborne, and ate the fly on the descent, like a mini-Orca plucking a seal from the surface. This bell-weather species was another juvenile, but verification of an ever-improving river system, still reeling from many moons of open-pit mineral extraction. Two bull trout in one day was a rare event, and we had encountered both of them within an hour of leaving the ramp. The toothy critters were clearly on the prowl.
On river right, we approached a steep bank, the current meandering along at walking speed. I threw the fly tight to the bank and allowed it to dead-drift through a juicy holding lie. As the fly neared the tailout, I gave it a good long strip and the line was nearly ripped from my hand. A mammoth fish rolled on the surface, revealing a golden flank—the fish’s size convinced me I’d hooked a giant char.
“Bull trout?” I queried.
Metcalf quickly corrected me. “Nah, that’s a brown.”
I’d guided this river for several years, floated it countless times, and never seen a brown even close to the one attached to my line. We followed that fish out of the bailout and headed down a set of rapids, the fish thrashing on the surface. Sawyer perked up at the elevated intensity in the boat.
Metcalf cranked on the oars and we eddied out and dropped the hook on a sandy beach, an ideal spot to battle a trophy fish. The brown made several runs into the main current, and I was pretty certain the hook would pull free. That predictable outcome would be ok; but I wanted an image to forever etch this moment in family lore.
My net is designed for the 15 to-20-inch trout that we typically encounter in Western Montana, but the brown barely fit in the net. Instantly, the fish decided it didn’t care for claustrophobic conditions, and leapt out. Eventually we got her back it back in the net and snapped a quick photo.
“Wow, that’s a big brown!” Sawyer exclaimed.
This river, with its north-south orientation and glacial waters, carves a deep chasm and freezes nearly completely in winter. During the fleeting Montana summer, hoards of anglers and fun-floaters congregate here to fish and giggle, and in a month one would be lucky to catch a trout half this size. Complete with aquamarine cheeks and a quarter-sized adipose fin, this fish carried nary a blemish. Where had this fish been hiding? I wondered.
A few weeks later, my friend, Bill, and I took Sawyer out for a rip. On the drive up a mountain to look for morel mushrooms, Bill asked him about the brown.
“Oh yeah, that one,” Sawyer said. “I’d been feeding that fish gummy worms the whole way down the river. You know, the ones that are sweet and sour. When I ran out of those, the fish decided to just eat dad’s fly.”
Well, that explains that. —Justin Karnopp