I awoke in the early morning hours to the clacking of
bighorn sheep hooves on dry ground. Or was I going to sleep? I poked my head
from my tent to find a gray haze hanging in the canyon, sheep no longer
visible. Wisps of warm sunlight occasionally and increasingly found their way
into the understory as I made breakfast of oatmeal and coffee to shove back the
chill.
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| Photo by Matt Reilly. |
The woods are bright, in the Lolo National Forest, even
behind a dawny veil. Amber trunks of lodgepole pines laced chocolate protrude
heavenward in open groves amid a green forest floor. Cedar waxwings flit and
chirp about them. Dramatic raveling mountains serve as their backdrop and hint
at the presence of the as-yet unseen novelty of bighorns and the elusive
mountain lions that prey upon them. A fawn wades through dew-wet grass as Rock
Creek dances by joyously, singing to all with enough care to listen—the very
same who notice the waxwings and the pines and find spiritual rejuvenation in
them.
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| Photo by Matt Reilly. |
Now I hold no prejudices against eastern Montana, and the
prairies and the mountains and their canyons that populate it. In fact, I’ve
developed a rather strong infatuation with the crystalline, cold creeks that run
there, and the willing trout who have seen and consumed live grasshoppers
frequently enough to have developed a reckless appreciation for them. But it
occurred to me among that awakening Eden that the landscape where I had pitched
my tent the night before, in the western part of Big Sky Country just a few
miles short of Idaho, was not created by God in the same motion. I’d be more inclined
to believe that God promised Israel a homeland and then, in an act of fairness,
did the same for fly fishermen.
As such, Rock Creek and the Lolo National Forest is no
secret among anglers. Before the sun establishes a clearly visible position
above the canyon, the Creek’s banks will be lined by the God-fearing.
I’ve carefully planned my sleeping for when I’m dead, though,
and not in Montana. So before those warm wisps of sunlight became the majority
and broke the canyon of night, I discovered by foot and gravel road a
promising-looking stretch of water to explore.
Before my eyes, a strong, tight run a hundred yards upstream
flattened out into a rather flat tail, and rolled over in pockets over rock
shelves. Current seams were a dime a dozen, each one strong in character and
potential.
Small cased caddis blanketed the cobble river bottom. I
broke one open to discover a gray larvae inside, and then returned him to the
water to find the stomach of a hungry trout. Spruce moths were hatching,
leaving the firs and spruces to live another day, and dappling themselves on
the river’s surface to restart their lifecycle and contribute to the fish’s.
Taking visual cues, I rigged a large stimulator with a
caddis larvae dropper and began stripping out line. Three false casts and an
aerial mend laid a 40-foot length of line on the water, and the fly at the head
of the nearest current seam.
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| Photo by Matt Reilly. |
The stimulator disappeared. It quickly reappeared as a
feisty brown trout of about 14 inches leapt from the lie with my caddis in his
mouth, then bore downstream against the flex of my modest four-weight.
I released the brown safely, keeping his body in the water.
Several dozen more casts yielded about half as many fish—a healthy mixture of
shouldered browns, rainbows, and cut-bows. Each had a preference for the nymph,
though one large brown, rising rhythmically, made a dash for the stimulator when
it touched down inches in front of his nose.
The fishing slowed as sunlight took over the visible scene.
The moths disappeared, and so did the shadowy corners of pockets in the body of
the river. It was then that I looked upstream to see a fisherman and his guide
taking a casting vigil upon the upper reaches of the pool, along the whitewater
in the head. Another team strung rods, shut the car door, and stepped into the
river 40 yards below me. The world was finally awake, and the dream over, only
to recur when once again the light fades to gray and the spruce moths come out
to play, and I’m alone in the canyon, again, to dream.
*Originally published in the Rural Virginian
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