By Marc Alberts
I stood there on the banks of the river looking out at her practicing another false cast. The sunshine danced off her blonde locks peaking from under her broad brimmed hat as the line fluttered back and forth, high above the soft flowing waters wisping with every pull from the elbow and wrist. I wondered if the line would ever glide down to the water’s gleaming surface to finally enlist the purple Chernobyl to commence its sultry dance for those unsuspecting trout.
Perhaps if I approached and stood ready to assist, she would feel more comfortable with facing the task at hand, after all, fishing with the ones you love is easier than fishing alone. I began to enter the calm, flowing waters but before I could even begin to offer my assistance, she shooed me away back to the bank and reassured me in a somewhat frustrated tone, that she had it all under control. I sighed but did as was suggested of me and found some comfort on a boulder nestled in the shade of a rocky bluff, overlooking that vast, Big Sky country.
Cast after cast, she walked the river, hunting for the trout she knew were bound to be there, but for some reason, knew enough to leave her fly alone, lest they be fooled by the rough and tumble technics of a ‘greenhorn’.
“How could they possibly know? Why won’t they just bite the damn thing?”
But they did know, as all trout seemingly do, whenever the uninitiated venture into their waters and begin to offer the clumsiest of dry fly presentations. The brute ripping of line off the water, the snapping of fly at just the wrong time, the repeated furls and knots in both line and tippet…the signs of novice are obvious and many to those picky trout lingering just below the glass surface of that humble, meandering river. Of course, cussing repeatedly and kicking rocks with bulky wader boots is a sure giveaway, too. Nevertheless, she kept at it. The summer day was long but had entered its final few hours before the sun would set too low to keep the pursuit up. She could sense it was prime time for big bites from such a productive afternoon hatch. She just had to keep casting.
She gathered the line in and lifted it off the water at the end of yet another uneventful float. Undeterred, she proceeded to false cast with her eyes on the water ahead. I had taken up refuge a little over her right shoulder back in the soft, warm tall grass, my eyes struggling to stay aloft as I watched her commence the casting routine for the umpteenth time. No need to offer any instruction, she wouldn’t appreciate that anyhow. Maybe watching eyes were putting too much pressure on her. Maybe success could be found in solitude.
I decided to head up the riverbank in search of bugs and could see the Wild Man ahead standing in the river, casting and puffing on a stogie. Flickering hoppers taunted my nose along the banks as I wandered away leaving her to continue the pursuit alone. I hadn’t made it halfway between the two of them when it happened. The cast hadn’t been perfect, but then again, they seldom need to be for lightning to strike. The hopper had landed just above a section of fast water flowing through a deep stretch of submerged boulders and potholes. And that’s where the trout lay waiting in the deep pool, staying cool from the afternoon sun baking that arid countryside. The fish took the bug with authority, and the thrust of the ambush nearly ripped the five-weight from her unsuspecting grasp. That majestic kind of lightning had finally shot through her rod and jolted her heart; the fight was on! She immediately began to hoot and holler, overwhelmed with triumph.
“Oh my God! Come quick! I got one! I got one!”
The yells of excitement were unmistakable; the young prospector had struck paydirt and I sprinted to be by her side in her moment of baptismal fly-fishing glory.
“Keep your tip up! TIP UP! Don’t horse it! I got the net, just hold on!”
Panic, joy, chaos; each ripped through the water up the line to the bowing rod tip and injected straight into her pulsing veins. The brown was a real lunker of a fish, one any seasoned rod would be proud to net, let alone a first timer struggling to process the delicate dance unfolding at the other end of her tippet. As I reached her side, I could only watch with devilish curiosity whether she would be able to land the giant she had been after all day for miles up and down that water.
The Wild Man had tried to close the distance in time, but sprinting a football field in wader boots is easier said than done. He was only yards away, net in hand, sheer panic on his sunburnt face, when the mighty brown rose from the depths one last time, went fully airborne, it’s golden-brown flank kicking and flashing furiously as it tumbled end over end and snapped the tippet. The rod tip shot up, the tension vanished from the line, she stopped reeling. The big brown was gone and the #6 tan streambank hopper with it. For a moment the three of us froze in disbelief, staring at the cruel wake it had left behind. A distinct profanity echoed off the water into the surrounding cliffside but from whose lips it came was unclear and entirely irrelevant. Smiles and even more hooting and hollering quickly followed. Although the big one had escaped the net, taking with it the coveted grip and grin photo-op, something more meaningful had been landed instead.
A novice, energetic angler had been caught that afternoon in the waters of that central Montana river. She had come to the vast open country seeking weekend refuge from her busy, corporate nine to five and a chance at fly fishing glory in the rivers of the Last Best Place. It had never occurred to her that in those glorious waters that spiderweb throughout the west, the trout are often the ones that catch you. Rainbow, brown, cutthroat, bull; the pursuit of those tight lines and bending rod tips keeps you coming back to the riverbank for life.
We kept fishing and eventually another brown did take down yet another streambank hopper, but with admittedly less rod bend to boot. I stood by her side as she proudly held her prize aloft in the net. The Wild Man snapped a photo that would make the Christmas card that year. Afterward, we all piled into the truck and headed back towards that remote town in the middle of nowhere Montana. She couldn’t stop talking about the monster that got away, as the Wild Man reassured her, now that she had been initiated, it wouldn’t be her last heartbreak with a giant brown. I slowly drifted off to sleep curled up in the back seat. The river faded into the rearview as the sun set beyond the Sawtooth Range. The deserted highway road splitting the dusky horizon ahead. More fishermen caught than fish that afternoon, I mused. Tomorrow we’d try again.
