The Long Goodbye | Field Ethos
By Brooks Potter It was a chilly, sapphire-blue-skied Montana morning. The bouquet from season’s first alfalfa cutting hung…
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It was a chilly, sapphire-blue-skied Montana morning. The bouquet from season’s first alfalfa cutting hung heavy in the air. The river was up, but gin clear.
Standing in my board shorts and flip flops with a foot kicked up on the trailer’s wheel hoop, I leaned on the gunnel of the still-trailered drift boat, eyes sweeping the chaos of the Storey Ditch put-in. It looked to be rush hour on Wilshire Blvd. There was this kind of snark as all vied for position in the line up to launch boats.
“Dude, that was my spot.”
Never used to be this way.
Having recently reread Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage, I was struck in that moment by the catastrophe in front of me juxtaposed against the wild, bucolic landscape Lewis and Clark stumbled into in 1806—on this very river and maybe even the very spot I stood. The only traffic of that day may have been the few, scattered Shoshoni camps pitched each summer to hunt and fish these prolific headwaters of the Missouri River. A quieting image.
I’d become acutely antisocial in my trout fishing cosmos. My capacity to manage the increasing chaos on popular western trout waters has become inversely proportional to my increasing age—and the curve isn’t linear. It has become outright dispiriting.
Anymore, and as a general consequence, I don’t get real serious with a rod until September and will fish solitarily well into the snows of winter. Greased up ferules and frozen snot is a thing unto its own—kind of like fine wine.
This particular break from my otherwise iron-clad convention came after a call from David. Without even a hello, “Lets fish the Madison on Thursday” he said.
A brilliant securities attorney who’d loomed large in my former life, David was exceptional with a rod and a pro on the oars. Both progeny of the territory’s llanero’s, we’d fished together for years.
“This Thursday?” I said.
This was a stupidly last minute proposition, and David knew he’d be pushing on a piece of string. After merciless placations, he dropped the salmon fly bomb. I went quiet, remote-viewing the infiltrators slapping water.
“You still there?” David asked.
My calendar was clear. Then there is the forever siren call of my maternal waters.
At cross purposes with my better judgment, I heard myself take the flyer, “Ok, I’m in.”
I loaded the requisite gear into the cowboy Cadillac, hooked up the trailer and pulled the trigger on the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Idaho Falls. David would fly into IDA the next morning, early.
Then on to Ennis.
After procuring 20-ounce coffees from the one-man “Drift & Drip” roadside kiosk, we blew through town, bypassing the already busy fly shops.
Turning up-river, the trailer chattered on the heavily washboarded access road. As we closed in on the put-in, “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said. More than a mutter. At that point, I’d have rather skipped the whole thing. Kryptonite.
As we often do while fishing together, David and I spoke without speaking.
Rather than trying to stuff our way onto the river, we’d let the flotilla bob well downstream before putting oars in the water. This meant getting off the water late, but we’d headhunt the dusk-dark caddis hatch. This was workable.
With the launch pressure ameliorated, I cracked a beer. Through the dust kicked up by the to and fro of boats and trailers, my scan stopped on one chap in particular. There’s always someone that stands out in a crowd. He’d gone man-down trying to help his guide launch the boat.
They don’t want help. Trust me.
He was fully wadered up—puzzling inasmuch as the river’s running speed would almost assuredly keep him in the boat. Then the vest stuffed absolutely pocket-busting full, zingers and tippet spools all a’swinging, the GoPro strapped to his noggin, the other to his chest. I tipped my head like a confused puppy. It occurred to me that if he went in the drink, he’d go right to the bottom. The trendline of the ridiculously over-togged had gone vertical. Where are these people coming from?
The simplicity of the “quiet sport” has been largely supplanted by consumerism. Though not yet a smokestack industry, fly fishing now figures as a stand-alone in the GDP, crosspollinated with the fashion sector.
Of course, overarching is the pressure on the resource. Only so much water, so many fish and so much unmolested province. Despite best efforts, the “governmental agencies” and non-profits are out of ideas. Landowners aren’t taking any shit either. Stir into that soup the penetrating effect of the water rights mayhem.
The guide and outfitting associations remain the on-the-water infantry, not with badges and sidearms, but as mentors of resource stewardship. This includes the tenets of river decorum, a treatise in its own right. The increasingly abrasive attitudes of entitlement are conspicuous—courtesy of the incoming big blue wave—inseminating all good things of the Old West.
The fairytale of Yellowstone is twisting the knife.
What’s the answer? There is no answer. The thing, such as it’s been forever, is broken.
About mid-float, we pulled over for a bite of lunch. Relaxing with feet kicked up, tranquilized with the sound of water lapping against the fiberglass hull, a couple of fellas floated by us. We extended the fraternal wave and a “howdy!” They simply stared at us stone-faced. David lipped an appropriate “pfft.” “Where’s a #4 sinker when you need one?” And having been a star pitcher at Penn, he’d have gotten it there. “Who the fuck are these people anymore.” Not a question.
I let the declarative hang.
“David” I said with half a sandwich in my mouth. “You called me.”
“Yeah I know. I’ve been waiting for that.”
