August

Today, the Gibbon River- arguably my favorite river in the entire Park. From the road it doesn’t look like much- it’s pretty, a big, wide, calm, meandering meadow stream in the massive Elk Park area. But when you get up to it, you realize it’s far more. Tremendously undercut banks and thick vegetation beds, incredibly clear water and shy, spooky trout. Even the little ones are nervous. It’s fun, gorgeous, textbook water.

But I’ve never caught a fish there. Some sort of voodoo which I can’t seem to shake. I can get fish to rise, I can get fish to bite, I just can’t get fish to hand. For two seasons now I’ve tried, and for two seasons I’ve failed. It’s a weird sort of masochism, I suppose- I keep going back because I’m a sucker for humiliation.

We parked along the road and hoofed our way to the water- Jake, Jo and I working upstream while everyone else fished down. I got a couple hits on black ants and caddis dries, as well as some serious hopper looks, but nothing really incredible. Jo got a couple hits, but nothing. Jake slayed them, as he typically does on this water, mostly on Cherynobl Ants. He even hooked up with a big brookie, he put it at somewhere between fifteen and eighteen inches.

I’m incredibly lazy on this river- watching the water, watching the fish, musing at the grasses, wondering how far the woodline is, wondering if that’s a bear or an elk or just a stump way out in the meadow, wondering about the old, extinct geysers that pock parts of the stream bottom, showing tubs of crusty, strange rock. I suppose that’s part of the reason for my epic failure- it’s such a pretty place, it seems like such a shame just to pay attention to the fishing.

But I do want to catch a fish there. Someday.