August

We woke up and tied some flies, trying to imitate all the things we’d seen but had no flies for- small pale yellow Sparkle Duns, olive-yellow stonefly dries, spruce moths, foam ants, beetles. We headed out of camp and down the long hill towards the Northeast Entrance, stopping at what had become the now familiar road construction. It was getting to the point where the lady holding the SLOW sign could recognize our vehicles and our faces, and would strike up a brief conversation telling us how long it was until we would be through the traffic, and what we were up to this day. We took the opportunity presented be a half-hour traffic wait to get out and visit the Cooke City Store, where we picked up some food and meat, flies and beer.

We fished Soda Butte primarily, though Jake and I wandered back over to the Lamar. Fishing was much slower than previously- it was warmer, the water had been packed the past few days, it wasn’t as windy. I caught two or three on the Lamar on olive stonefly imitations and spruce moths, though nothing big. Nor did I raise any big fish, though I did stop and watch a big cutt from a high bank, as it rested behind a rootwad in a deep run. Jake tried for it from across the channel with a big stonefly, and I had a few whacks at it with a six-inch long Sex Dungeon, but neither of us seemed to impress the fish.

We did, however, get awfully close to some awfully big buffalo. Jake wandered up and fished a run thick with willows, while I elected to go around the three or four acres of willows and leapfrrog over Jake to some better looking water a few hundred yards upstream. I turned around the edge of the willows and came out about 40 feet from a massive bull. I stared blankly at me, and I slowly, gingerly backed out, then made a wide circle around him. Jake, going directly through the brush, had been fishing only a dozen or so feet from the thing.

The upper part of the beat we were fishing wasn’t producing much better, so we walked up and over the bench, back to Soda Butte. From our high vantage point we sat and watched ten or a dozen other anglers fishing, poorly we thought, not catching anything. When a couple decent spots vacated we descended, like vultures on a carcass.

Fishing was still slow, and we weren’t picking up much. No surface hatches, and fish seemed reticent to come to hoppers and other terrestrials. We fished downstream, coming to a braided section, the left, slower branch holding a good number of fish. The other branch, the one carrying more water, also held a bunch of fish, but was being played by a guide with a family of four. They were far enough away that you couldn’t hear the conversation, which made his antics more interesting. He’d wade out to where the fish would station behind some clods of dirt, picking off ants or whatever else, and point down into the water, signaling to whoever had the rod at the time to stick the fly here. It was for naught. In the hour and a half I watched them, no fish were brought to hand.

We weren’t doing very well either, though. Jake took the tail of the run, where it opened out into a larger pool, while I took the upper section, where the pool above poured out into the run. We tried most everything, starting out with hoppers and ants, then going subsurface with nymphs and soft-hackles. Nothing. Jake tied on a little zebra midge, and I played around with copper Johns. Nothing. Finally, I tied on a bubblegum-pink colored egg, and immediately caught two. The kid from the guide, maybe fourteen or fifteen, would wander over when he saw I had a fish on, and would stand on the bank above the fish, scaring whatever wasn’t put off by the hooked fish in the water. That got irritating. And the fact that I was catching fish while Jake wasn’t, and that I was catching fish on something as dumb as a pink egg while he wasn’t, was noticeably galling him. I relished in it.

I wound up catching six or so on the egg, broke one off and went about tying on another. I had my head bent down, watching myself knot another egg to the tippet, and could hear swishing in the grasses in the meadow ahead of me. I figured it was the kid again, the nylon of his river pants swishing against the grasses, and that he was subsequently spooking the rest of the pool, again. I looked up, and my field of view was occupied by another massive bull buffalo, rubbing and mowing down a willow tree with his horns. I stood stockstill, the thing was all of twenty feet away and looked pretty pissed, and I had no clue what to do. I yelled down to Jake, who by this time had walked downstream a hundred and fifty yards or so. He looked up, noted the buffalo, then went back to fishing. So I just watched the thing for what seemed like an eternity, trying to judge whether a buffalo would see the little run separating myself and him as an adequate barrier to charging.

He wandered off though, and I breathed a genuine sigh of relief, and went back to fishing. I caught a few more on emergers in the falling light, before wandering downstream to the rest of the crew and heading back to the campsite.

It was about 9:30 when we got back to Cooke City, and the gas station was just about to close. Our two vehicles pulled into the lot to get gas, and we piled out. The first three in grabbed a bunch of snacks- frozen burritos, jerky, chips, and all the rest, and the nice, young, bored clerk was more than happy to keep the place open for us while we used the microwave, simply saying “You boys look like you could use it.”
Forty minutes later, when we left, she seemed much less inviting. But we were on our way to the campsite, had a fire and a few beers, and crashed.