August

That was the first time I’d heard wolves. Like, genuinely, in real life, heard wolves. They didn’t sound close, but I heard them. And that contributed to the loneliness, to the feeling of utter desolation.

That the day was the last of the unplanned was sending pangs throughout me as well. The realization that from here on out, things were more or less regimented- I was to go to West Yellowstone, I was to go into Yellowstone, I was to go to Cooke City and Silver Gate, I was to go to Gardiner, I was to go to Billings. The fishing was still up to me, but the destinations were now concrete. It made me, in some strange way, uncomfortable.

But I did wake up early, my car covered with a rime of frost. I watched the sunlight peter over the hill and down to me, all the while munching on a pop tart and an orange. I didn’t bother fishing the dink lake again, just headed back down the gravel road and over the mountains.

I had wanted to stop and fish a small stream for big cutthroat, reports I’d heard said the fish surpassed the magic 20 inch mark. But the same reports said access was terrible, and landowners were assholes. No matter, I could never find the stream anyway.

Instead, I made a cannonball run up the mountains and down into a little tongue of Idaho, right to Henry’s Lake. It was fun seeing in the early morning, though I had no desire to purchase an Idaho license and dick around there. I smelled. I was headed to West Yellowstone.

By eight in the morning I had made it to the Slide Inn, on the Madison River. A very cool shop owned by Kelly Galloup, purveyor of the Sex Dungeon, Circus Peanut, and other big-fish flies. I had been introduced to the Sex Dungeon the spring before, and thought it was a beautiful, fishy thing. It was neat going to the shop, seeing all the flies, all the experiments, like a fly-tying mad scientist. I bought some tippet and some Gatorade, then was on my way.

I made my way around Hebgen and Quake lakes, took a wrong turn, then wound up in West Yellowstone. Strolled around downtown, visited the various fly shops, and partook in lunch, did laundry and grabbed a shower before going and finding a campground at Baker’s Hole, on the Madison River.


I talked to Jake and Paul, who I were to pick up along with Kyle and Eric in less than a week. Friday, to be precise. This was the only concrete date on the whole trip: I must pick them up at the airport in Billings on Friday. Until then, I had time to play.

Everything I’d read about the Madison stated it wasn’t much of a summer fishery. Most of the big fish moved in and out of the river during the spawning season, spending most of their time eating in Hebgen Lake. But Jake egged me into going fishing that night, saying he had looked it up, and there was supposed to be a caddis hatch.

I did, and there were. Caddis- when the wind would die down you’d see them clustering around eddies and the margins of streams, and the whole river was alive with mouths- making the great sucking sound of a hatchery raceway at feeding time.

fish were about the size of raceway hatchery trout, too. All rainbows, none greater than about six inches. I had two pulls that felt like more substantial fish, but wasn’t able to see them, much less bring them to hand. The most eventful moment was when I was tying a fresh caddis on and hear an enormous crash in front of me, like an anvil hitting the water. I looked up, and I was eye to eye with an osprey at about twenty feet, as he carried off a dainty little rainbow. Awesome.