August

My wild hare sent me over the mountains to the Big Hole valley, in a quest to take a look at Idaho, catch some outsize brook trout, and the chance at a Montana grayling. A fish nerd’s dream.

It was early, and it was raining. I climbed up over the mountains and into Idaho, pelted with ice and snow. Snow. In August. I was ten times higher than home, and it was unreal. I got out, snapped a few photos of Idaho and the snow, and was on my way.



I came down and stopped at the Big Hole National Battlefield long enough to snap a few pictures and watch the documentary. It was definitely a sobering experience, and I sure felt like shit afterwards. I walked around a bit in the cold and the rain, and noticed there was a fishing access right there in the park. Sort of incongruous, I thought…

Anyway, took a right and headed through the big, wide, wet, swampy Big Hole valley, seeing the river, really no more than a creek at this point, winding around lazily every now and again. I stopped at a couple bridges to check things out, the water was covering the entire channel, and many of the bridges had barbed wire strung along them to boot. I decided not to chance it.

Stopped in at Jackson, Montana and got a plate of BNG at the bar. Heads turned when I walked in. I smelled, too. But the BNG was good, and the waitress/bartender/cook was nice.

Stopped a couple different places and fished half-heartedly, more to say I had fished the Big Hole than to fish it seriously, honestly, and expect to raise fish. The water was up a fair bit and I felt sketchy about the state’s stream access laws, figuring my best route would be to head up a tributary into the National Forest, where I’d be safe from angry landowners.

So I did that, and wound up on a pretty little meadow brook trout stream, loaded to the gills with fish. Nothing really huge, a couple pushing twelve and thirteen inches, but there were a lot of them, and it was a blast casting to and catching dumb, innocent little fish again. It was rainy, and the whole place had a primordial, swampy sort of feel to it, as though at any moment Sasquatch would pop out of the bushes or I’d be ambushed by natives. And it was quiet- deathly, beautifully quiet.

I went further up the road and made camp at a Forest Service campground near a pretty, weedy lake. It was raining. I started a fire and cooked my trout, drank from my growler of Blacksmith, and read in my tent, plotting what I should do next.

I had really accomplished all I had set out to do, which wasn’t saying much. I wanted to catch Yellowstone and west-slope cutthroat, check. I had wanted to see Red Lodge, visit some breweries, and do some touristy things, check. I had yet to catch a grayling, which was the last thing I felt I must do. So I plotted.