Out West...

I’m getting old now, nearly 60, what’s left of my hair turned grey. This is a story of a love affair that came relatively late in my life. It’s not a cool story of gonzo fishing. It’s a love story, of the West and fishing the Bighorn.

Southeastern Montana seemingly goes on forever, the high plains flowing to Wyoming and the Dakotas. It’s broken by a series of small mountain ranges , and by rivers, the Yellowstone, Little Bighorn and the Bighorn, that run north. The plains make it possibly the best horse country in the world. Countless horses were raised here, initially by native Indians, and later by farmers. The Sioux and the Crow were rivaled only by Genghis Khan’s Mongols as the greatest-ever fighting horsemen. They were masters of guerilla warfare, and they hated each other.

After the Civil War, families came west across these high plains, along the Bozeman and Oregon trails, looking for farmland. The Sioux, under Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, decided to stop them, to protect their land, and to stop the slaughter of the buffalo. The government built a line of forts to protect the trails, and, when these were overrun, sent General Custer to stop Crazy Horse. Eventually their forces, totally unmatched, met.

On a beautiful day in 1876, Custer’s Crow guide, White Man Runs Him, looked out over the valley of the Little Bighorn. He stared at the camps of the Sioux and the Comanche massed there, and told George Custer “They have more braves than you have bullets. We are all going to die today”. Custer, perhaps a little unnerved, called his scout a coward, and banished him from the camp. He went to a nearby hill, painted himself grey, did a death dance, and waited. Custer and his 300 men ran out of bullets fighting the waves of men who came up that hill. They all died.

The Sioux chased White Man Runs Him all the way to what is now Yellowstone National Park. He killed five of them. He lived a long time, and until the American President fell in love with the Eiffel Tower, and asked its architect to design the Statue of Liberty, the Statue was going to be White Man Runs Him standing guard.

The Indians were eventually defeated. Crazy Horse was murdered by a soldier, after surrendering, and Sitting Bull went with his tribe into exile to the very north, almost to Canada. The Crow were allowed to stay, on a huge reservation. One of those original forts on the Bozeman Trail, Fort Smith, is 25 miles from the site of the battle, on the reservation. It’s now the tiny town of 200 people that is the center of Bighorn fishing, with five fly shops, a store, a coffee shop, a post office and a Baptist Church. There’s no alcohol, and no nightlife. There is, though, amazing fishing, and in Fall and Winter, pheasant and waterfowl hunting that beggars description.

Many surgeons, me included, are drawn to beautiful things as a respite from a life often mired in sadness and stress. It’s hard to talk to friends, at dinner or watching your kids play football, about the lady who died yesterday, a week after your operation. Sadly, science sometimes just isn’t enough. Sometimes the will isn’t there or the disease is too strong. Sometimes there’s no explanation. It’s just not something you talk about. But it can be devastating.

Over time it weighs on you, and we look for something to counterbalance it. Some turn to music, some to lovers, some to art or to wine. Thomas Aquinas once said that sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine. My wife, Christine, is also a surgeon. We surely love wine. We also flyfish together. We love being out in the fresh air, seeing the wonder of nature around us, developing a new skill, meeting people outside our world who don’t give a shit that we’re surgeons, allowing us to forget from time to time. Chris always catches more fish than me.

I love the Blues, whether it’s the Delta guys who went to Chicago, or Englishmen like Clapton, Page and Richards who paid homage while taking it to a new level, Leon Russell on his piano, or Stevie Ray in Texas. They sing about basic truths, about love, lust, loss and betrayal, sometimes of the joy of living. One of those truths was described by Henry Thomas in an old song, “Fishing Blues”, when he said “and I bet your wife catches more fish than you”. It’s humbling, sometimes irritating, but still the truth. I love watching Chris apply her surgeon’s problem-solving brain to the seemingly simple, but very complex problem of flyfishing. That she shares my love of fishing and of the West enhances my joy.

Our first-ever flyfishing trip, ten years ago, was with Sean, on the Bighorn River. Sean is White Man Runs Him’s great, great grandson. He’s a Crow, ex-Marine Recon, proud of his family history and his tribe’s traditions. He does a sun dance every year. No water, no food, dancing in a teepee with logs burning like a sauna for three days, entering a Zen-like state, worshiping the power of the sun. When we met Sean on the Bighorn we could barely fish our way out of a paper bag.

The Bighorn’s a wide river, winding through high red cliffs, dotted with long islands that hold abundant pheasant. Ducks and geese love the back channels in winter, when the sky is black with birds. There are a couple of decent rapids that will usually deliver if you streamer fish as you go down. There are always Blue Herons wading the banks looking for fish, and countless hawks and eagles soaring overhead on the breeze. The banks hold beaver, moles and raccoons. We’ve seen bears cooling off in the river with their cubs, and wild horses, deer, mountain lions and bobcats on the cliffs. At night, coyotes howl.

A typical day on the Bighorn is a 13 mile float from the dam to Bighorn access, A to B. If dry flies are your thing, there are always pods of fish to set up on. Casting is typically upstream, so different to back east, where it’s downstream and across. I find it harder to get the drift right. Most people nymph fish. A few years ago, we took my son James and his girlfriend Kim. She’d never fished before, and caught 27 the first day. It might have been beginners luck for Kim, or female superiority, even natural skill, but really, it’s just that this is a stupendous fishing river.

We fished that first trip from Forrester’s, as we still do. On the third day out with Sean we’d sort of got the hang of nymphing. Almost at the end of the float, in the Greycliffs pool, Chris cast into the foam line. Bang. Another trout. Then we saw it. It looked like a golden shark.

The nymph was called a Ray Charles, because even blind fish will eat them. It’s tiny, about ¼ inch, and grey. If she pulled too hard it falls out. If she pulled too soft, the fish spits it out. It’s fair to say that Chris talks a lot, being from New York. She didn’t utter a word for the next 15 minutes, as she played that fish, and it played her. Big, old fish like this know every trick. He ran to the bottom and stopped dead. He jumped, he ran towards the boat. He took her into her backing many times.

Sean was anxious, calling out instructions. Chris seemed a natural. Time has proven that she is. It was such a big fish, the fish of memories forever. I just sat there, willing it to happen. Then Sean had it in the net, 28 inches long, fat, glistening, golden yellow, great spots. The photo cannot possibly do it justice. We were both irrevocably hooked.

Every time we float through that pool, I dream I’m going to catch him again. I had a ceramic model made of the fish, from the photo, and gave it to Sean. We fished with him every time we came west. Later, Sean taught us how to hunt pheasant in the high hills of the Hooterite land. We owe him a lot.

When I was a boy in Australia, the greatest stories of exploration we were taught were of Captain Cook circumnavigating the globe, claiming Australia for England, and saving his boat on the Great Barrier Reef, and of Livingstone in Africa. Who could forget the American, Stanley, miraculously finding Livingstone, the dour Scot, in the jungles of East Africa, and calmly proclaiming, “Livingstone, I presume”, as if they’d bumped into each other in Knightsbridge.

In America, their equivalent was Lewis and Clark’s three-year voyage of discovery to the west, a tale of bravery, endurance and sheer bloody-mindedness to rival any. The most astounding part of the journey, apart for crossing the Rockies twice, was that they went against the tidal flow of the Missouri the whole way west, pulling the boats along the river. When they got to what is now central Montana, the river nearly beat them. Names like Grand Rapids, Cascade, and Land of the Giants tell the story. The Missouri is a huge river, and when it cascades down rapids it means business.

Five years ago, on our first trip to fish the Missouri with Al Caucci, Christine and I got to Craig a day early. Al’s a tough-ass Italian boy from the mean streets of Philly, now in his 70’s. He fell in love with flyfishing on his honeymoon. He eventually quit engineering and built the Delaware River Club. Al coined the term ‘matching the hatch’ and invented Comparadun flies. He lives for bonefishing.  He told me there were no guides to be had. I rang the Trout Shop and begged them for a guide. We turned up the next morning and met Dave Bloom, who’d had a cancellation. Lucky us.

Dave took us to Pelican Point, where there are a lot of pelicans, to float to Cascade. We floated horizontally downstream casting Brown Drakes, sitting down so as not to spook the fish with our shadows. As you float down the Missouri, on water that will end in the Mississipi, flow past Memphis through the Delta to the sea, it’s hard not to think of Lewis, Clark, their thirty men, and the beautiful Indian woman, Sacagawea, going against the tide. Their trip wasn’t a holiday.

The clouds built up in the afternoon. Then it got ugly, as the storm finally came over the mountains. We pulled over to a small island and tucked our rods away. Montana has more lightning strikes than anywhere in the world. It was cold, rain pelting down. Lightning struck a tree about 50 yards away. A nerve shattering boom, then blinding light. We nearly died of fright. As we calmed down, we waited for the rain to stop. The fish went nuts after the storm, devouring the Drakes, as if in a frenzy. We learned three great technical things from Dave – say Chimpanzee before you hook the fish, that the hero mend can salvage a drift, and how cool flyagra is. Being Anglo, I sometimes use God save the Queen instead of chimpanzee. Best of all, we learned of Dave’s deep respect for the fish, their beauty, and for the art in flyfishing, a feeling so in tune with our own. We’ll never forget that day.

Chris and I went back to the house we shared with 10 other fishermen and Al, all of whom had a quiet day upriver. They were so excited when we told them we’d fished with Dave. I had no idea of his fame. You’d never know. We went into the Trout Shop the next day and saw about 50 fly patterns he’d designed. I’m now the proud owner of several patterns of Bloom’s Caddis and his ant.

After that first trip with Al, we’ve fished the last few years with Mike Agee, a local Montana boy, a football star in his college days. Mike’s what one imagines when thinking of a fishing guide- tall, fit, quiet until he gets to know you, kind to those who haven’t done it much and want to learn, and possessing a deep knowledge of his river. One of the nicest things about this sport is the willingness of men like Sean, Al, Mike and Dave to teach. Last year Mike took my daughter, Sam, and her boyfriend Alex, both novices, and had them landing fish left, right and center.

Mike has access to the Land if the Giants. The Indians named it, the fish prove it. It’s a long canyon full of huge trout and delicious walleye. The walleye at Izaak’s in Craig is hard to beat. Mike motors across the lake into the canyon, finds a spot, cuts the engine, pulls out the oars and off we go. We catch mostly big rainbows, all above 20 inches, on nymphs early in the day, then with caddis on the surface, then on streamers as the sun starts to go down.

This place also holds huge brown trout, up to and over 30 inches. I’ve seen the pictures.  One day I had a shot, and blew it.

There was once a cabdriver in Boston, Jack Gartside, who happened to be one of the best fly tiers around. He used to sit at Logan airport waiting for a fare, and tie flies in a vice in his car. His masterpiece was the Beastmaster, a large colorful streamer. Just as the sun was almost gone, Mike tied one on for me. I cast out to the bank and stripped the line. Not ten seconds later it was smashed. Big trout attack streamers on dark. This fish massacred it. I saw it once. It looked prehistoric, like something that lived with dinosaurs. I was yelling, Mike was yelling at me to stop it. Right. I lost him, that huge brown. Nobody spoke. The adrenaline in the boat as we motored home in the dark could win the Giants another Superbowl.

When we got home to New York, I found Mr Gartside and ordered as many of his flies as he could make. In the kind way of fishermen, he later emailed me to ask how they went. “Very well. Thanks, mate”. He died not long after, and I’ve framed a Beastmaster in his memory.

Friendships are forged whilst sitting on a riverbank. For Christine and me, it started with Sean and Mike, and the guys on the Delaware. We’ve loved hunting for solitary big browns on the Delaware with Ben, John, Wylie, Kevie, Bob and Steve. As you float with almost vertical wooded cliffs around you, the sun shining through the trees, it’s not hard to imagine Hawkeye trying to find the last of the Mohicans somewhere on the bank. It’s seen trade, turmoil and war over centuries. This area became a center for timber cutting and for quarrying beautiful bluestone that can be found all over New York’s finest buildings.

It truly is hunting here. You have to be patient. Big brown trout remind me of a spider in his web, waiting, killing everything. They lurk in the shadows under an overhanging branch, usually behind a rock that creates a current, dragging food their way. They typically eat most just as the sun goes down, like Tailor in the surf on Fraser Island in Australia, coming in at dusk. Big brown trout have a brain the size of a pea, but I’ve never met anything so able to outsmart me. You can float one past their nose 10 times and they just shrug. If  that bug doesn’t float exactly like the real thing, they shrug. You’d think you were dealing with Einstein.

Then it was the same fishing the Snake with Vance Freed and Trevor Wine, sleeping out, to awake to moose crossing the river in scenery that drew Ansel Adams here. Or fishing the North Platte in Wyoming with Vance, nymphing for huge rainbows in howling winds, unable to go to shore even for a piss due to the silly water rights. Or when winter fishing the Yampa in deep snow, the ridiculously beautiful Green River at Flaming Gorge in Utah, or the tiny East Walker that holds such big trout. I love winter fishing, standing in the river under a blue, cloudless sky, in perfect quiet, after trudging through deep snow. It’s warmer in the water than out, there’s usually nobody else for miles, and the fish still eat.

We’ve fished the Cascapedia in Canada with our buddy Henri Atlas, and Josh from the Micmac Camp, standing precariously in long Indian canoes, looking for Atlantic salmon on their regular pilgrimage from Iceland, going up the river to spawn. These are the fish of a thousand casts. One constantly swings the fly as you wade through fast rapids, deep limpid pools, or on the breadth of this big river, surrounded by evergreens. Nothing beats casting and casting, then landing a thirty pound salmon, as Chris has done twice.

Stupendous though all these rivers are, my heart belongs on the Bighorn. The Aussie in me comes out. I love the wide, open spaces, the laconic men who work there, and it’s stark beauty. It reminds me of being in the Australian bush with my grandfather and his stockmen, mustering cattle in the heat, sweat dripping in our eyes, flies all around, dogs barking and nipping as they push the herd.

We’ve fished the Horn in similar crushing, dry August heat, when the fish are lined up along The Drum like planes waiting for takeoff at JFK, as they gorge on hoppers. We’ve stood in blizzard caddis hatches near dusk in the Aquarium, with the damn things going up our nose and into our ears, trying to skate a Goddard Caddis to get the fish’s attention amongst the blanket of flies on the water. We’ve watched spinner falls slowly descending to the river just on dark, and tried to catch fish when you can hardly see the fly or the fish. We’ve fished streamers down to Two Leggins, gasping as another golden monster crushes our Beastmaster one foot from the bank in one of the back-channel braids, giving thanks yet again to Jack Gartside for his invention.

We’ve thrown baetis and midges in driving snow, in the dead of winter, cracking ice off our lines, perhaps dreaming of being warm and watching football. We’ve then walked the islands with our dogs Katy and Jimi, clumping through snow, shooting flushed pheasant and jump-shooting ducks and geese in the back channels, only to get back into the boat and throw streamers. It’s hard to beat shooting birds, then getting fish throwing streamers, after catching them on midges in the morning, in the snow.

Sometimes we’ve just nymphed A to B, quietly boating 50 trout, as we discuss the Giants, baseball, the Jets and Rex, surgery, music and the state of the nation.

Best of all, we’ve done it for years with two men who’ve become great friends, Dale Davisson and Chris Stinson. Dale finds fish like you and I breathe, and knows every animal on the river, knows where the wild asparagus grows and the morels hide, bless him. He’s hunted here since he could walk. Chris, who made it to pro baseball, loves tying big streamers and shooting ducks, and is the most enthusiastic guy I’ve ever met on a river. Sean retired from guiding and now cares for troubled Crow kids in Billings. We’ve recently fished with Matt, 20 years a sergeant major in the 4th infantry, who now helps vets with Healing Waters.

I love the river, love the wonderful golden and silver fish, am sometimes overawed by the beauty of it all, but when all’s said and done, it’s the company of these men, and my wife, that I most enjoy. They love it all as much as I do, and their enthusiasm, even on a quiet day, when there are no bugs, or the wind is howling, or it’s just too bloody hot, is infectious. Those rare quiet days on the Bighorn are the time for a Bookers and a fat cigar for us guys, a beer for Christine, and some music on the jambox. It’s a time to chat, and perhaps have a swim at Crow Beach. There’ll always be fish another day.

If you come to fish the Bighorn, try to visit the Battle site on the Little Bighorn. You can reflect on the inexorable passage of time, think of the great Crazy Horse and his doomed war, of silly, brave Custer and all the poor Irishmen, straight off the boat, who died with him. You can imagine buffalo streaming by, see the wild horses and White Man Runs Him dancing on the hill. Then you can go to Fort Smith, pick up your guide, float this beautiful river, sit in the sun and catch fish. Feel and see the beauty all around you. Find peace. I know I do. It’s why I fell in love, why this affair will never end. Times change out west, downriver.