Last month, I spent a little over two weeks going as truly bum like as you can take things in pursuit of fish. I started my trip out west landing in Bozeman and meeting up with friends that live there. We then traveled to Idaho where the first leg of my steelhead trip began. Another friend of mine from Helena met us there and for the first 5 days of my trip I had company. Even with comfortable summer steel weather, it undeniably helps having friends to share your time with on the water when pursing a fish that seems to not exist for most, if not the entire day. You talk each other off the ledge when you see each other’s body language going to hell and giving up throughout any given day.
At the end of day 5, the trip for my friends ended and they headed home. From there I had 9 days and no plan. At first, the transition from having fishing partners and a group to grab dinner with at the end of the day, to having no one to talk to all day was an abrupt change. I hadn’t even really thought about where I was going to head next and was mulling it over in my head and then that day just came. I decided to head to Washington State and drove 300 miles the end of day 5 and ended up in a motel perfectly suited for a dude that was a danger to anyone on the roads from exhaustion and just needed a place to hang his waders up to dry for 5 hours and close his eyes for a brief time. I woke up the next morning and pulled up a map on my phone to get a sense of the river I was fishing that day and where to start. I had never been there before, so I knew that day was going to be a process getting to learn the area. I found some beautiful water that morning and fished hard through 5-6 runs without a touch. No signs of life. But the river looked beautiful. I tried to find a place to grab lunch but there literally wasn’t any place to go nearby. I found a gas station that had some beef jerky and some brownies as I was checking out that I grabbed two of for good measure. I was dehydrated with road burn setting in on day 6, so I had one Gatorade that by the time I got to the counter I had already drank 2/3 of it, so I told the lady charge me for two and grabbed a second before walking out the door.
I kept fishing that afternoon til dark and didn’t touch a fish. It occurred to me when I was moving from a spot to find new water at around 4pm that I didn’t even have lodging set up for that night. I knew there were no hotels or motels to be found immediately in the area as I was now 60-75 miles from where I had stayed the night before. I pulled up Airbnb and found some mini cabin that looked like a classic northwest bohemian style set up that was rustic but cozy and it looked like the owners cared and weren’t ax murderers, so I booked that when I had one mini bar of cell phone service on the side of the road. I didn’t even pull up the map of where it actually was until I finished fishing that day. When I finished, I thought I need to get a real meal I haven’t eaten legitimate food in nearly 3 days. I drove towards an area that I saw lights in the far off distance maybe 10-15 miles and when I came onto the town I saw a McDonalds and another gas station with a food mart. I pulled into the McDonalds, and then hit my brakes as I was about to get into the drive through line and had a moment with myself. “dude you need to eat some real food this is serious”. I pulled out of the lot and continued further into what appeared to be society. I was driving along the strip and appeared to be running out of real estate with no real food options spotted. One of the last buildings on the strip was this railroad car looking place that didn’t have any windows or real sign I could see- but there were a bunch of cars parked outside. I figured alright this has to be a place that is open and has real food I’m going in. I took my waders off in the parking lot that were leaking bad at this point- I was wet but put on my slippers and walked to what appeared to be the entrance. I opened the door and what I saw felt like heaven- it was this rustic old school frank Sinatra type spot that I could tell from the vibes immediately definitely had steak. And I was definitely going to get one. I sat down at the bar to hide my appearance and ordered food quick. I ate my meal in about 10 minutes once it came out and then pulled up my Airbnb. It was only 14 miles away but was saying it was going to take me nearly an hour to get there. I knew I was off the grid somewhere and finding this place was going to be fun so I left and guessed perfectly about what the situation involved. 10 miles to finish the drive on basically a logging road I found my little mini house cabin which at least had a light on. I went in and passed out in about 3 minutes. I woke up the next day at 6am and started down the same road to start fishing again.
This process ensued for two days almost identically. I didn’t catch a fish or even have interest in my fly transpire at any point in time even when being vulnerable about lying to myself something might have just happened. The fact is it definitely didn’t.
I began working my way back home after a three day beat down and covered some water I liked and had fished on my way out there. In doing so, I found some fish. The first fish I hooked was a fresh fish that had beautiful colors and fought like hell. It tore up the pool and after no success at all for days, I was beyond pumped to be back in this situation. As I was getting close to landing the fish, I almost fought it like someone was going to be there to help me. I looked around, remembered I was by myself, and knew now for a fact no one was around or going to help me. I landed the fish in a soft cove I found nearby.
After landing the fish that was perhaps my best fish of the trip, I thought let me try and get a picture of this fish. I patted my pockets and realized I didn’t even have my phone. I unhooked the fish and held it in the current and it took off hard seemingly getting to the riffle upstream in a couple of seconds. It occurred to me at that point in time that I was happy with my feelings of the situation that just transpired. I wasn’t even carrying my phone anymore- didn’t care about the photo- knew a photo of a steelhead while fishing by myself in a rocky freestone stream wasn’t happening. Didn’t matter and wasn’t why I was here doing this.
The next couple of days I fished water that I had not fished previously that looked good and that I knew had fish in it. Id get to a run and the feeling was you were expecting a grab first time through the run in several spots over this period of time. When that didn’t happen, I’d debate to myself how to respond next. Do I move up to the next pool? Do I re-rig and run this again? On one run in particular, I remember wanting to just move on and keep going up as there was one nice pool after another and I was eager to just keep seeing what was up ahead. But this run was too good looking. I had started walking up, and stopped myself and was like dude what are you doing you know there is a fish here. I knew I was a little small on the fly I was fishing and that my leader was on the shorter end after some previous fly changes before swinging that run. I forced myself to turn around and sit down to rebuild a longer leader and picked out a fly that was a little bigger and had the right balance of materials to get down slightly in what was a fast upper end of a run that had current. I was working the run and had gotten half way down without a touch again. The bottom half of the run sucked to wade and there was an easy way out at the mid way point where I could just get on the bank and keep going upstream like I wanted to originally. But I was mindful of how fishing by myself I was being quick to just keep moving to stay busy rather than focusing on the water in front of me. I forced myself to keep working down, and when I got to the tail out I had a fish lightly mess with the fly without taking. I knew it was a fish, and made a fly change to the same fly one size smaller. The fish messed with it again but didn’t take. I opened up my box and stared in it looking for the fly that spoke to me in the moment after two refusals. I found a brown wet fly that had a little bit of flash to it but not over the top, a pattern that John Hazel had pointed out to me in the shop was his go to fly and that if he could fish one fly the rest of his life that would be it. I thought alright if its good enough for John its good enough for me. I tied it on and made a cast where I set it up with a downstream mend to put some speed on the fly swinging through the tail out. The fish took with conviction and I landed what would ultimately be my last fish of the trip. After it all played out- part of me instinctively wanted to share the story with a fishing partner that was there to tell it to. While at the same time I thought to myself holy shit I am having a blast out here and literally have not really talked to a person in 5 days. I had been internalizing and talking to myself the entire time.
I ended the trip with a couple days left to burn in Montana before I took off. When there, I visited two sections of river that are marginal and can be good this time of year, or hold nothing. The first day I thought the river looked right and conditions were beautiful weather and flow wise. I got to the river and in a couple of casts hooked a big brown that I lost. That proved to be the only fish I had on that day. I slept in my car there that night because it was near nothing and I wanted to be out there early the next day for redemption. I got up and went to a section that I liked the day before but just didn’t have enough time to fish well. I was swinging flies again because I couldn’t really do much else with limited dries and being on my own. I came into the sweet spot of the run I was fishing and got the take I was expecting right where the fish should have been. It was a big rainbow that was around 24’’ and fought hard. I was in the process of landing the fish when a guy I didn’t know was there came up behind me and goes hey nice fish do you want a picture. At this point I was in pure hunter gatherer mode after being left to my own thoughts and devices for a while. I said no and he insistently said “are you sure”, almost as if it seemed totally illogical to not want to take a picture of a trout of that size. I told him I was sure and let it go. After I did I felt the need to talk a little more, as I think my reaction threw him off. I said hey I appreciate it, I’ve been fishing 5 days by myself you’d be surprised how quickly we revert back to being uncivilized without anyone to talk to- making fun of myself to excuse the situation. He laughed and we talked a while. Walking along the stream a while, we came across another run that looked good and we agreed we should fish it. We went down and I started from the top working down while he nymphed at the way top where the run had a focused lane that made sense to fish. As I started working down, the guy every few minutes would blurt out “ahhh just missed another” , “are you fishing a wet or a streamer” , “seeing some caddis come off here might make sense to switch to a caddis pupa”….. after so many of these I thought my god just let me fish. I can barely hear you my man the current is ripping, I don’t want to pretend I heard you and say something that might be responsive to what you said, and we don’t need to feel uncomfortable with silence while fishing. Lets just fish. This dude couldn’t do it, so I left and went back to internalizing things to myself.
I ended up staying an additional two days beyond that finishing on the Yellowstone that trip. The beauty of the place was just something I couldn’t leave and I was having fun driving around fishing places I hadn’t been to in over ten years. I surprised myself with how well the spey performed on the Yellowstone pulling out some beautiful browns on foot which was a unique way to find success on that river- perhaps one of the hardest trout rivers to locate big trout that I have experienced over my time out west. I pulled a couple of magazine cover fish out of Yankee Jim canyon in water that seemed too fast but I fished anyway to finish a stretch I had been covering just to see. The last one I landed I thought to myself wow over 100 days spent on this river in my life and my best brown here comes from shore on a spey rod in high winds swinging a wooly bugger with a 13 foot rod in a class 3 rapid. It felt more lucky than good to have that happen there and for that reason felt right to reel up and end it on that note. I looked up the canyon and saw no one and did my best to burn it into my memory as any angler does knowing their trout season is over. There was a cold wind starting to blow and you could feel a front was coming in. I hadn’t checked the weather or my messages in a week now, and I thought I probably should this feels like its serious. I drove back to Livingston and got service to check weather and saw the following days were going to be in the teens to 30s as a high. I smiled as I was set to take off that evening in realizing I had caught the end of the fall run perfectly. When I got to the airport, I had time to grab dinner before taking off so I sat down and ordered. I looked at my phone and when I opened my pictures, I had 10 photos. Not even one per day. My phone had over 100 text messages. Voice mailbox was full. I didn’t want to go on social media and say what I had just seen because people were looking for me and I needed a shred of doubt that I maybe wasn’t fishing to re-enter active communication with people and not get my head ripped off. As I was finishing dinner, two guys at the bar start talking about how great the fishing was on the upper Madison between the lakes. As this conversation ensued both men pulled their phone out and had it out showing it to one another for validation that what they said was true. I paid my bill and started walking towards my gate. The trip was over.