Fishing in Yellowstone

I had my wish! Twice! And the first is not writing this blog, because Linda has been doing a super job of that, don't you think? Nope, I got my chance to go fly fishing on Tuesday, and today I got to fish with casting reel and lure. Regarding Tuesday, I contacted a local fly shop here in West Yellowstone, Arrick's Fly Shop, and hooked up (pun intended) with a great guide named Matt Morrill. He picked me up at the coach at about 8 a.m. and we headed first to the shop to get fitted for my waders and boots. He had everything else for the trip, artificial flies, rods, even what turned out to be great sandwiches for lunch. Off we went in his SUV to Lamar Valley, to one of his favorite spots to fish. After about 45 minutes, we were presented with a sign in the road that said because of the danger of a new forest fire in the valley, the rangers had just decided to close the road until further notice. No cutthroat trout today (but not forever, but I'll get to that in a moment). We turned to Plan B, which entailed going to another of his favorite spots to fish for brookies. We got to the Gibbon River about 30 minutes later, and I thus donned my waders and boots, my dapper looking hat from Bean's, and slung my Foxwoods Casino backpack up on my back. I'm a real outdoorsman, huh? Anyhoo, we hiked about a mile in alongside the stream and as we went, Matt kept yelling out nonsense type things like: "hey, Dave" and "time to leave, Hank". This, he explained, was necessary to make sure the bears knew about our presence. So, I thought, what the hell, and I started yelling out nonsensical things, too. At the same time, of course, I'm looking behind me to make sure one of the black bears (like in the blog photo you saw earlier this week), or worse yet, one of the very angry grizzlies Linda and I had seen in a documentary on bears at the local IMAX on Monday, were not following me. More on bears later. Matt and I descended down a fairly steep decline and proceeded to wade and walk through both stream and bank side, until we arrived at our destination. Matt proceeded to provide me with fly casting 101, and within about 10 minutes, I was fishing. I learned to use more arm than wrist and I must say, I started to catch on (again, pun intended), until guess what(?), I had a brookie on. Matt showed me how to humanely handle the fish and extract the hook from his mouth, and we both admired his (the fish, not Matt's) incredible colorings. There were spots of green, yellow, brown, fins of brown and orange, tipped with white: just an incredible creature of nature. We were practicing catch release, so the little guy swam away, I'm sure, wondering not about Matt, but who the heck the guy was with the funny hat, with the big shit eating grin on this face. More brookies followed and for the next two hours, we had some fairly good action. Then, Matt suggested it was time for lunch and indicated that he would go back to the SUV to procure the goods. Leaving me alone, of course. With the bears. And anything else that was sure to turn up with Matt being a mile away. Brave me, I said "okay, but you didn't show me how the bear spray you gave me this morning works." He obliged, showing me how to unlock the nozzle, proceeding to spray a pepper cloud about 30 feet in front of him. He explained that I had spray content for about 5 seconds (great, as if that's going to work!) and that it was usually considered a last resort. He said that if I hopped up and down like an idiot, waved my arms and screamed like a loonie, it would be far more effective. So, off he went, leaving me rod in hand, a beautiful scene, the brookies...and the bears. Suddenly, almost with every cast, I was either getting rises or catching fish. Unbelievable! The hell with the bears, this was too much fun! (And this blog is getting far too long, so let me make an effort to economize). When Matt arrived back with food in hand, I told him about my fishing success, prompting the fish to essentially stop biting altogether. No hits, no rises. I'm sure Matt thought I had just made the whole thing up. Anyhoo (for a second time), we munched on his great sandwiches, and spent the rest of the day enjoying the whole experience. By early evening, Matt suggested it was time to go, but not before a masterful demonstration of fly casting, the likes of which one could only imagine. He was casting a distance of 40 to 50 feet, on target with each cast. He was good...real good. We hiked back to the vehicle and on the way back to the coach, we saw numerous bison and elk, and enjoyed a colorful sunset. Great day!

Today (and I promise I'll make this far shorter), Linda and I took a drive along Yellowstone Lake. I took along my fishing gear, having also picked up some promising lures from Arrick's. During the second stop, I hooked a 2-2.5 lb, 14" cutthroat trout, which is the native species in the lake. Linda was up in the Jeep with Sammy, and as I was constrained to practice catch and release, I had to ease this fine specimen of a fish back into the water, without anyone but he and I having experienced the catch. Another great day!

Thanks for reading all this or perhaps you've had a birthday or two if you've gotten to this point. But, as you might guess, we're having a wonderful time on this trip! And with that, I'll hand you back over to Linda for future blogs and I can almost hear your sighs of relief.