It was a long time ago.The Swan River was ferocious that spring and early summer. I remember it well. None of our usual places along the river were fishable. The river was running strong and fast, a rich coffee- and cream-colored stew of cottonwood limbs, fir and larch logs, birch trees and anything else that got in the path of the torrent that was carving new channels and filling in old ones as we watched.
I remember that my father, my grandfather, my brother Sandy and I were there. Grandpa thought of one place where we might have a chance to catch a fish. It was a place where one particular creek flowed into the Swan, and unlike other tributaries that seemed to add nothing but mud to the frothing mixture, this stream dumped a good head of clear cold water into the river.
Back in those days, five decades ago, or maybe more, I only knew that Grandpa had a notion of where we might catch some fish, and it was right there in the pool where that little creek dumped into the raging river.
There was no question of wading more than ankle-deep in the torrent. A misstep beyond that would have been a serious, serious thing. Brother Sandy was older than I was by a couple of years, and bigger, so most of the parental and grandparental attention as far as keeping us out of trouble was aimed directly at me.
We all had fishing rods. They were three-piece bamboo fly rods. Both Sandy’s and mine were a little bit shorter than they would have been new. The delicate tips had been broken off, and that’s how they ended up in the hands of us youngsters. Grandpa and Dad had fine, unbroken, unblemished bamboo fly rods of the first order. And each of us was armed with an automatic fly reel. That’s something most fly fishers today have never heard of, much less seen. One of these days I’ll tell you all about those reels, but right now, suffice it to say that we had them.
My memory is a little vague about what we fished with, but I am quite sure that we would not have been using artificial flies with those rods that early in the spring with mostly muddy and unfishable water to start with. If we were using flies, they would have been those flies with a little flashing silver propeller or blade of some kind at the head. Most self-respecting fly fishers would not want to get caught using such a contraption, but in those days things weren’t quite so snooty in the fly-fishing business.
And if we weren’t using one of those spinner flies in a royal coachman pattern, we were likely using some angle worms or some sucker meat and a handful of split shot to get that bait to the bottom of the pool. Later in the year we might have been scornful of our friends who used bait through the dry fly days, but when conditions demanded, we were always flexible.
Whatever the case, we all stood there on the bank, or just barely ankle-deep in the pool, casting whatever we had toward the clearest water we could find.
Grandpa caught a fish first and laughed as he slipped it into his grass-filled wicker creel. Then Dad caught one, which he landed with great ceremony, as though it was much bigger than it actually was.
But it was when Sandy felt a tug that things got exciting.
“Hey! Hey, you guys, I think I’ve got a big one!” he shouted.
We watched as Sandy’s broken-tipped bamboo rod began to bend dramatically and his line knifed back and forth in the current where the stream joined the roiling river.
Sandy grew more excited by the moment. His eyes widened. His shouts became stammers.
“I ... I don’t know if I can hold him! Oofta, look at that fish!” he shouted.
A red and silvery shadow rose from the depths to roll on the surface, twisting and tossing its head to try to shed the hook.
Grandpa was excited, too.
“Get the net,” he shouted at me in his Norwegian twang.
“What net?” I shouted back, my own voice quivering with excitement.
“Drat! We didn’t bring it down from the car,” Dad pitched in.
We could all see that Sandy had a big, big trout. It was certainly the largest trout I had ever seen on the hoof, or rather, the fin.
“Work it into the shallows here and we’ll get it for you,” Grandpa directed my excited brother.
It seems now that it took a long time before that fish eased in toward the ankle-deep water where we stood. By that time, I had set my rod up on the bank out of the way and was ready to help. When the fish slid in, appearing spent and gasping with one gill out of the water, I went into action, lunging toward the fish, grabbing at its silvery girth with both hands.
I held that beautiful trout in my hands for just a moment before it made one more desperate lunge, spit out Sandy’s hook as it slipped from my hands, and disappeared slowly into the depths of the swirling pool.
For a while, it seemed as if the world had suddenly come to an end. Darkness settled in all around me. I don’t remember what Sandy said to me, but I can imagine what it might have been and I will not attempt to repeat it here. I do remember being scolded, first by my grandfather, and then by my father. And I remember the words, “You lost that fish for your brother. You should have stayed away from it.” But I do not remember whether anyone actually said them to me, or whether I just said them to myself.
Sandy eventually forgot about that fish, or at least he forgave me and quit mentioning it every time we were near a fishing hole. But I have never forgotten it. And on days like today, when the streams are running bank-full and there is almost nowhere around to float a fly, I think about that day long ago and that place where the water flowed so cold and clear.
Greg Tollefson is a freelance Missoula writer whose column appears each week in Outdoors. He can be reached at gtollefson@bresnan.net.
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