May is a lousy time to fish rivers. Unless you’re on a tailwater, the river will be high, muddy and dangerous. That’s not a bad thing as these systems need the revitalizing enema of high flows to flush out the pipes. But the fishing sucks.
A friend who worked over on the Missouri River once joked that he always knew when high water hit the Bitterroot, as there’d be a sudden hatch of rafts sporting guide tags on the tailwater near Craig. The regulars on the Missouri use hard boats. The Bitterroot is one of the few heavily worked rivers in Montana where guides still prefer inflatables.
I used to pretty much take May off, distracting myself from the poor fishing with gardening. Then I figured out a farmers market is a suitable replacement for a vegetable garden – with the added benefit that it won’t wilt to dust if you leave for a week and forget to ask someone to water.
Eventually I noticed the Flathead has plenty of lakes. So I dusted off my float tube and started fishing still waters. Rogers Lake fast became a favorite. That’s what grayling do to me.
I’m a fool for these fish, to my eye the most beautiful of the salmonids. Grayling looks can be deceiving. At first glance they can look a bit drab, like a duller version of a whitefish. Then their scales catch the light just so and the fish flashes lavender, electric blue and with pink highlights.
In the net the famous dorsal fin isn’t apparent as it folds down over the back. But in clear water such as Rogers you’ll get a good look as you bring the fish in close. It flares out, giving these spunky fighters a little extra leverage, while reflecting all that color. They put up a fine fight for their size, and will get up in the air a bit just to make things exciting. They come easily to dry flies, and with a hard, boney mouth, grayling are far less likely than trout to slip free of a barbless hook.
These days I’ve ditched the float tube for a drift boat, and my twin daughters and I spend as many May evenings as possible out on the lake. Rogers is small enough that rowing a river dory backwards from shore to shore is a reasonable task. An added benefit is that the twins have become fitness buffs, so now they fight over who gets to row. For all you childless men out there still on the fence about the fatherhood thing, make sure you factor in the benefit of having your kids row while you fish. When you consider the big picture, the whole changing diapers thing kind of balances out.
The twins are about to graduate from high school so it’s a time of change. Fortunately, one change is their renewed interest in fly fishing. Both daughters caught grayling the other day, our first on Rogers this season. We also spent time walking along the small creek that enters the lake from the east. This time of year it’s crowded with grayling, spawning in the cool, clear pools. We don’t fish the creek of course. We just go to take in the spectacle of it all.
I can stand in the boat and cast to rising fish all day, but for my daughters, a fish or two is enough. After that the business of teens – homework, jobs, the impending milestone – all begin to tug them back to their day-to-day lives, away from the “other” described so well by Wendell Berry in his novel “Jaybor Crow.” The other is that place where we retreat to escape barbering, or whatever we do to survive in the world. Despite the houses ringing half the lake, Rogers seems such a place, one where the world still seems ordered by the serendipity of nature.
For a time we allow ourselves to be lost in that world, listening to calling loons; watching bald eagles swoop down to capture spent grayling washed out of the creek. We stay as long as we can, until the tug becomes too strong, and then row back across the lake.
We leave the other for now. But we’ll be back soon.