I’d like to tell you an epic tale of traveling more than 1,000 miles to Montana and catching fish until my arm fell off. That would be the bee’s knees.
I’ve a better story to tell, however, and it involves just five trout, distributed in a 3-2 ratio. And I got two.
That’s how many fish I caught in Montana, and it seemed plenty.
To elaborate, I didn’t fish the whole time I was in the Treasure State. I mostly cooked dinner for my daughter, a joyful act I used to do almost every night, and now only rarely have the chance.
I also tried unsuccessfully to prevent my daughter from getting me hooked on one of her favorite television serial crime dramas. Other than Liverpool Football Club and a bit of news, I’m not much for television these days. But she’s cagey and once she has me hooked, I usually have to stay up late getting caught up on who murdered whom.
The weather wasn’t much for fishing. I know some will frown on our lack of commitment to the assignment.
“If you really want to fish, you go. Rain is why God created Gore-Tex,” they’ll say.
But fishing wasn’t the only assignment, as you can tell based on the trout distribution. We went to Rogers Lake for grayling one day and were nearly skunked. Yet, it didn’t much matter. My daughters and I used to go to Rogers regularly when we all resided in the Flathead. But that ritual fell out of practice as the three of us were scattered by the wind to three new states.
Now, with one of us living back in the Flathead, it seemed time to revive the tradition. Catching fish was secondary to being on that water, together, once again.
Fishing trip No. 2 was another springtime golden oldie: the Thompson River. The Thompson was a revelation when I learned of this trout fishery that was fishable when the rest of the rivers in western Montana were blown out by high water.
There wasn’t high water, but there was Memorial Day weekend. I’d never seen that river corridor as crowded with campers, ATVs and more humans than fish. We gave it a whirl for a bit, but then one of our group had an unfortunate incident with a Panther Martin, missing the eye fortunately, but not by much.
So that “fishing trip” turned out to be an 80-mile detour en route to the ER.
Since we were back early, I resumed my place in the kitchen. I spent the week working through my canon of vegetarian meals I learned to cook in Kalispell when my high school daughters were infected with a mysterious malady and stopped eating meat.
I made pasta with kale and tomato, pasta dressed with a lentil stew, pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and almonds, and a Mexican combo plate with beans refried in bacon grease — bacon being the gateway meat for recovering vegetarians — with some pork simmered in red sauce on the side for myself.
We had one more stop to revisit in our canon of spring fly fishing hot spots: Duck Lake. With only one day left to fish, we made it happen. The price, $50 for a one-day license, was a bit steeper than I remember, but this week we were bound by canonical dictates and that required a trip to the Blackfeet Reservation. Whatever the fishing prospects, any chance I get to set eyes on Chief Mountain and the Rocky Mountain Front is worth it.
But we slept late, then when we finally woke, dallied over a Liverpool match. By the time we made it to Duck, we only had a few hours to fish.
Final score: Zoe, three chunky rainbows. Dad just two. It was a clear victory for youth. And sleeping in.
At least Liverpool snagged the title.