Dennis Anderson: Bighorn can become big fishing challenge

ON THE BIGHORN RIVER, MONT. — Here the last drift boat leaves the river when the sun sets. In late August by 8 at night you might see one boat or maybe two still on the river. But the next morning comes quickly. As the sun lowers itself below the dry foothills beyond, where mule deer and coyotes roam the scree, boats are pulled to shore. Waders are hung. Charcoal is lit and dinner made.

The Bighorn speaks directly to Americans' capacity for singularity of purpose. Fishing is the reason anglers have driven here from New York and California and states in between. Fort Smith, Mont., is ground zero for these activities, and its small gathering of buildings suggests not so much a town as an outpost. You can purchase flies here, hire a guide, rent a drift boat. But this is the Crow Reservation and there is no alcohol for sale. All is acceptable in the name of big trout.

I had received word from a friend that in recent days a certain nexus had been achieved, a downturn, slightly, in the number of anglers and boats on the Bighorn, and an uptick in the dry fly fishing. Come here on some summer days and you'll pass your time dredging the river's holes with San Juan worms, drifting these big flies unseen 5 or 6 feet down exactly with the speed of the current. A brightly colored strike indicator at the top of the leader pauses for a moment when a fish inhales the fly, and the hook is set.

This is good fishing, but of the assembly line variety. Everyone prefers fishing dry, or surface, flies.

We found our rental boat in the tail waters beneath the Yellowtail Dam. A two-ended boat with oars, it was quickly loaded with a cooler (lunch and drinks), fly vests, a landing net, rain gear and fishing rods.

My two boys, ages 14 and 11, had fished the Bighorn before and generally knew what to expect. But today they would have to figure things out for themselves; the sizes of flies, the presentations. They don't have to be bull riders. But if they ultimately choose lives of soft hands and packaged adventures, they will do so defying my best intentions. This nation has problems enough.

The first run below the dam is deep and maybe 600 yards long. I set the boat along a seam between faster water and slower. The boys had 9-foot leaders, 4X, with foot-long, 5X tippets, attached to which were the San Juan worms. At varying times we also tied smaller flies, tiny nymphs, to the worms, and drifted the flies in tandem.

We had driven west on short notice, a pickup and an attached camper our version of a bullet train. At night, a short distance from Fort Smith, we parked the rig at Cottonwood Camp, which, as its name suggests, is spread among tall cottonwoods, some so big two men can't reach their arms around them.

Now, in the morning, some of our campmates were also on the river. Some had their own boats. Some had contracted with guides for the day. Others, like us, had rented boats and were on their own. All smelled the sweet, dry air we did, cooler now as summer winds down, the brown hills beyond suggesting the dry months just concluding. All of this appeared on both sides of the river as we drifted through it, a moving diorama.

The guide boat ahead of us produced two fish quickly for its client. I was relieved not long afterward when Trevor, the older boy, set the hook on a rainbow, a good trout but not a big one, maybe 14 inches. We don't keep trout, and the fish was released. Trevor retied, and while he did, we drifted into faster water, a long, clear riffle in which water lapped against the boat's upturned bow rat-a-tat-tat, like a drum roll. I am not expert in rowing a drift boat, and I wanted fundamentally to keep us pointed downstream.

A word here about catching fish and counting coup. The Bighorn is a river whose waters below the Yellowtail Dam for 15 or more miles are filled with thousands upon thousands of trout, many of them big, 20 inches or more. The fishing is not always productive. But it is good often enough to render itself a unique fishery, one that regularly attracts anglers unafraid to tell you at day's end they landed 20 or 30 trout, or whatever the number. Fishing here can be like walking into a bar full of arm wrestlers, where, in lieu of a cover charge, you're asked to roll up a sleeve.

As the riffle tailed into an oblong pool of contradictory currents, Cole, the younger boy, took a fish of his own. This was a bigger trout and it seemed forever before I could get a net underneath it. Watching this from afar, as our boat drifted rudderless downriver, with me hanging over one side, arm extended with a net, no one would have confused me with a professional.

"Outdoors writers," to the extent they are capable of orderliness, generally adhere to this maxim: Always photograph the first fish caught. The reason: It might also be the last fish caught. Yet this imperative is routinely violated, sometimes for reasons of inebriation, but usually thanks to a wildly misplaced confidence that another fish will in time be put in the boat.

The point is, the other day on the Bighorn, we did catch more than those first two trout (which I didn't photograph). But not many more.

In most places, the Bighorn is perhaps 50 yards wide, with islands, side channels and long, sensuous bends where waters of differing speeds join and rejoin along foamy fault lines. In these places the river invites anglers to beach their boats and fish from shore. We did this often, realizing anew when we did that moving water might be as close to peace as this world offers.

Sometimes, as the Bighorn's cold waters swirled around our waders, we caught trout. But mostly, for us, fishing was tough.

We made sandwiches while drifting along. Dinosaurs once roamed these ancient lands, and that notion seemed in contrast to the junked cars piled at one spot along the river. More recently, log fishing lodges have been constructed streamside by anglers who just can't get enough of the Bighorn and its trout.

Cottonwood Camp has a small fly shop, and that night the boys ruefully considered their options. They were fishing a river where big numbers are the thing, and they believed they needed heavier armament in their fly boxes to compete.

Actually, not heavier, but smaller: a size 20 sow bug, that was the fly to have, most anglers they talked to said. Or a size 18 Ray Charles.

"Dad, do you think we'll catch more trout tomorrow?"

It was dark then, and we were sitting around a small charcoal grill, dinner cooking. Mostly the campground was quiet, everyone asleep or nearly so. A night wind rustled the cottonwoods.

"I don't know. I hope so."

The boys had come to a river where, after this first day, everyone appeared to fish more knowledgeably and more confidently, with more trout caught.

True or not, their perceived relative position in this angling hierarchy was discomfiting.

"Don't worry, Dad. We'll figure it out."

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com