Western swing is heavenly

ON THE BIGHORN RIVER, MONT. — River fishing begins in a swirl of water, sometimes around a pair of waders, other times, as now, when a drift boat slips its neat geometric shape into swift currents and points itself toward lower elevations.

Downstream a few miles, among cottonwoods so large two men can't reach their arms around them, we've pitched our tent.

Sometime tonight, we'll grill dinner there over charcoal while distant coyotes bay at the moon, and stars sparkle in a black sky that seems to stretch from yesterday to tomorrow, and beyond.

For now, this clean, cold river envelopes our boat, as our flies -- nymphs -- drift near the bottom, carried downstream at the exact speed of the current.

Then: A brown trout rises to a nymph, a size 18 caddis emerger, a fly rod draws into a long arch, and its tightened line knifes through the watery translucence.

Briefly, the fish's sides flash against sunlight refracted by the clear river.

Then the line goes slack.

The fish is ...

Gone.

•••

The Bighorn flows into the Yellowstone River, and the Yellowstone into the Missouri, which drains the northern Rockies toward the Mississippi.

From these ebb and flow the lifeblood of much of Montana.

Vast grass and croplands are irrigated by these rivers, and stock ponds made flush.

Guiding the drift boat to shore a mile or so downstream, I let the oars go slack and free the anchor line with a foot, feeling the lead weight catch the boat from its stern.

Stepping into the river, rod in hand, I loop a stretch of line into braided water, blue then green, with white on top, watching as one of my sons scampers upstream to claim a piece of river there, and the other boy shuffles downstream.

The morning air is as fresh as springtime, free of humidity, and too cool yet to wash grasshoppers from the bunchgrass into the Bighorn.

As quickly as my line is cast, it is carried downstream in the fast current.

Mending the line once, then again and again, I encourage the fly to drift without drag.

I make another cast, and another still.

Then a good heavy trout slices the fast water, inhales my fly, and the fish's desperate pulse tugs fast against my line.

For me and the trout alike, all is instantly occluded, save for present circumstances --which come clearly into focus, as if through a sharpshooter's scope.

Net!

If one or both of my sons also has a fish on, my plea for help will be unheeded.

More likely, the boys will feign deafness, or incoherence, and delay moving toward me, so they can continue fishing. They'll bet that in the fast water I will lose the trout anyway, compounding the cost to them of pulling their flies from the river.

Net!

The older boy stirs now downstream, his fly line being gathered up as he reaches into the boat for the net.

But the combination of fast water and big fish proves too unwieldy, and the fish soon breaks my 5X tippet.

Seeing this, and not missing a beat, my would-be net man pivots like a soldier on a parade field, and returns to his fishing.

It was big! I yell, really now to no one.

But then the Bighorn might stand alone among all rivers in the nation for oversized trout, a result of the 525-foot-tall Yellowtail Dam being built in 1967 just upstream, at Fort Smith, Mont.

The dam backs up some 70 miles of the Bighorn, whose tributaries include the Wind and the Shoshone, all the way into Wyoming. Behind the dam, the Bighorn divides steep limestone canyons and provides boating and other recreation.

Just below the dam, the cold river flows so rich in insect life and minerals that some trout grow from fingerlings to 16 inches in just three years, a growth rate like few others.

But then, the Bighorn is not the Gibbon or the Firehole or even the Big Blackfoot, which Norman Maclean wrote about eloquently in "A River Runs Through It.''

In these and many other western rivers, trout 12 to 16 inches are common. The largest trout taken from the Bighorn, by contrast, is reported to have weighed 16 pounds.

What's more, specimens 16 to 20 inches are typical among the 5,000 or more trout that inhabit the first 13 miles or so of the Bighorn below the Yellowtail Dam.

•••

In the small office of the campground where we tented, Don Recker, of Ohio, had gathered that morning with a few other old boys to drink coffee and talk fishing.

Recker and his wife had been at the Bighorn a month, he fishing every day, or nearly so; catching the river's currents in a one-man inflatable pontoon, just as he did on the Bighorn last summer, when my sons and I first met him.

"I would say it's not been quite as good this summer, the fishing,'' he said. "A little slower.''

Angling vagabonds who fish the Bighorn only a day or two, or who similarly drive-by fish other rivers of the West, including the Big Hole, the Henry's Fork, the Madison and the Gallatin, rarely see beneath the patina of tourism that governs their routine comings and goings.

In these, guide meets client. Guide shows client where and how to fish. Client succeeds or fails. Buys a T-shirt. Moves on.

In counterpoint are Recker and many others, some, like him, retired, others purposely existing off the grid. Quite literally, they've given their lives over to the allure of cold, flowing water, to trout, and to fly fishing, particularly here on the Bighorn.

Show Recker a caddis fly or mayfly in any stage of its life and he can tie a dead-on imitation in less time than some anglers can tie a nail knot. And year-round, he fashions delicate fly rods from bamboo (www.bamboo-rods.com), the same rods he employs to catch the Bighorn's browns and rainbows.

Seeing Recker in the campground office, I say, "You dispensing wisdom this morning?''

"You won't get that here,'' he says, grinning.

Now, many hours later, evening approaches.

The boys and I have taken trout on nymphs and also on the surface, on grasshopper imitations. This was last weekend, and the 'hopper action was not what it was a few weeks ago.

Still, fished with tan Ray Charles droppers, size 18, or similar-sized soft hackle sowbugs, our 'hoppers tripped up some good trout.

As we cast from knee-deep water, Recker drifts by in his one-man craft.

"What's going on in Minnesota?'' he says.

Succumbing, apparently, to the heat, I say, "Those Buckeyes better watch out.''

Recker drifts a short distance downstream, pulls over and soon casts tiny offerings to a few fish whose noses are tipping up.

Bracketing the river here are occasional groves of cottonwoods, and beyond, arid benchlands, each punctuated by small bands of cattle.

The sun is low in the sky, the moment idyllic. Most guides and their clients are off the river.

From now until dark, black caddis will tease some of the Bighorn's trout to the surface, and we will be there to offer our imitations.

We do that, and as darkness descends completely, we find an inside turn of the Bighorn where brown trout are slurping flies as if famished.

One cast, one take. Another cast, another take.

All the while, the flowing river encircles our waders, sparking around us explosions of clear rivulets that dissolve as quickly as they appear.

Later, near our tent, we place a small grill on a picnic table, the charcoals soon afire, dinner cooking.

We have no other light, only the glow of the charcoals.

Soon coyotes bay, and stars sparkle in a black sky that seems to stretch from yesterday to tomorrow, and beyond.