Spring had been planned by ticking off the days until sap ran. Somewhere in the middle of this, or around it, rivers would break free of ice, or warm up, and fishing dates were on the calendar. This was before winter hung on forever, and snow remained piled halfway up the bird feeders. Not a tapped tree dripped, and even geese were returning slowly. A hankering was afoot for open water, and I organized my fishing gear in neat piles.
Usually the first fishing outing is to the Mississippi at Red Wing. But ice clung to the boat launch in the Wisconsin backwaters, and my partner Ol' Griz was happy enough to stay home, twiddling his remote and watching fishing-show reruns. "I'm not as mad at walleyes as I was when I was younger,'' he said. This was a couple of weeks back, and Griz reported that trucks were still driving on lakes near Chisago City. "That should tell you something,'' he said.
A call to my older son, Trevor, in Montana painted a more promising picture. Warmth was a reluctant visitor there as well. But the Bitterroot's skwala hatch was taking hold, he said, and besides his spring break was approaching.
"I don't want to interrupt your studying,'' I said, unsure whether the long silence that followed indicated a medical emergency, or instead was intended to underscore the old man's cluelessness.
"Right,'' Trevor said finally, and plans were laid for a trip west.
I needed to work out the sap thing, and I worried matters might run off the rails in my absence. I hadn't cut enough firewood, and if the floodgates opened, my syrup-making partner John Weyrauch could be caught holding the bag. Ours is a bootstrap operation that makes fools of slackers, with 50 trees drilled and 50 more an option. "Give me five days and let's hope the maples stay stingy,'' I told John. "I look forward to working with you upon my return.''
So it was on a recent morning that I found myself in the Bitterroot's cold embrace. Our younger son, Cole, had made the trip as well, and he was in the bow of the drift boat, with me in the stern and Trevor on the oars. To the west, mountains rose steeply toward their snowy peaks, and the day, which had broken clear, was overcast and cool. Canada geese honked from the pebbled shore. But more common were mallards, slipping air through their primaries and splashing and rising from the moving water. Among these, in timeless swift cadence, and aswirl in eddies and riffles, the Bitterroot swept us smoothly downstream. Bracketing the river, cottonwoods swayed in a cool breeze, while spring arrived piecemeal, the fly rod feeling good in my hand.
We could have tipped the odds more in our favor had we cast nymphs, or subsurface flies, as the day wasn't quite warm enough to encourage a full-blown hatch. Still, the occasional bug was coming off the water, and we tossed big imitator dries toward likely lies near shore. We also targeted foamy seams where fast and slower water congealed, and Cole took our first trout, a hefty brown, in one of these divides.
