It Was a Crap Day

It started early. Breakfast. Time for an omelette. Some juice. A quick post about our arrival in Montana. Hard drive goes up in smoke. Acrid, burned electronic circuitry smelling smoke. 

The laptop is toast for the rest of the trip.

It was a crap day.

We departed for Elk Springs Creek, Hackett Creek, and various small holding ponds that line the Centennial Valley. Ten miles out we stopped. Rigged up. Left my “up close" glasses in the cabin. Everyone else was too keen-eyed to need such things. Babies. Owl tied on my small streamer. Sanders, later, a dry.

Friggin' humiliating.

It was a crap day.

Swore that I’d throw that dry for the rest of the day - whether it worked or not. No more chunks of precious male pride to be surrendered here. But it didn’t matter. Never saw a fish. Nothing all, hot, mosquitoful morning. Only Chris came back reporting as much as a rise.

Fishing sucked.

It was a crap day.

We bagged it early. Went back to base camp for lunch. And my glasses. Then north to Hidden Lake to chase rainbows. Chose a float tube like mine at home. Forgot that my east coast floating is typically on moving water, chasing bass on gently flowing rivers. The water doing the work. Lazy lakes just sit there.

This would take effort.

It was a crap day.

Told Travis to cinch his swim fins tight. If lost, they’d sink. Then kicked out to the middle of the lake and demonstrated it. Spent the remaining afternoon splashing around in tight little circles. Going nowhere fast. Cold. Soaked with sweat. Cramped from single-fin propulsion. Miserable from too hard work and too little angling. Sun dropped below the tree line. Chill crept towards the bones.

The float tube started loosing air.

It was a crap day.

Finally spiraled my way to where Chris was fishing. Noticed rises along the northwest shoreline. Narrow weed beds rimming the edge of the lake. Chris tied on an Adams and began working the edge, bringing two feisty rainbows quickly to hand. Added a couple feet of 5X and strung an Adams myself, an 18. Dropped it gently within a foot of the weeds. The fly sat for a second, then disappeared in the quickest of swirls. A tugging match ensued and ended with the christening of my new Brodin ghost by a fat nineteen-inch ‘bow. Slender but strong. It wasn't the holy grail 20/20 - twenty inches of trout on a #20 fly - but it was close.

A Montana 19/18 was just fine.

It was a GREAT day.

Two quick acknowledgements. My heartfelt thanks to Sanders and Owl for stringing my flies but, more importantly, for rescuing me with their row boat on the far side of the lake. It would have been well after dark before I could have single-kicked home - assuming, of course, that the tube held air long enough. Second, an apology to TU's Tom "Jones" Reed whos loaned swim fin now rests at the bottom of Hidden Lake. I owe you a pair, buddy.