Psalm of the Trout: Spring Fishing a Big Hole River Trib

Gramps, who was not particularly religious, was deeply spiritual. He loved to recite David's 23rd Psalm:
- while taking a break from scything the timothy and goldenrod along his rod-line paths that ran from the powerhouse to the individual pumping jacks at his oil lease;

- while leaning on his hoe and looking out over the garden that supplied much of our need;
- while eating lunch before a blazing hunter’s fire on a ridge over Elk Lick; and,
- while cleaning a mess of trout at a favorite hidden spring on our way home from Sugar Run.
As a boy, I always thought the poem was about fishing—all this business about a restored soul, a path beside still waters, the comfort of a good rod, a cup full of spring water, and a table laid with trout (of which the neighbors were quite jealous).

And so last evening AJ and I found ourselves beside greening pastures and the still waters of beaver dams (and the rushing water in-between). Usually, at this time of year, it is an iffy proposition to fish these tributaries of the upper Big Hole River. Always – except for this year – there are snowbanks along the creeks and sometimes shelf ice that makes the water unfishable. I knew the waters would be rising, but the many beaver dams along the meandering path of this valley floor creek slow the rush and also settle the sediment:


We were there to fish, or at least AJ was:

And I fished a bit too, though mostly I was interested in rambling around a special place, flushing a few sandhill cranes and ducks, marching to a drumming grouse, listening to the meadowlark, taking stock of the elk tracks, and wondering what climate change will do to places like this. For several days, the temperature has been in the 70s, about 20 degrees above average with correspondingly warmer nights. No wonder the creeks have risen so much, and water flows across the meadows:


The tiny wildflowers of these near-Alpine meadows are just coming on, though the hot sun of the past few days has been tough on them. With any luck we’ll get some long-soaking rains and more seasonable weather. Here’s one of my favorites, bluebells:

“Oh where, tell me where, did your Highland laddie dwell?
Oh where, tell me where, did your Highland laddie dwell?
He dwelt in Bonnie Scotland, where blooms the sweet blue bell,
And it’s oh, in my heart I lo’ed my laddie well” [traditional Celtic folksong, “Bluebells of Scotland”]

And pretty shooting stars, which my elk hunting mentor Denis Haley liked to refer to by their Montana colloquial name, “roosterheads,” just to piss off our botanist colleague Paul Sawyer. They come in both violet:

And white:

No springtime ramble would be complete without a bit of yellow from buckwheat:

C’mon AJ, get those fish cleaned:

What’s this? Several of AJ’s brookies had eaten sculpins (aka bullheads) 2 to 3 inches long. We’re talking brookies of 8 to 10 inches, sort of like a human being swallowing a dog!

We met Jan for a picnic lunch, took in the panorama of the valley, watched hundreds of elk and a half-dozen or so moose, and packed up as the setting sun chilled the air:

Old Ed says: "Get out there..."

The prophet Ed Abbey wrote, "Do not burn yourselves out... It is not enough to fight for the West; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still there. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends..."

I try to take old Ed seriously, and so in addition to working on Superfund issues in the crack-addict Clark Fork watershed and preservation issues in the clean-living Big Hole watershed, I do get out there. And so one fine afternoon colleague Chad and I (no pictures of him, just in case anyone wanted evidence of truancy) snuck off to "the dog hole" near Melrose. We were greeted by the sandhill cranes--including the one in the photo below and several that buzzed us, coming in low over the willows like pterodactyls.

And a few trout came to hand (and maybe a whitefish or two) like this fat brown that took an Okrusch Sparkle San Juan (my favorite form of bait, these days). Unfortunately, though there was a smattering of march browns, pmds, and other mayflies in the air and on the water, the trout were not looking up: it seems a little late in the spring not to have caught a fish or two on dries.

In the Big Hole, history is never far away. Here, a "date nail" in a railroad tie.

After a few hours of delight (Oh, how wonderful to live just 15 minutes from Montana!), it was time to head home. You can tell RTD is getting old--after 3 or 4 times swimming back & forth across the river, she is waiting at the truck. Good old dog and, here, looking especially noble.