Regrets are terrible things to live with. I avoid them whenever possible, but every now and then I get one hung on my karma. Since I can’t shake it, I thought I’d share it with you. The backstory is that I recently met my posse in Craig, Montana for some trout fishing. The plan was that we would camp outside of Craig, float our boats down the Missouri for a few days, and generally kick back.
Craig is pretty much Trout Central in late June, and you need to hear about it. The Missouri runs north along the interstate, and Craig is just a wide spot in the road. I was thinking about how to describe Craig to you…how about this? How many other places do you know that have more fly shops than bars? That’s Craig.
The first thing you notice when you pull into town is the setting. Craig is right on the river and surrounded by the Rockies. Located between Helena and Great Falls, there is nothing but scenery and river around here. When you wander down the street (singular) on a cool morning, with the sun rising over the Beartooth Wildlife Management Area, a light breeze lifting the tail of your shirt, and Ospreys calling as they launch their first fish patrol of the day, it is a pretty good scene. It is pretty enough to make you rubberneck into a parking meter, if Craig had any, or trip over a curb, but there aren’t any. And when you put that first cup of coffe to work on that mild scotch headache you have from last night? Life is good.
A friend of mine owns a ranch further north from here, up beyond Great Falls. The Missouri flows past it, and Lewis and Clark’s diaries are quite specific about the ravine that they pulled their canoes up, as they began their portage around the falls. Jerome gave a five-acre site to the Lewis and Clark Historical Society, and they have put in a nice little park there. You can stand up at the top of the ravine, look down at the river, and think about what those men did. When you think of “canoes,” don’t think about some plastic fifteen footer in designer colors; think about a hollowed-out cottonwood log weighing half a ton. Then think about paddling that rascal upstream from St. Louis. I’ll bet none of that group was going down to the club three days a week to work on their abs.
Speaking of fit and healthy, the next thing you notice about Craig is how young and healthy everyone looks. (Well, almost everyone. I was hiding in the shadows and holding my stomach in.) The population here is young and mostly whitebread. Everyone dresses in shorts, tee shirts, and felt-soled wading sandals. You can tell how long a kid has been up here guiding, working in a fly shop, or bartending by how deep their tan is and how tattered their clothes are. Dressing up around Craig means pulling on a clean tee shirt and running your fingers through your hair….not that everyone up here can run their fingers through their hair. There are plenty of trustifarians and other assorted hippie types who have come to the Rockies for the summer to guide fishing trips and find themselves. Dreadlocks with beads are da bomb right now.
Most of the guys wear baseball caps with worn-out flies stuck into them. If you are really at the top of the social pecking order in Craig, your ball cap will be faded and stained, with a hole worn in the brim from taking your hat off to scratch your ’locks. If you are a dude in town for a couple of days of primo fishing, you can buy a hat just like that at the Orvis shop, and “faded, stonewashed” fishing shorts to go with it. It tickles me, to watch all those guys come out and buy instant look-alike status with the faded stuff, and the pre-ripped fishing shorts. They look great…until they pick up a rod…then you get to see the difference between amateur and professional. Some of these kids can do stuff with fly rods that should have been featured in “A River Runs Through It.” While you are at the fly shop, don’t forget the SPF 50. With that Pillsbury doughboy complexion you brought out from Wall Street, you are going to need it after the fog burns off.
A serious number of fly-fishermen come through here every summer, which means a lot of flies are being purchased locally. The guides will try a lot of different flies at the start of the season, but by now they have discovered a few flies that are working, and they will put that fly on their dude’s line until the fish quit taking it. I talked to the owner of one of the fly shops here, and he said he had sold 150 dozen of one particular fly. 150 dozen! He had a smile on his face as he told me this. The mark-up on flies must be pretty substantial.
Another thing you notice right away about Craig is that everybody is in a good mood all the time. How could you not be? The guides here are from all over the country, so there is a feel of “school’s out” about the place. The ambience is “work-hard, play hard” and these kids get that done in style. Their day goes something like this: get up. That might be the hardest part of the day for most of them…I’ll explain in a minute. They grab some coffee and a granola bar, and drift down to the shop to get their assignment for the day.
The morning shop meeting sounds like this; Take two dentists from Secaucus and float from Wolf Creek Bridge to the Craig take-out. They have never fly fished before, remember to take extra flys and a spare rod…they are going to spend a lot of time with their line caught in a tree. They need to be off the river by lunch, to meet their wives in Helena. Take a father-son from Craig to Pelican Point. They are the real deal, they were here this time last year. They will have their own rods and stuff, make sure you put them in fish. That is an all-day float, we ran out of beer last year, put an extra case of Moose Drool in the second cooler.
The guides lounge against the counters, with a far-away look in their eyes, nod, and head for the door. Most of them have been guiding for six weeks straight without a day off. They are in the groove.
By the time the dudes show up, the boat trailers will be hooked up, the extra rods packed, the coolers iced down, and the guide’s fishing supplies…flys, tippet material, extra leaders, spare reels, are all in the boat. The shop manager will have arranged lunch for the boats, and choreographed the “shuttle.” The Forest Service has landings at regular intervals down the river…referred to as “put-ins” or “take-outs” depending on the circumstances. The boat goes in the river and is anchored at the side of the landing, then the guide parks the truck and trailer in the lot. While he takes care of the truck, the dudes are putting their rods together and packing their plunder in the boat. A shuttle service will pick up the truck and trailer and drive it to the designated take-out point downstream. The dudes step into the boat, the guide dips the oars into the water and off they go, propelled into glorious uncertainty by a twenty-something with a raging hangover and a nagging suspicion that he may have just developed STD-like symptoms.
He starts his patter: “Okay, fellas, let’s fish river-left down this first bank. Remember to put your fly as close to the grass as possible, and mend your line upstream so it doesn’t drag.” The guide will repeat this approximately a gazillion times over the next seven or eight hours, alternating it with “ don’t drop your backcast” (a cardinal sin of fly-casting) and “hang on, let me get the hook out of my shirt.”
Guiding can be a contact sport and most guides insist on “crimping the barb.” They take a small pair of pliers and mash down the barb on the hook. This increases the skill level needed to land the fish; trout are quick to detect slack in the line and given the opportunity will throw a smooth hook. Crimping the barb also prevents damage to the fish’s jaw. This is critical as the vast majority of fly-fishing these days is “catch-and-release.” However, the most important thing about crimping your barb is that if you hook yourself, it “backs out” easily.
The second day we were there, we were in the fly shop early, to listen to the BS and to get an idea of where to fish with the best chance of success. In walks a guide with an enormous bandage on his ear. His pals immediately pitched in on him, ascribing the wound to various practices and perversities. "No way, man." he replied. What happened was that the dude in the front of the boat had tied on a new fly, forgotten to crimp the barb, and cast it straight into the guide’s ear. Naturally his ear bled like Hell, so at the sight of all that blood Otherguy in the back of the boat threw up all over the place. In the meantime, the first dude is coming unglued with apologies and showing signs of hyperventilation.
What did the guide do? First of all, he said to the hyperventilator “Shut up, shut UP, SHUT UP! Grip, dude!” With the fly still dangling from his ear, he turned to the back of the boat and told Otherguy to “take the bucket, dip some water and wash that crud off, before it dries and stains my boat.” The guide then turns back to the first dude and makes him hold still and look at the fly with his mirrored sunglasses still on. The guide used the dude’s sunglasses as a mirror to show him which way to twist the fly so that the barb would come out the other side of his ear where he could cut it off with his pliers. Tied a dirty cowboy bandanna around his head to soak up the blood, and good to go.
“Gross, dude,” the assembled group agreed. The wounded warrior shrugged and said “ had to do it, man, fish were feeding something chronic and we had to get after them.” We all felt that was the only option for true fly-fishermen. Always something new, when you are a guide.
People forget; when they step out of the boat at the end of the day, the guide’s day is not over. He will drive everybody back to Craig, make sure they have all their stuff, wash the boat down, and re-stock his fishing supplies. By now it six in the evening; time for some serious beer therapy. These guys have been up for twelve hours, engaged in hard physical activity for the most part, and they will spend the next six hours or so drinking and generally raising Hell. They will get up tomorrow, which may be the hardest part of their day, and do it all over again.
Because they have been pulling on the oars for eight hours, it makes a kind of sense that they join in the on-going game of whiffle-ball that occupies most of the only street in Craig. This has been going on every evening since at least 1972, and a couple of the guys in the game are legacys…their dads played in the game back in the day. While they keep score in a desultory fashion, nobody is serious about it and it is subject to negotiation and revision according to the beer factor. By dark, everyone has a pretty good buzz going, and as the mosquitos come out, so do the spliffs, to keep the bugs away. Works for them, but I’ll stick to DEET. Between cancer and stupid, I’ll try cancer…you can cure cancer, at least for a while. Stupid is pretty permanent.
When the sun slips over the far ridge, all the trout bunnies come out for the evening, and a party atmosphere settles over the town. There seems to be a balance of the sexes here, and some obvious couples share tables at the local pub with other singles obviously cruising the scene. As the dudes come in for dinner, many of them wearing khakis and polo shirts from their golf club back home, several of the trout bunnies put on aprons and clean shirts and are miraculously transformed into waitresses and hostesses.
It is little off-putting to me, when a gorgeous young lady carrying a stack of menus wafts by, gives her beaded dreadlocks a shake, and asks “how many for dinner?” The culture clash of some college girl wearing a set of ‘locks is jarring to me, and probably intended to be so. I watch out of the corner of my eye as our drink order is taken, and questions pop into my mind. Beaded dreadlocks are a commitment for sure, so what about maintenance? How do you shampoo them? How long have they been in…a week…a month…a year? Isn’t there bound to be a little odor attached to them, after all that time? How do you get them out, when you decide to change your ‘do? Shave your head and start over, or what? All these questions and more remain unasked; when my turn comes, I settle for a double single malt on the rocks.
A couple of double- singles and I’ll be ready for my tent and my sleeping bag. I went most of my life avoiding camping experiences. The US Army will do that to you. However, modern equipment is so light and easy that I am enjoying playing Boy Scout. A secret advantage to bringing my own tent is that I can pitch it far enough away that my fishing buddy’s snores don’t bother me. I am a total hypocrite about snoring. Give me a couple of single-doubles and I snore like a Husqvarna chain saw. But let my bunkmate give even a little kerfluffle and I am awake all night. I didn’t say it was right, just the way it is.
So I am in a pretty good mood when I wake up the last morning, even though today we are going to fish and then drive back to civilization. My mood continues on into Craig, but then…remember those regrets I mentioned? There is a sign in front of one of the fly shops, advertising the “Saturday Bikini Boat Wash, benefiting the Craig Volunteer Fire Department.”
Feature that…a hundred or so guides in tee shirts and flip-flops, drinking beer and helping trout bunnies in bikinis to power wash drift boats. If ever there was a prescription for bacchanalian excess, this is it. And I missed it. I’ll never get over it.
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