Midwestern waters are second to none
Kneeling in the slight headwaters of the Big Thompson River, a small brown glides to hand. I cradle the masterpiece examining each sunlight reflecting speckle of its existence; mesmerized. The backdrop of this scene: big, beautiful blue sky draped with glacial peaks, cascading crystal clear water, and elk all around. A moment in life when the world was right.
In my net just days after moving to Colorado, this trout was my first on a fly rod. I find it fitting the fish came from the Rocky Mountain Nation Park seeing as how those mountains were the fuel of my soul’s desire to chase a 1,000 mile dream.
Fly fishing addiction grew quick. My fly rod became a constant companion. Together we crisscrossed the state of Colorado in search of new waters, and other elements of western life foreign to our Midwestern measures.
My new job, the fable first post-college employment, was as a management trainee for a national auto parts supplier based out of Denver office. Part of my grind included visiting all of our retail locations in the state and assisting in any special projects these shops had. Places like Aspen, Steamboat Springs, Montrose, and Buena Vista became weeklong or longer destinations. Regularly forcing me to remain in these paradises at nice hotels, eating and drinking wherever and whatever I pleased. Always covered by a corporate dime, rarely out of walking distance of trout filled water.
Sweet gig in deed, but the story gets better. After only nine-months of a two-year stint as a trainee, a territory sale manager position opened in the Billings, Montana distribution center. Top brass in the regional office tried to fill the position for a couple months with no success. It seems not too many people were interested in covering a territory consisting of every map dot between Dillon, MT and Lander, WY.
Just to put into perspective the area of which I am speaking, rivers within the bounds of the territorial map include: Beaverhead, Jefferson, Madison, Gallatin, Ruby, Yellowstone River, Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone, the entire watershed of Yellowstone National Park, Boulder, Stillwater, Snake, Shoshone, Wind, Bighorn, Green, Greybull, and more. Countless lesser streams, alpine lakes, and warm water fisheries were always within a short drive as well.
The company wanted someone to take this territory, spend 2, 3, or 4 days a week bouncing from town to town selling auto parts, and no body wanted it. Except for me of course, who after much hand waving and damn good politicking was named the new territory manager from Montana.
A few weeks later I settled into a one-bedroom apartment in the back of a house rented to me by a wee little creepy guy living with his mother. With little more than a blow-up air mattress, my faithful old green leather chair, a slew of books, one rabbit ear wearing television, and a case of cold beer. I had to steal an empty wooden cable spool from a nearby construction site to serve as a coffee/dinner table. Paradise found.
I hit the territory running. My inherited sales numbers were horribly low because no one had been actively working the region for quite awhile. It was rather easy to become a shinning star with escalating profits. This is of course a great thing for two reasons: bigger bonuses and looser management. Which when combined equal more fishing.
It became a habit to go ahead and purchase a hotel room for the night, use it to complete my end of day computer activities, and then leave. Opting instead for sleeping on hard ground next to a nearby water, usually within a national forest. I’d fish till nightfall, and then read myself to sleep by the light of fire, all the while growing affinity to the spirit of wilderness.
In the morning I would return to my hotel, shower, dress for success, and hit the road again. My wheels of commerce spinning in the direction of a coming evening’s caddis hatch.
When given the opportunity to hire on as a sales rep for a Japanese pharmaceutical company expanding in the U.S., I hesitated only until they made their offer. Tripling my annual income was reason enough, but the actual icing was my territory; the entire state of Montana except for the extreme northwest corner. I lost a few good rivers in Wyoming, but I added the Bitterroot, Big Hole, Blackfoot, Clark’s Fork, Big Spring Creek, Musselshell, Missouri, Milk, and Smith. Daily I would cross water many dream their whole life of fishing.
Within a month of changing jobs, I married. Melissa and I exchanged vows in a meadow below Emigrant Peak in Montana’s Paradise Valley. Chico Hot Springs is a must for anyone traveling to the Yellowstone River. The natural spring waters, ambiance, food, lounge and location combine to form a rustic elegance found nowhere quite the same.
With plans to travel the world, we decided to wait five years before starting a family. Three months later Melissa was pregnant. Bailee was born in June of 2005. With my job requiring so much travel, and most of my free time spent completing my master’s, I began to realize I was missing a lot at home. When Melissa announced another pregnancy in November, our second in the first 18 months of marriage, I set my sights on southern Indiana.
We sold our Billings three months before my transfer to Bloomington, Indiana would be complete. During that time, we rented a third floor apartment on Main Street in Bozeman, right above the MacKenzie River Pizza. Living in Bozeman for only a short while made leaving Montana much more difficult. Few mountain towns compare to this outdoor paradise.
In May, four years after driving a U-haul across Kansas solo in a wind storm chasing the unknown, I was heading home with a wife, a baby, and another on the way.
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked “How could you ever stand to live in Midwest after living out there?” let’s just say I wouldn’t be waking to an alarm clock except on opening mornings.
“The world is but a canvas to the imagination,” Thoreau said.
At home in Indiana, I immediately began viewing familiar waters like strange women late at night. Who were these seductive mistresses calling to me in voices I’d never heard before? Exposing curves and creases previously unnoticed. In youthful haste, I had only skimmed their surfaces. Depths were waiting to be explored.
Creativity is gift exercised by experience. As I began to apply my western experience on Midwestern waters, I began to see things invisible to me before moving away. I was once focused only on catching fish. Now I’m more in tune with the experience of fishing. I credit the west for this lesson. People out there seem more in tune with soaking it all in, and understanding the fabric of fish and water.
Culture is in my opinion the most significant difference between mountain and Midwestern fly-fishing. The creativity of fly fishing speaks to the mentality of a certain sect of society who seem drawn to mountains. In my local club here in Indiana, most members teach or work in some creative capacity at Indiana University. This doesn’t mean the rest of our local population is incapable of discovering what it is we already know. Chances are they just need someone to point out to them that it can be done. The way Columbus so crazily pointed out the world may not be flat. Seems a little obvious now, but that’s the way many view fly fishing the Midwest. Like some ancient right reserved for water above a certain elevation.
Many Midwesterners are under the unfortunate impression that fly fishing grass grows greener in the shadow of mountains. This typical uninformed mindset of the masses figures without mountains and trout, fly fishing can’t exist. Its ridiculous to any of us who have slipped beyond this hurdle of false mentality, manifested by untold magazine covers depicting a sunglass clad twenty-something or pipe-smoking, wool wearing retiree grip-and-grinning a native cut as evening falls on Teton Valley.
The vision of a factory worker expelling a mess of bluegills from the bank of a southern Indiana farm pond for the purpose of a good old fashion, down-home fish fry, complete with hushpuppies, vinegar based slaw, corn bread, and apple butter, has yet to leap from the romantic mind of a marketing suit. Why would it though? The man needs no waders, wouldn’t be caught dead in a pink or peach button down, and would rather take his family to the Smokies than fish bones from some $5,000 a week resort.
The Midwest is so much more beautiful to me now than before I lived in the west. My natural sensory has awakened. I see aspects of nature in views I never once imagined. I feel the motion of nature; the ebb and flow of the waters around me.
Fly fishing has a harmonic value experienced in moments of effortlessness. If you’re a skier then you surely know those glorious lapses in time when the mountain takes control and you glide through freshness so powerful it transforms airports, shuttle buses, and $12 burgers into minor bumps on the path to Eden. Golfers feel it when they’re sinking puts, sky divers speak of it, and surfers can fall so in love with the feeling, they’ll sell everything to chase the peace in a van they call home.
Comparing fly fishing to golf is a fair comparison. The first few times you try either, chances are you won’t be very good. With the right attitude and some persistence, you’ll get better each time you go. Until all of a sudden, you’re a pretty decent caster who’s catching fish on most outings. Like golf, you’ll never be as good as you’d like to be. You will always want to cast just a little better, tie your flies a little crisper and fish new waters for the challenge.
I had it great in the west; incredible actually. The forced sorrow I witness in faces of those trying to consol my loss of western waters falls on blind eyes. I am full convert to the reality of fly fishing being perfectly applicable for catching nearly all species of fish habituating Midwestern waters.
There’s still a fly rod in my truck and I still stop after work to fish local waters. The only difference is, you’ve never heard of these southern Indiana streams. There’s value in the fact.