For many of my grownup life, I averted one in every of America’s really iconic western streams: Silver Creek. I’m nonetheless unsure why I steered clear for therefore a few years. Possibly it was the rumor that the water was just a little too deep for simple wading, or that the underside was a quagmire of mud and aquatic vegetation, or possibly it’s simply onerous to commerce nice Montana trout fishing for an extended drive to southern Idaho. Regardless of the purpose, I by no means visited the legendary creek the place Ernest Hemingway “noticed extra massive trout rising” than he’d seen wherever else, ever.
That every one modified one September. I left the Flathead and drove south by way of Missoula, and thru the Bitterroot, and up over Misplaced Path move into Idaho, the place I motored alongside the Salmon (the river) and thru Salmon (the city) and Elk Bend and Ellis. Earlier than I reached Chalis the panorama turned even drier, with bushes rising scarce and gunmetal clouds doing their greatest to cover large peaks frosted with the season’s first snow.
There have been a bunch of mule deer on the lonely highway between Mackay and Moore, and for an hour or so I used to be dodging deer and getting peppered with leftover highway development gravel each time a automobile glided by in the other way. At the very least the rocks hitting my windshield saved me awake till I rolled into Arco, the place I grabbed a burger & fries in just a little restaurant that was as snug and acquainted a slice of Americana as I’ve ever run throughout.
I caught seven hours of first rate sleep in an outdated, rundown motel with paper-thin partitions — the loud night breathing from the highway crew subsequent door was oddly comforting, as if I used to be listening to a heard of cattle lowing within the moonlight — and the following morning I drove southwest on the ultimate leg of the journey. I bombed by way of the surreal lava fields of “Craters of the Moon,” questioning, at 70 miles per hour, what sort of volcanic eruption might have led to such a weird, alien panorama. Then, after passing by way of the tiny city of Carey and gassing up on the pumps in entrance of the Picabo Angler, I traded asphalt for grime. Roughly 450 miles from my driveway, after a full day on the highway, I parked in entrance of the Nature Conservancy’s cabin on Silver Creek.
I think I’ve talked about this earlier than, however there’s one thing about spring creeks that simply makes me smile. After I step into these gradual, clear flows amid the weed beds and mayflies and outsized browns and rainbows, I’m reminded of the Uncle Remus tales I used to learn once I was a child. You may even say that I have a look at spring creeks the identical manner that Brer Rabbit checked out these briars. “Please, Br’er Fox, do not fling me in dat brier-patch.”
Positive, a stream like Silver Creek might be awfully prickly, and the fishing is fairly rattling technical, and also you’re liable to get your bottom kicked regularly, and there’s no assure that an ideal forged and excellent drift will finish in success, and … effectively, you understand the drill. It’s robust fishing. You’re chasing trout who’ve performed the sport their total lives and if the one factor you care about is hooking up, then you definitely most likely ought to have traveled to Alaska or Argentina reasonably than Idaho. Severely, Silver Creek is hard. Neither is it for the faint of coronary heart. However if you happen to discover surprise and amazement within the occasional victory, and if getting beat up by fish with tiny brains truly strengthens your resolve, then you’ll be able to empathize with my love for spring creeks.
It’s all the time just a little tough the very first time you fish a brand new stretch of stream, principally since you don’t know fairly sufficient to do it proper. You wade the place you shouldn’t, and also you don’t wade the place you must, and until you could have some critically good intel beforehand, you’ll find yourself feeling such as you’re misplaced within the woods with no map or compass. Fortuitously, there have been so many little blue-winged olives floating down the gradual currents of Silver Creek that the fish have been consuming repeatedly on the floor, and I might determine the place I wanted to go — and simply as importantly, the place I ought to keep away from wading — with out an excessive amount of of an issue. And it turned out that these Idaho trout favored my little BWO emergers simply as a lot as their Montana brethren do.
Severely, it was fantastic. I wandered downstream, the creek snaking between brush coated banks; massive fish rising; these bizarre, barren, dry-as-a-bone mountains coming into view at odd moments — trying virtually like fresh-from-the-oven Idaho baked potatoes — and I discovered myself in that fantastical reverie the place my consciousness flows out and in with the identical rhythm as my forged, whereas good trout, for causes solely they appear to know, abandon warning and eat my little bugs with gusto.
Then, similar to that, it was over. The BWOs disappeared, to get replaced by cream-colored, dimension 16 Callibaetis, and I didn’t have a Callibaetis with me. Not one single Callibaetis sample. Out of the blue, these fish have been pricks. They wouldn’t contact my olives. They gulped and slurped, an orgy of hungry wild trout feeding with abandon on a heavy hatch, and I did the one factor I might assume to do, altering flies and altering flies time and again as I wandered downstream into deeper, slower water the place the stream backside was gumbo and the weed beds existed solely to encircle and entrap my wading boots.
It was, fairly actually, defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. All I might do was tip my cap to the handfuls of trout that rolled with laughter on the sight of my rusty spinners and ants and beetles and hoppers and all the things else I might assume to throw of their basic course.
I’ve no clue what Hemingway would have performed. Possibly he would have walked away with a smile, or reached in his pocket for a flask, or thrown rocks at these rising trout. Or possibly he would have turned the entire expertise right into a story worthy of his abilities and his piscatorial adversaries. Who can actually say for positive? However earlier than I gave up — and I used to be actually on the verge of calling it quits — I remembered one thing related. I had my PMDs with me. My Pale Morning Duns. And whereas most of them have been numerous shades of yellow, I had, for causes I didn’t fairly perceive on the time, tied a number of creamish ones, dimension 16s. They didn’t have speckled wings, however their our bodies have been lifeless ringers for these Callibaetis.
It doesn’t occur on a regular basis, however generally we will get fortunate twice in sooner or later. Typically we do it proper and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Typically a cream-colored PMD actually does the trick.
Man, I like Silver Creek. You’ll want to test it out when you could have the prospect.
