Giant Trout on the Blackfeet Res
It was April, the weather had turned, green grass poking through the scab brown lawn in Ennis, the sun rising higher each day, holding its own against night, winning the battle.
The weather report said sixties and seventies in Ennis and Bozeman. How much different could it be to the north, in northwest Montana, on the Res? I told Becky, “It’s my job. I have to go … four days and I’m back.” I left without checking the forecast.
Dan Summerfield hoisting a solid bow from Duck Lake.
The Blackfeet Indian Reservation is the place to be during spring, if you like casting to five-pound trout cruising the shorelines, snapping up just about any fly placed in their path. They are large fish, hungry and aggressive after spending the winter nearly dormant under the ice. Sometimes they come one-after-the other. Other times it takes a day or more to land a dozen.
I was completely optimistic about the fishing, giddy about the spring weather, ready to embrace Montana’s short season of bliss. I’d packed sunscreen and a case of ice-chilled Coronas. Friends said they would join me. I wore sunglasses all the way to Ronan, but by Bigfork rain was falling hard. I met one of my prospective partners at the Raven. He had two Rainiers on the counter and said, “You could get soaked.”
“Me. What about you?”
“Not in this crap,” he assured. “It’s supposed to snow for two days. I’ll wait out the storm at the Raven. Much safer here.”
Bright rainbow from Duck Lake.
I left the Raven at 10 that night and drove toward West Glacier. I was tired but didn’t want to sleep, couldn’t sleep in fact, didn’t want to pitch that tent. Then again, I didn’t want to drive all the way to the Res. I pulled off the highway at Columbia Falls and crawled into the back of the truck with Moose, my Labrador retriever. A few hours later I was thawing, buying coffee and breakfast corndogs and the proper fishing license at a gas station in West Glacier. The gal behind the counter said, “Yea, I don’t think you can get into Mitten when it’s like this. Mission Lake? No way. Those dirt roads won’t have any bottom.”
I jumped over massive parking-lot mud puddles on my way to the rig, then sped toward Duck Lake, the only place I could think of accessing in a downpour. Ten minutes out of Browning that rain turned to giant snowflakes. Visibility was 20 yards. I crept up the grade and finally pulled off near the Duck Lake Campground. I found cell service and phoned another friend.
“No,” he said. “I’ve got to work in Deer Lodge. Besides,” he added, “I checked the weather report. You’d have to be crazy to camp out in this. You’re going to freeze to death.”
“It’s a whiteout here for sure,” I said. “And you’re going to miss out.”
I spent that afternoon parked at various campsites sprinkled around Duck Lake, my down jacket zipped tight to the chin, a stocking cap pulled low over the ears and the back of my neck, the truck running, heater pegged to 5,000 degrees. I considered the possibility of asphyxiation but, instead, I’d stay in the truck, down a Corona or two while 50 mile-an-hour gusts shook the truck and hail pelted the windows. A far cry from those commercials, I reflected, those ones where drinking a Corona miraculously transports the ingestor to an isolated tropical beach with palm trees swaying above and palm-frond clad women walking through the surf. This was no tropical beach, more like an icy hell. As a local angler, wearing 5mm neoprenes and sporting an eight-foot meat stick with a six-inch long, treble-hooked Daredevil hanging off it, sauntered by I said, “What a tradeoff.” I thought about my wife and daughter in Ennis, stomping around in the sun, casting to five-pound rainbows at the town park. Beam me up, Scottie.
Every hour, when my hands and feet thawed, I’d swap out a Corona or a cup of coffee for the long rod. I’d wade a few feet into Duck Lake, turn my back to the wind and the snow, and cast parallel to shore, which wasn’t a bad tactic given the schools of big rainbows cruising the shallows. They raced by in packs of 20 or 30 at a time, mostly ignoring my flies. Occasionally, a fish would break from the pack, charge a San Juan worm or scud and the game was on. Four-pound rainbows, fit and strong. So thoroughly they filled their skin, touching one produced the sensation it might pop.
That was the routine; land a couple fish, retreat to the truck, crank the heat, return to shore an hour later. I was working through my supply of Backwoods Smokes at an unprecedented rate and only cracked the window to blow smoke out of the cab. Oh, the taste of my tongue around midnight, I feared.
Nights came early on the res. It was too damn miserable to cook on the tailgate. Instead, I crawled into my sleeping bag just before dark and ate powdered donuts, beef jerky and chips and washed it all down with what remained of my Corona stash. I cursed my fair-weather friends and read the New York Times Sunday edition until the eyelids grew weak.
Three days of iced-in hell and I was off to the races. On my way home I stopped at Hope Lake, but the wind was blowing 65 and there was no way to reach Hope’s big rainbows from shore. Launching my new Watermaster raft would have been a death sentence. I read the description of drowning in The Perfect Storm. Not for me I concluded.
That evening I was back in Ennis, enjoying the company of my wife and daughter while eating sushi at a friend’s house. The peaks of Glacier were awesome, the storm had been an event, driving was a life-threatening account, fishing had been marginal at best. But, even a few fish on the reservation is better than 30 almost anywhere else. I chalked my experience up to a disregard for the weather and the temperamental nature of the Blackfeet Reservation fisheries. And where will I be this year as the ice comes off those lakes and the weather in Ennis is grand – probably back on the Res, casting into the wind, hopefully with a coupled converted deadbeats in tow.