Dentry: Bighorn River remains a big deal

Friday, May 18, 2007

FORT SMITH, Mont. - The boat embarks early when you float the Bighorn River through the Crow Indian Reservation with an oarsman of the row-hard-and-stake-your-claim school of fishing.

So it was that Dr. Ed Running, 76, rose before the wild geese and launched his drift boat downstream from town to get a head start on the rest of the world. He rowed like a Tasmanian devil toward a coveted fishing hole while two groggy passengers clutched coffee.

He rowed past Canada geese and their new puffball goslings, past wood ducks whistling, pheasants crowing and muskrats swimming. He even rowed past rising trout.

You wouldn't want squatters beating you to your fishing spot. It happens on the Bighorn, a world-class trout river with at least 40 resident fishing guides and an international constituency.

Running, a semiretired physician from Arvada, keeps a cabin in Fort Smith. The fishing hole he covets is maybe tops in the river, embracing a riffle sliding off a shelf into a pool.

"You cast 45 degrees upstream," he says. "If the fish aren't there, they'll be on the shelf or in the pool. So you get two or three cracks at them with each cast."

You wade in to reserve your spot. Then the rest of the world has to float through. This foot-in-the-door approach is the only way to fish, if you ask most Bighorn anglers.

Back in the swing

"It's not my tactic," says Steve Hilbers, longtime guide and co-owner of the Bighorn Trout shop. "Some days the river gets pretty busy. But there are so many spots to fish."

Hilbers is relieved when conversations turn to fishing from the tragedy last August, when the shop, lodge and Yellowtail Market next door burned to the ground.

Three guests from Wisconsin died in the fire, which was presumed to have been started by cigarettes.

"They were very good friends," Hilbers said solemnly. "They'd been coming for 15 years, and I personally guided them."

Although the Bighorn Trout shop is the oldest under continuous ownership in this eastern Montana fishing town, it is shiny and new and smells of varnish curing. Its rebuilding complete, it reopened three weeks ago.

"I want to express how much I appreciate everybody's support and prayers," says Hilbers, whose crew operated out of a rented modular home during construction. He said hundreds of people came and called to pay their respects.

"You run this business for 20 years and you don't realize how many lives you've touched, and how many lives have touched you, until something like this happens," he said.

Low flows

The Bighorn River is tailor-made for drift fishing. It is wide enough to accommodate passing boats, pretty tame, and trout live at every riffle and bend. But the tailwater is a shadow of its former, 6,000-trout- per-mile self.

This is the seventh year of drought, and the Bureau of Reclamation has squeezed the flow from Yellowtail Dam to 1,500 cubic feet per second. The stingy release is meant to hold back water so Wyoming boaters can launch in the reservoir upstream.

That has raised the ire of fishery officials and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who claim the restrictions jeopardize the Bighorn's famed trout and the local economy.

The low flows eliminate side channels, which are invaluable spawning and nursery areas. Nevertheless, Hilbers remains upbeat. He says fish numbers declined to 1,500 trout per mile soon after the drought started, but the fish started spawning in the main channel.

"They've adapted. So their numbers started increasing three years ago, and now it's back up to 3,000 to 4,000 fish per mile," he said.

Sow bugs and pig trout

The Ray Charles, a sow bug imitation spiced with a pearlescent strip, is the star of the show these days.

The trout at Ed Running's stakeout pounced on the fuzzy, gray bugs with relish. Running and pal Charlie Russell, of Arvada, caught several plump rainbows and one golden brown trout on the Ray Charles and Pheasant Tail nymphs.

Well-fed on a lush banquet of invertebrates, the Bighorn trout were strong. Many had a knack for shaking heads and throwing hooks, as if they had learned the maneuver in boot camp.

In the evening, blue-winged olive mayflies emerged, and the Bighorn's pools were polka-dotted with the rings of rising trout.

At the Thirteen Mile Access, a small crowd of fly fishers gathered to trailer their boats. They shared polite talk and went away, like people leaving church.

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com