Yellowstone Adventures and Kid Fishing Memories

We have many outdoor and shooting and hunting and fishing issues to discuss.  This weekend, I shall depart from my faculty representation duties in Olympia long enough to hang out with my Safari Afrika buddies at the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen’s Show in Portland.  I expect to collect even more food for thought as we chew on these issues.

In the meantime, I thought maybe we might lighten up a bit today, and consider a couple fishing adventures.

Lee Bates submitted a never-to-be-forgot reminiscence of fishing on Yellowstone Lake, near its outlet and the world-famous Fishing Bridge.  The judges for our outdoor writing competition liked it, and it got me thinking about my own once in a lifetime Yellowstone fishing adventure.  I can still taste the air of that morning.

When my older kids were still too small to do much fishing—sometime in the early ‘70s—we spent time camping in Yellowstone.  I still vividly recall a first-light morning on Yellowstone Lake in July.  It was one of those mornings when I felt totally alive, when the colors in the morning sun were deep and rich, and the air gently flowed through every cell of my being.  I stood at the edge of that clear, cold lake casting for cutthroat trout, knowing that if this was my last morning on earth, it would be okay.  I was even catching a few of those famed 14 and 15 inch cutthroat trout.

Just down the beach was another early fisherman.  Fiftyish, I guessed, a bit older than most men with young kids.  He commented about the morning and how badly he needed to be fishing again, and hurriedly, almost nervously, rigged his gear for a first cast.  Then I got it; down the trail behind him came a woman and two little all-dressed-to-fish-with-daddy girls.  Six or eight year-olds, I though.  His peaceful morning of him-versus-cutthroat was all over.  The guy smiled bravely as he got them rigged.  While they were casting, he would turn to his own rod.  One time he even got to squat next to his rod once, as a fish played with his bait.  Then cries of frustration over tangled lines, hooked limbs (the girls’ and/or one lone shrub’s) or lost bait drew him away from his own moments.  I can still see him in my mind’s eye, and I remember thinking something to the effect of “That sucks…”

At some point, though, his wife hugged him tight and offered to remove his girls so he could relax and fish.  He was quiet for a moment, wrinkled his nose, and said, “No.  Thanks… I need to relax, yeah, but what I really need is you guys.”  He put his gear away and taught his girls to fish.  As I brought in my last cutt of the morning, he was grinning ear to ear, helping the younger one unhook a fat trout.

Now I’m thinking about our passel of Grandhucklings… and some kid fishing in Yellowstone.

Funny the memories people save from their Yellowstone adventures.  To wit: Lee Bates’ “Fishing Bridge.”

“When I was 16—in 1959—we went on a family trip to Pinedale, Wyoming.  My dad said we had a choice to fish around Pinedale or Yellowstone Park.  We all voted for Yellowstone.

“We stayed in the village near the falls.  We were told the fish were biting near the Lower Falls in the Yellowstone Canyon, so we climbed down into the bottom of the canyon.  …And caught nothing but little fish.

“So the next day we went to Fishing Bridge, and rented a row boat.  We rowed up the river, under the bridge and out onto the lake.  At some point, my brother hooked into a big trout. He played it for about 10 minutes before the line broke.  Since we got to see the fish roll, and how big it really was, we were heartbroken.

“While we were rowing to a different area, one of our oars broke.  When the day was over, we had to somehow row back to the boat rental area.  With one oar.  In the current, we missed the clear boat opening under the bridge, and found ourselves headed for the impenetrable mass of lines from the people fishing off the bridge.  One of the lines come over the edge of our boat.  And the lure snagged into my dad’s shirt.  My dad let out a big yell as the line broke.  We then, somehow, crashed our way down the shoreline back to the boat rental area.  We were pretty much out of control and caught in the current.

“As we were about to drift past the boat rental dock—heading faster and faster for the falls—the rental guy managed to snag our boat with a boat hook.  As we meekly got off the boat, the guy who lost the lure came running up, asking for his lure back.  I pulled it out of my dad’s shirt, handed it to the guy, and said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’”