FREE DRIFTING THE ELK RIVER

The 2012 summer in Montana had a different routine in mind for us.  Seldom can I grip the immense beauty as I travel from the Great Basin over watershed divides into the land of cool days, rivers and streams that house accommodating trout and blue skies that change little with polarized glasses. Being there during the Montana summer is about hoping like a teen hoping for the best at a co-ed summer camp. Here desires are fulfilled with the fish and people that live there enduring the winter. The spirits of an impending summer filled with water bugs morphing from their underwater homes into duns and then spinners drives a fly fisher to drink.  Montana has  two seasons, winter and August so time is precious and so is fishing the dry fly. It is a contagious feeling.

We had traveling to Montana since the early 1960's to escape the Arizona heat and dry fly fish. But this summer, smoke filled our historic fishing valleys and waved us onward telling us not to stop for the  summer but come back after the first September snows.  The trout would still be waiting for us. So driving several hours further north seemed reasonable.  Besides my gypsy wife craves more adventure


A simple invite by several fly fishing  posters on a internet board I had been on and off since 1993 got me excited about catching Cutthroats.  The board is split into three audiences.  Mostly easterners, a few western Canadians and a sprinkling of American urban westerns.  Clearly an inverse relationship between fishing opportunities and posting. I dreamed of Cutthroats coming from the clear waters to grab a floating bug my aging eyes could celebrate.

I had a three point hitch trailing my Grand Cherokee behind my truck camper.  Behind the Jeep I trailer ed my Koffler Rocky Mountain Trout Drift boat. At the crossing in BC they made me disconnect my rig. Ellen drove the Jeep and I trailered the drift boat.  Our first stop was a fruit stand in Fernie.  We bought some apples (not so good) but the cherries were to die for.  While eating them at a the only stop light in Fernie, I heard my cell ring.

"This is Jim, your klave host! Are you driving a big diesel truck camper hauling a drift boat?" 

"Yep," I said but how do you know that." 

"I'm driving next you," Jim laughed.

 And so we connected from an online presence to a real handshake and excitement that we are going to make this fishing trip happen. Jim from Calgary had done and excellent job of recon.  We spent the night alongside the Elk River in Fernie awaken to Ellen returning from her morning wake with the hunting dogs seeing black bear. It was a prelude of events to come the next week.

Your spirits soar when you see jagged peaks looming in the towering mountains. So these were the Canadian Rockies so much more impressive than I imagine and there are wild fish as well. Camp was within yards (meters) of the river about 40 km north of Fernie south of Elkford.


And them a force of nature showed up that next day.  Scott was a Peter Pan like man child with a smile from ear to ear and an easy going nature that put you immediately at ease. A classic Canadian fellow who knew how and when to party, fish and cook.  He was the most self contained man I had meant in awhile and above all he loved dogs. Scott unbashfully was enjoying life and his and Jim energy was contagious. Dry fly fishing was quickly taking a back seat to the camping and comradely.

Scott