Fishing Slough Creek
“For Christ’s sake keep your rod tip up” my brain was screaming at me as a large cutthroat trout seized the fly on the end of my line. In an instant the line ran zigzagging down the creek and I could hear the reel sing as more and more was torn from it. I looked over at my brother with a slightly ill smile at the thought I might lose another monster cutthroat to my lack of experience.
Only a moment before, I had been resting on bended knee watching my brother as he cast into a small riffle. I looked at him through the tall prairie grass as his eyes fixed on the small fly and followed it as it meandered its way with the current. With one motion he would swing his arm in a wide arc causing the rod to mend the line so as to ensure the fly rode smoothly through the current in what he hoped would be the perfect drift.
I watched him do this for a few minutes thinking I might pick up a new trick. We were on our seventh day of a ten day trip to fish Slough Creek (pronounced “Sloo”) in Yellowstone National Park and a couple of other creeks and rivers in-between. On this day I had so far been skunked – not even a nibble. As the local guides said, “These are sophisticated fish.”
One look around was all that was needed to see why.
Slough Creek rises outside the Northeast corner of the park in the Beartooth Range, not far from Grasshopper Glacier where thousand-year-old grasshoppers can be seen frozen in the face of the glacier. The creek falls from the rocky spires of the Beartooth down into the park and through a series of high-mountain meadows that are sometimes referred to as America’s Serengeti. As we fished my brother and our two friends – Paul and Rob – can see bison and elk grazing in the distance. On the walk up we saw paw prints left by Grizzlies earlier that morning. Behind my brother as he cast were a few of the Beartooth’s peaks with snow swathed down their massive shoulders like a white shawl. It was September 13th and the snow had fallen only the night before.
The sun was shining, it was about 75 degrees, and the “cutties” that we could see idling in the currents averaged 15 to 20 inches – in the deeper water they were even bigger. For an angler in general, and a fly fisherman in particular you couldn’t do any better, which is why the first meadow on Slough Creek sees a relatively constant parade of people seeking to catch one of the overfed cutties lurking in the deep green water.
In order to get to the first meadow the avid angler must hike a little over an hour from the trailhead – located in the Northeastern corner of the park – which travels up a steep slope through a wooded area of pine and aspen. Once there the first meadow stretches out for about a mile with the creek snaking its way through. The second meadow requires an even more committed angler as the hike takes about three hours. The third, and least fished meadow, is a five to six hour trek. It is recommended that anyone heading that far up prepare to camp overnight.
This is not rest-stop fishing.
Up in the meadows Slough has a few riffles, but the water mostly ambles around numerous bends. The bank is about four feet above the water so we are able to get a good view down at the fish. As I kneeled and watched my brother cast I heard a dull pop in the water near me. I turned my head as one of the larger cutthroats rose and sucked in a small bug floating on the surface. Normally I would have aimed my fly at where the fish had just risen, but the words of Tony Voleriano, a guide we fished with a few days before on the Yellowstone River, crawled through my head, “Yo James, you need to work on your stealth mode buddy.” So I unhooked my fly from the rod, pulled out some slack on the line, made a few false casts to get more line off the reel, and aimed about ten feet above where the fish had risen. Then in order to give the fly a more natural drift I…
“Mend your line!” As I said, that was a constant refrain shouted to us by our guides Tony and Eric Adams as we floated our way down the Yellowstone River from Gardiner, Montana, which is home to the North entrance of Yellowstone, to Corwin Springs located at the head of Yankee Jim Canyon (named after Jim George who cut a toll wagon trail through the canyon and charged travelers to Yellowstone a fee to pass).
The Yellowstone is everything Slough Creek is not. The water is large and moves through several rapids that, while not quite class Vs, are nonetheless daunting to a fisherman trying to hit a spot off the far bank while bouncing in a rubber rowboat. But it’s worth it. From the time we put in the water to the time we got out we caught fish – cutties with dark red slashes under their jowls, multi-hued rainbow trout, speckled browns, as well as the seemingly ubiquitous white fish. Paul caught the first cutty within five minutes. My brother caught what Tony described as a “Beautiful cutty” a moment later. The fish ranged from 12 to 18 inches, though there are definitely bigger fish to be had. Then Rob pulled one close to the boat, then me, then Paul and so on, like popcorn.
To say the least it was a good day. The sun was shining and the fishing was good.
At the end of the day we retired to the bar at the Murray Hotel in Livingston, Montana, for some well deserved bevies followed by dinner at the Chop House with both Eric and Tony. Tony, the son of a preacher who has five kids, my brother says, “is a gregarious guy, he loves to be around people who fish. He’s happy where he is,” which is all true. He is also one of the more popular personalities around town as is testified to by one of the entrees on the menu at the Chop House – The Tony V. This is two ten ounce baseball cut steaks, which Tony says he hasn’t yet ordered, he usually only has one, but says “One of these days boys, one of these days.” He is also a man of constant good humor. During dinner as we tried to talk him into coming with us up to Slough Creek I chided him saying, “Hey, it’s not like you have six kids, though, I guess you haven’t been home yet.” He answered, “You know James, despite your best efforts I am starting to like you.” In short, Tony and Eric are a couple of good fishing buddies to have along, even if they are getting paid.
“Ahhhhh, the Murray,” was the constant refrain from our tired souls at the end of ten-hour days of fishing. The Murray, and this is no overstatement, is a little patch of heaven in downtown Livingston. First, the bar is everything you would want in a bar. It’s the local’s joint, has the best micro-brews on draft, live music, and a bartender who looks just like Juliette Lewis (by the way, our waitress at the Chop House was a dead ringer for Anne Heche). Second, the rest of the Murray, its rooms and lobby, expresses everything one would think of the old West – Western art, the dime novel, horse opera – via its antique furniture; Oak doors with hand-painted numbers; marble stairways; hand-cranked elevator; the stuffed mountain goat, bison head, and antlered elk; rooftop hot-tub; and its brick façade with neon emblazoned signs announcing the hotel and café. Third, the uniqueness of this hotel is further testified to by the people it has hosted, Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, Will Rogers, Jack Palance, Tom Waites, Keith Carradine, James Woods, Richard Brautigan, and Warren Oats. Sam Peckinpah, director of The Wild Bunch took up residence from 1979 until his death in 1984. He lived in the largest suite with a sign on the door “The Old Iguana sleeps, and the answer is no.”
My fly drifted lazily on Slough Creek toward the large cutty I had just witnessed inhale a buggy morsel from the surface. The trout slowly emerged from the green depths of the water and sniffed at the fly for a moment. It pulled back a bit, then eased up on it and sucked it in. I set the hook and off it went.
“Got one?” my brother called over.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Keep your rod tip up,” he said.
“I know!”
I watched as the fish fled down the river. My rod was doubled and bouncing from the caterwaul of his fight to free the barb-less hook from his mouth. I let him run so he would tire, then began to pull him in slowly not allowing the tip of the rod to dip down too far or put too much strain on the 5x tippet. Rob came over from where he was fishing. After a few minutes I had the fish near the four foot high bank. “Time for the leap of faith,” said Rob.
Holding the rod above my head I dropped down off the bank into the shallow riverbed. I stripped more line in and reached and held the fish. He lay in my grasp for a moment, tired, but not fully worn out. Rob pulled his camera out to take a shot, but as he aimed it the fish gave one last flip of its body and fell out of my hands. The picture Rob took is of my ass bent over trying to recapture the biggest fish I would catch – a 20-inch cutty with an olive back, black spotted sides, purple cheek plates, and the distinctive red slash under each jowl.
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