South Fork Day

On a lovely early summer morning in eastern Idaho, a friend and I went fly-fishing. We were intent on getting in on the hot action on the South Fork of the Snake River near the eastern border with Wyoming. Flowing out of the snow packs of the Grand Tetons, the South Fork is big, fast and cold. The report was that large, wily, killer trout were hitting ants floated near the holes that form under the banks.

We parked as close to the river as we could get without trespassing on private property. We carefully assembled our fly rods and selected among several reels, each filled with a different, but specific and, therefore, scientific choice of line designed to float just so high or so low, or sink this much or that. Then we donned our waders and fishing vests, whose pockets we filled with folding cases of flies, snippers, leaders of several weights and lengths, tweezers, floats and other essential gear. Among my hand tied flies, by the world’s foremost experts on Snake River fly-fishing and, therefore, very expensive, I had no fewer than eight varieties of simulated ants.

Just a short tumble down the bank saw us at the water’s edge. We parted; my buddy went upstream and I went down.

After a couple of hours of fruitless casting, I found myself fishing this slow but deep hole that was a backwater eddy of the main current. There was a sort of peninsula of the west bank that extended 300 feet or more downstream, so that the river eddied into this long, wide and very deep pool that was a hundred yards long and some 40 yards across at its widest point near the main flow of the river.

I was down near the end of the peninsula, where the backwater joined the river, and had waded out into the pool. The water was over my bellybutton, just an inch or so from overflowing my chest waders. I was trying to work my way just a little further in because my casts were coming up short of the west bank where it narrowed before joining the main current. I had my eye on a spot in the shade of an overhanging tree. The west bank was a near vertical cut all along the pool at this point and the only way to get close enough to the spot was from the peninsula where I was. I knew trout were hiding in the shadows of that tree, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t seem to get my fly quite close enough.

Then, as my frustration nearly reached the tipping point, and injudicious steps were actually tipping small volumes of water over the top of my waders, it happened.

A double bowed drift boat came oaring downstream and turned into the pool I was fishing. I was pissed, no other word for it. Here I was working this pool, and one of those snooty drift boat guys, who think the river was made just for them, was rowing into my spot. It was just plain rude. It was not the code of the fly-fishing west at all.

But, then it got worse.

The boat came closer and closer, until it reached a point that was just outside my fly-casting range. Now, I would like to say this was 150 feet. But, the truth is, I couldn’t cast a fly accurately more than 35 feet without it slapping the water like a 2 ton stone falling from the sky; so this boat was about 40 feet from me.

And what do I see?

A 20 something stud, with broad shoulders, designer shirt and shorts, expensive looking polarized sun glasses and the most beautiful fly rod. He was standing at one end of the boat, making brilliant, accurate, and softest-landing casts I have every seen. His placement was perfect. His hair glistened in the sunlight as his rod arced back and forth, and the line raced through his fingers before the fly lit softly like a dandelion seed on the water.

He had a cold beer in a cup holder attached to the gunwale beside him. Even at that distance I could see the glistening drops of condensation on the can. He sipped at the beer between casts.

But this is not what really grabbed my attention. Rather, it was the captain of his boat. She was a goddess.

The virginal white of her skimpy bikini was blinding, glaring as it did in the sunlight. Her full head of blond hair tumbled over her tanned shoulders and she practically glowed as I imagined an angel from heaven might glow.The brilliance of her perfect head was outdone only by the gleam of her pearl white teeth as she smiled at something witty the man said.

She rowed the boat by pressing forward with both hands, and then dipping the oars deep into the water, arching her back and shoulders just so, leaning back while triumphantly thrusting her full breasts aft, straining them against the fabric of her bikini top so that the clasps must break, and then pulling back on the oar handles, digging the blades deep in the water, which swirled and foamed as she jerked the oars towards her magnificent chest.

It was a vision like none I had ever seen.

At that moment I knew that I was looking at the single most lucky bastard I had ever seen in my life.

How else explain that he came to have this beautiful young goddess with her amplitude of oiled and barely covered rowing musculature ferry him up and down a pristine wilderness river as he flopped his fly into deep dark pools and drank cold beer the while?

It all seemed designed to prove what a miserable existence I led.

As I stood in that pool of water with occasional ice cold glops of it running over the top of my waders and soaking me to shriveled oblivion, I saw this paragon of manliness lightly toss his fly into the very spot under the over hanging aspen that I had been trying to reach with my own poor miserable casts for the last quarter hour. The tree caused him no problem of snagging, for such does not happen to the Gods when they come among us. No, his fly lit softly like a bit of fluffy down on the water. Seconds later the water boiled. He gave the rod a quick twitch to set the hook, and in 15 minutes of exhilarating and splashy mano-a-pisce combat, he landed what must have been an 8 pound rainbow trout whose side colors flashed in the sun like so many jewels set before a king.

He held the fish up for his goddess to see. She blew him a kiss with a teasing laugh, and I could tell there was a world of promise in that gesture. Then he slowly lowered the fish to the water and released it. The goddess flipped her left oar a few times and turned the boat around, and they headed back for the main current. As they passed by, he gave me a little nod. Moments later the boat was just a speck disappearing downstream.

I was so depressed I worked my back to the bank and trudged the mile and a half to the car. I stopped fishing for the day, not having caught a thing.

I never told my friend about the man in the boat. I didn’t think he would believe me. Still, I sometimes think about that day. Each time I do, I find that I am still filled with one over riding thought about that lucky man in the drift boat. My thought and hope is that the beautiful bikini blonde babe gave that bastard genital warts or something equally incurable and disfiguring.

I mean, that would be fair, wouldn’t it?