Reservation Blues

IT WAS APRIL, THE WEATHER HAD TURNED, GREEN GRASS POKING THROUGH THE SCAB BROWN LAWN IN ENNIS, THE SUN RISING HIGHER EACH DAY, HOLDING ITS OWN AGAINST NIGHT, WINNING THE BATTLE.

The weather report said sixties and seventies in Ennis and Bozeman. How much different could it be to the north, in northwest Montana, on the Res? I told Becky, “It’s my job. I have to go … four days and I’m back.” I left without checking the forecast.

The Blackfeet Indian Reservation is the place to be during spring, if you like casting to five-pound trout cruising the shorelines, snapping up just about any fly placed in their path. They are large fish, hungry and aggressive after spending the winter nearly dormant under the ice. Sometimes they come oneafter- the other. Other times it takes a day to land a dozen.

I was completely optimistic about the fishing, giddy about the spring weather, ready to embrace Montana’s short season of bliss. I’d packed sunscreen and a case of ice-chilled Coronas. Friends said they would join me. I wore sunglasses all the way to Ronan, but by Bigfork rain was falling hard. I met one of my prospective partners at the Raven and he said, “You could get soaked.”

I said, “Me. What about you?”

“Not in this crap,” he assured. “It’s supposed to snow for two days. I’ll wait out the storm at the Raven.”

I left the Raven at 10 that night and drove toward West Glacier. I was tired but didn’t want to sleep, couldn’t sleep in fact, didn’t want to pitch that tent. Then again, I didn’t want to drive all the way to the Res. I pulled off the highway at Columbia Falls and crawled into the back of the truck with Moose, my Labrador retriever. A few hours later I was thawing, buying coffee and breakfast corndogs and the proper fishing license at a gas station in West Glacier. The gal behind the counter said, “Yea, I don’t think you can
get into Mitten when it’s like this. Mission Lake? No way. Those dirt roads won’t have any bottom.”