FANS OF THE early-2000s political drama “The West Wing” may recall an episode in the show’s first season where Josh (Bradley Whitford, as Deputy Chief of Staff) tells President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) how he can use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to prevent a mine from being built in Montana: “You’re gonna establish Big Sky National Park!”
The real warmth arrives in late April. By dawn, backlit vapor rises from the edge of lily pads; at noon, turtles sunbathe on every exposed log; just after 2 PM, a quilt of gray clouds arrives from the south. It’s beer-time on your local largemouth pond.
AHAB WAS AN AMATEUR. If you want real obsession, you need to cast farther. You need to climb down root-ladders and weave through briar bushes to the river just as spring melt is ebbing, then low-crawl under massive logs and scamper over wet river- stones more slippery than a candidate’s promise.
DAN SOLTAU is owner of the Plano, Texas-based fly shop Dirty Water Fly Company. He also hosts fishing trips, and recently returned from hosting his sixth group at Anglers Inn, located in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. One of the many nice aspects of Anglers Inn is that it has lodges on both Lake El Salto and Lake Picachos, two of the finest largemouth lakes on earth. A typical hosted trip would see all of the guests staying together at one of the two lakes, with maybe a chance for a day trip to the other one. But this would not be a typical hosted trip.
LIKE MANY FIRST-TIME ATTENDEES, he sat in the back for several nights, drinking coffee and working up the nerve. I noticed him, but I’ve seen plenty of his type come and go. Some have hit rock bottom and are ready to deal with their problem. Others know the truth but aren’t ready to accept their dependency until it destroys everything they once held dear. When you’ve been to as many meetings as I have, you learn not to get attached to the dabblers.
THE BOISE RIVER flows just beyond my office door, passing Fortune 500 companies and a cadre of office complexes and eateries. Along its banks is a twenty-five-mile greenbelt where hundreds of people walk, bike, jog, roller blade, and relax.
ONE THING BEGINNING fly anglers should be taught is the importance of knowing when to quit. In certain sports, sheer will and dogged determination are critical to success, but this can backfire in the case of tangled leaders. Every seasoned guide has witnessed this: The caster has missed a hookset or thrown a tailing loop into themselves or committed some other cardinal sin resulting in an infamous bird nest. Their rod is draped with a wet girdle bug, some split shot, a size-18 pheasant tail, and a strike indicator, all webbed together with dripping coils of crisscrossed fluorocarbon. Without fail, the new angler will ignore the line nippers hanging from his neck and instead set about trying to untangle the jumbled snarl while avoiding having to snip or re-tie any part of the system.
THOSE WHO PREFER fall fishing typically want to partake in a peaceful practice, connecting to the water and the fish at a time with fewer jetskiers and Instagramming paddleboarders in manbuns. These anglers aim for graceful, leisurely, practical fishing. Then there are those who chase false albacore.
A YOUNG ANGLER lands a nice-ish trout and wants to share the photo, not only because of the fish, but because of the location: at the base of a waterfall, beneath a big bridge and a gondola, in downtown Spokane, Washington.