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PHIL GONZALES lucked into his first fishing rod. He grew up close to a giant bend within the Yellowstone River in Huntley, Montana, about 15 miles east of Billings. To maintain the river from washing over its banks and flooding the city, staff for the Rural Electrification Administration would use their growth vans to stack previous vehicles, pull-behind combines, tractors, and different defunct farm gear as riprap alongside the bend.
Gonzalez was 9 years previous, and the stockpiled equipment was his playground. At some point, the employees dropped off a classic Buick sedan with portholes alongside the entrance fenders. He liked to ransack the discarded vehicles and vans, on the lookout for treasure earlier than they went into the river. The trunk on the Buick was locked, and Gonzalez wasn’t in a position to get into it by chopping by means of the again seat like he often did.
“That factor was constructed like a Sherman tank, however the longer it stored me out, the more durable I attempted to open it,” he says.
After three days of failed makes an attempt, he managed to pop the trunk with a pry bar. “And lo and behold, there it was—a metallic telescopic rod with a windup reel. It was fairly prehistoric.”
That day in 1956 marked the start of Gonzalez’s fishing profession, one that might play a pivotal position within the historical past of the Bighorn River within the years to return. His earliest forays had been in his native waters, Pryor Creek and the decrease Yellowstone, which was not the pristine river it’s in the present day.
Dunking a gob of worms on a hook, Gonzalez would pull suckers, carp, and catfish from the water. “There have been no trout down there. Simply trash fish. The river was fairly soiled. You’d see oil slicks on the water from the refineries,” he says.
Gonzalez grew up poor. He was the eighth baby of 16. His father, born in Mexico, was an orphan who fought in Pancho Villa’s guerrilla military earlier than crossing the border seeking a greater life. Like many migrants, he headed north to seek out work. He settled in Montana, the place he met his spouse and received a job with the Northern Pacific Railway.
Gonzalez inherited his father’s work ethic—“My dad used to say the one technique to kill time was to work it to demise”—and his wanderlust. Gonzalez would irrigate fields for farmers (incomes $5 a day and getting paid in silver {dollars}, paper cash being seen with suspicion) and dream in regards to the storied fishing of the Montana that was past his attain.
Throughout his sophomore yr in highschool, in 1963, his finest buddy, Dave McClain, bought a beater 1955 Dodge, which grew to become their ticket to freedom. Gonzalez splurged on his first fly rod, a Ted Williams rod-and-reel combo from the Sears catalog for $20.
Collectively, he and McClain deliberate a journey to the actual Yellowstone—the river in Yellowstone Nationwide Park—that he had examine in Out of doors Life and different magazines all through his youth.
They pointed the Dodge west down the two-lane freeway to go to Dan Bailey’s store in Livingston, a mecca on the planet of flyfishing. Earlier than they received there, nevertheless, catastrophe struck. McClain by chance closed his door on the tip of Gonzalez’s rod, snapping it off.
Gonzalez entered Bailey’s store, damaged rod in hand, hoping it might be mounted. Bailey seemed on the rod and took pity on the poor teenage child from japanese Montana.
“He pulled a brand new rod off the rack and instructed me I might borrow it for the journey,” Gonzalez says. “I bought two flies—a Joe’s hopper and a black gnat. They had been 50 cents apiece. I figured I owed him one thing. I didn’t even know tie a fishing knot, so I bit my chief again to the place it might barely match by means of the attention of the hook, after which tied an overhand knot to maintain it from slipping off. I didn’t catch lots of fish, however I didn’t lose these flies.”
Beginning of the Bighorn
In 1961, development started on the Yellowtail Dam in Fort Smith, Montana. The Bighorn originates in Wyoming’s Wind River Vary, one of the crucial beautiful alpine areas within the U.S., residence to golden trout and native cutthroats. By the point the Horn wended its manner throughout the Montana border, nevertheless, it was a muddy fishery of no explicit notice. The dam modified that. The cool waters that flowed from the underside of the 525-foot construction, which was accomplished in 1967, gave beginning to one of many best blue-ribbon trout fisheries in North America.
Throughout these early years, the Horn was one of many best-kept secrets and techniques within the fishing world. A lot of that was attributable to geography. Fort Smith is the literal finish of the street, a tiny outpost that even in the present day has a inhabitants of simply 160. After the dam was accomplished and the employees pulled out, it grew to become a ghost city.
Gonzalez helped put the city and the river on the map, however not in any manner he might have imagined. In 1978, he was fishing with buddies on the river when a recreation warden with the Crow Indian Reservation, Wallace Pink Star, brandishing a shotgun, arrested Gonzalez and confiscated the 5-pound rainbow that they had caught.
A lot of the Bighorn winds by means of Crow nation, and the tribe wished to say the water as its personal. The arrest and subsequent courtroom case made nationwide headlines. It was carefully adopted all through the West as a result of it might have large ramifications in figuring out who had sovereignty over rivers that crossed tribal lands.
The case went all the best way to the Supreme Court docket, which determined in favor of the state of Montana. That ruling was upheld on enchantment within the ninth Circuit Court docket. The Bighorn was formally public water open to everybody.
Because the case performed out, Montana state officers closed the river. “They had been afraid somebody was going to get killed,” Gonzalez says.
The state reopened the river in 1980, and that’s when the Bighorn exploded.
Wild West
Anglers flocked to the Horn within the ’80s. When the Madison, Missouri, and Yellowstone had been blown out, guides would haul their purchasers to the japanese a part of the state to float the clear waters of the Bighorn.
The river is finest regarded as a large spring creek. It’s comparatively shallow and as much as 100 yards throughout in some spots. The riverbottom is residence to large numbers of scuds and larvae from midges, caddis, stones, and mayflies. Through the frequent hatches, pods of fish will cruise the water sipping bugs, making for glorious sight-casting to massive fish with tiny dries.
The fishing was so good, lots of these anglers didn’t need to go wherever else, a lot to the chagrin of the guides who launched them to the river. A community of native guides cropped as much as cater to those fishermen.
It was a chaotic, frontier-town scene. Guides had been dwelling out of trailers, and visiting anglers wanted to make their very own sleeping preparations. The one restaurant on the town wasn’t dependable.
On high of this, Fort Smith was creating a powerful outlaw vibe. Its remoteness and minimal authorities oversight appealed to these trying to lie low. Coupled with an more and more prosperous crowd of sportsmen, a few of whom had taken to touchdown their non-public planes on the one native airstrip, it was little shock {that a} cocaine-fueled drug scene had discovered a foothold in southeast Montana. The period of Fort Sniff, because the city got here to be identified, had arrived.
Gonzalez, who had been employed on as a information in one of many three fly retailers on the town, was among the many few with significant expertise on the river. The truth that he had fished the Horn for the reason that starting, within the late ’60s, and put in numerous hours studying its secrets and techniques, contributed to his popularity for entering into trout when others struggled.
The Bighorn not solely attracted well-heeled fishermen, it additionally grew to become a vacation spot for flyfishing celebrities. Throughout this era, Gonzalez met and have become buddies with the likes of Flip Pallot, Trey Combs, Dave Whitlock, Lefty Kreh, and John Randolph.
By way of these connections and his rising clientele, Gonzalez might act on the wanderlust that had propelled him and Dave McClain to Dan Bailey’s fly store all these years in the past.
Journeys to Alaska for salmon, adopted by fishing for tarpon and bonefish within the Florida Keys, and Cuba for allow—-long earlier than the journey embargo was lifted—gave him a brand new perspective. “It made me understand there was one other world exterior of Huntley, Montana,” he says.
Over the course of those worldwide journeys, he ended up taking greater than 40 completely different species on the fly, all the things from big brook trout within the mountain lakes of Chile to yellowfin tuna off the coast of Mexico.
These experiences additionally solidified his imaginative and prescient for what was potential for Fort Smith and the Bighorn.
A Dream Realized
In 1989, Gonzalez bought a 20-acre plot of land situated 13 river miles under the spillway the place the Bighorn begins. With the assistance of a buddy with a D8 Cat, they bulldozed the bottom to start development. The next yr, the Bighorn River Lodge opened. It was the primary all-inclusive operation on the river. The lodge crammed up instantly.
It grew to become a focus not just for celebrities and rich anglers, but in addition the neighborhood and Crow tribal members. Gonzalez made some extent of hiring Native Individuals as fishing guides, and he created a pond on the property the place he’d invite youngsters from the encompassing farm cities to return fish at no cost on what had been known as Huck Finn Days.
Even in the present day, when he goes to close by locations like Hardin, adults will cease to thank him for letting them fish on the lodge once they had been children.
Hiring Crow guides introduced some challenges, although. As an example, owls are thought-about unfortunate omens and harbingers of demise amongst many Native American tribes, the Crow included. When an owl took up residence in one of many bushes on the grime street that led to the lodge, one in every of his guides refused to return to work for a number of days till the chook moved on.
I met Gonzalez—at all times simply Phil to me—a number of years in the past. Dudley Lutton, a mutual buddy and native fishing legend in southwest Montana, had identified Phil for many years and organized for the three of us to fish the Bighorn.
Phil had bought the lodge in 2008 and was dwelling again in Huntley, however he maintained his private fish camp in Fort Smith—a single-wide trailer in the midst of the small city.
A botched effort to reconstruct his knee left him hobbled, and he had a tough time getting out and in of a drift boat. Nonetheless, he was fired as much as get on the water.
As we floated downstream, I listened to him dissect the river. Every twist, aspect channel, and run had many years’ value of tales. He talked in regards to the deep riffles that held trout in the summertime that nobody bothered to fish as a result of they didn’t understand the massive ’bows and browns had been drawn to that oxygenated water. He confirmed me the place Wallace Pink Star leveled an 870 at him and positioned him underneath arrest. He identified the shallows that supplied the perfect sight-casting. He instructed me the place he caught his largest fish on the river, a 10-pound slab brown that taped just below 30 inches.
That first journey was many others. Floating from the spillway on the Afterbay under the dam all the way down to Three Mile, after which from Three Mile to the takeout at Mile 13 was our two-day ritual. The time of yr by no means mattered. He was at all times recreation to fish.
We’ve been caught in storms and have needed to combat our technique to the takeout, rowing laborious in opposition to gale-force winds blowing us upstream. One time, a sudden squall hit us. Inside minutes, the temperature dropped 30 levels, and sheets of icy rain and hail compelled us off the water. We huddled on the financial institution in a thicket of Russian olives whereas I strung a tarp overhead with paracord to maintain us from being crushed to demise. Phil was shaking uncontrollably, and I believed for positive he was going to croak.
His ardour for the Bighorn by no means flags, nevertheless. He assaults the river with the identical enthusiasm he had for fishing when he found that rod and reel within the trunk of the previous Buick.
“The Bighorn is my residence water. All the time has been. All the time might be,” he says.
Winter in Montana is usually a brutal affair. Simply after New Yr’s, cabin fever hit laborious. I took a take a look at the forecast for Fort Smith and noticed that the subsequent few days had been going to be chilly however sunny and clear. I known as Phil to see if he wished to drift for 3 days. “I believed you’d by no means ask,” he mentioned.
Streamers fished gradual will be particularly efficient in winter on the Horn. Phil had developed a sample years in the past with a buddy of his, Pat Wright, that they dubbed the Gon-Wright. It isn’t cumbersome, nevertheless it comprises two parts he believes are important for eliciting strikes: eyes and a darkish streak that imitates a fish’s lateral line.
We began on the Afterbay, and I used to be on the oars. Not two minutes after launching, Phil mentioned he received a strike. After which one other. And one other. However nothing was sticking. I couldn’t resist. “You’ll be able to’t inform the distinction between a rock and a fish,” I mentioned. “You’re not hooking a rattling factor.”
We pulled over to the financial institution and anchored, and I took out my 7-weight with a Gon-Wright tied to the chief. On the primary forged, a small brown snapped on the fly and missed. I slowed the retrieve on the subsequent forged and caught it. I hooked and landed one other brown on the forged after that too.
I rolled lots of good fish with the streamer the subsequent day on the float from Three Mile to the takeout at Mile 13, however I had higher luck with the size-18 scuds and sow bugs which are mainstays on the Horn.
I’ve fished with Phil lengthy sufficient to know that a part of what drives him to get on the river is that at his age, the day will come when he received’t be capable of do it anymore.
However he’s not a egocentric angler. Removed from it. He’s one of the crucial beneficiant folks I’ve ever met. Once I made plans to go to Belize and fish the flats for the primary time, he not solely gave me his field of saltwater flies, but in addition gifted me a few of his prize Tabor reels and Thomas & Thomas saltwater rods. “I’ll by no means go once more, so that you would possibly as properly take pleasure in these items,” he instructed me.
On the finish of the afternoon on our third day on the river, Phil instructed me to drag over as we drifted alongside a nondescript gravel financial institution. The river there didn’t look any completely different from the miles of water we had handed over, however he instructed me to wade out calf-deep and begin working my nymphs.
I hooked right into a fats brown, practically 20 inches lengthy, that bulldogged for 10 minutes earlier than I might coax it to the financial institution and into Phil’s web. I supplied up the spot, however he instructed me to maintain fishing, saying he had had sufficient, which I knew was a lie.
I waded again out and caught an 18-inch rainbow that jumped six instances regardless of the chilly temps of the January waters. I stored hooking fish, all robust and acrobatic, and infused with the fierce explosiveness that makes your coronary heart skip a beat and is the drug that creates and sustains trout fanatics. I fished till the solar set behind the low brown hills that skirt the river, Phil leaning on his wading employees and looking out on the entire time.
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We rowed towards the takeout at nighttime, the intense moon casting shadows over the water from the tall cottonwoods that lined the banks. Rafts of Canadas and goldeneyes lifted off in entrance of us by the handfuls and a whole lot, the sound of livid honking and whistling wings breaking the silence.
“Pretty, ain’t it,” the Godfather of the Bighorn mentioned.
I couldn’t have agreed extra.
This story initially ran within the Spring 2020 situation as “Godfather of the Bighorn.” Learn extra OL+ tales.
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