MAIL BOX

August 9, 2010

Publisher's Note
The following is a real letter, I received this past week. I’m withholding the writers name but I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

“Please accept my personal check for $25 for an FAOL “membership.” I have visited your site many times over the past several years. I think I registered for the monthly prize once or twice, but that would have been some time ago.

I would like to say that I prefer your site to other fly fishing venues because you avoid affectation and presumption in your presentations. I would like to think, after many years of my own trial and error in fly fishing, and after having gone through various phases over the years, that various intrinsic values are why we remain attached to fly fishing, so plainly and eloquently expressed by Traver/Volcker. I think you have carried on that theme, encouraging prospective fly fishers to get out and experience, finding their way, even though at times with bumps. I have seen too many folks, myself at one time included, who seemed more concerned about pleasing and impressing others relative to style, technique and “appropriate” equipment, rather than on the total intrinsic experience.

I have included a piece of memorabilia that you may or may not want to use around your office or whatever. I secured the souvenir menu in September 1967, my first time in Livingston. Note the prices. I saw that the place was closed last time I was there a couple years ago.

I had the good fortune to spend about ten days on the Yellowstone in Paradise Valley for the first time in September 1967. After three years in the Army and two working, I decided to do post-graduate work at UBC in Vancouver, B.C., but unfortunately they failed to let me know before I got there that they had recently dropped my area of specialization. Eagerly, my eyes turned back to Montana, where I landed in Dan Bailey’s fly shop. Red Monical, probably knowing an initiate when he saw one, said I would need only two flies for that time of year, a size 8 orange banded wooly worm and a muddler. To my surprise, Joe Brooks was in the shop, dressed in a matched Western outfit, ready to go out and do some fishing and filming. Dan Bailey told me he didn’t think much of that (filming). All in all, quite a thrilling intro to some blue ribbon fishing. I literally had fifty miles of the Yellowstone River to myself. Mine was the only tent at Mallard’s Rest my entire visit. The Wooly and the Muddler really were all I needed to catch an impressive number of fish. I met an old time rancher, who migrated from Wisconsin in 1915 to settle in Paradise Valley, enjoying several beers together chewing the fat at the “Old Saloon” in Emigrant. I think it is still there.

For a few years following, I stayed at the old cabins of the “Wainigan”, on the Yellowstone at Pray, owned and operated by Bill and Doris Whithorn, who had written a couple pamphlets about the history of Pray and Paradise Valley. I still have them.

Obviously, the Valley has changed. I was especially distressed to see an RV park literally right on the bank of the Yellowstone. Housing developments, view home, and float tubes are everywhere. I can’t saw that is bad, it would be selfish to expect that things should remain the same because that is how I would like them to be, but having had the experience; later visits were probably too unfavorable compared with the first.

If I were ever to write an essay about the essence of fly fishing, if it can ever be called that, I would probably call it “Searching for Four Mile”. Picture three eleven and twelve year olds riding their coaster bikes five miles to the only trout stream in the county, and not a very good one at that, steel extension rods with plastic Horrocks & Ibbotson reels, tied to the handle bars, lunch box tied in back of the seat. Move forward several decades and view what looks like a human pincushion of gear walking down the stream. Has something been lost along the way?

Most obviously youth, but I’d have to say I sure like graphite a lot better than steel, and the truth be told, probably more so than the Orvis bamboo I bought in 1966 for less than $70. Four wheels powered are a lot better than 2 manual when you want to get to streams you wouldn’t be able to fish otherwise. Increased intellectual power and multitudes of information do in fact prove helpful in formulating strategies, etc. And it’s may a cliché’ to say so, but we don’t have to lose that sense of awe we felt when we were young when we first started fishing, of perceiving those first brook trout as the most beautiful thing we had ever seen up to that time. I suppose there might be a tendency to grieve youth, but in our culture we seem to have forgotten, or perhaps never learned, to appreciate and celebrate maturity either.

Whether it is a desire to have the best tackle, biggest fish, or more humble expectations, we’re left with the everlasting question of what is most important to us. In my humble opinion, when it comes to fly fishing, “all of it has been good”. I appreciate your efforts in reminding us of that.”

Editor's Note
The Sport Restaurant and Bar are still in operation in downtown Livingston.

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