Dreaming of fish

It’s 10 below zero and the wind’s blowing 25 miles an hour.

Snow’s piling up on the drift boat and my beard is frozen.

So why can’t I stop thinking about fishing?

And I’m not talking about hard-water angling.

My thoughts are on warmer times and climes, the sound of a screaming drag and the thump, thump of a smallmouth bass flopping in the cooler.

I can smell the exhaust from the outboard, feel the tug of a strong fish and see the fly line cutting through the water like a laser.

The forecast calls for more sub-zero temperatures, additional snow and stronger winds. Emergency-only travel is advised.

But I’m already counting the days until I can drown a shiner under the railroad bridge, throw an elk-hair caddis to rising trout on the Yellowstone or cast a gold spoon to tailing redfish in Mosquito Lagoon.

The Weather Channel calls for 25 below with wind chills approaching -50. Roads are closed and school is cancelled.

I didn’t fish as much last summer as I should have. Other things got in the way and now I fear I’m running out of memories. At least recent ones. And it’s always been thoughts of fish on the line that got me through these periods of arctic frigidity.

While I can still pull up visions of red and white bobbers disappearing into the murky depths, it’s been way too long since I actually landed a bluegill, unhooked a bullhead or lipped a largemouth bass.

I haven’t caught a fish since last August when the brook trout were fighting over my fly on the Clarks Fork near Cooke City.

Then it was hunting season and now it’s the middle of winter. Blowing and drifting snow. A high of -15. Weather brutal enough to kill.

A 23-year-old Bozeman man died of hypothermia last week after falling through the ice on the Missouri River near Toston. It was only nine below that night.

Now it’s so cold I half expect to find Jim Cantore, the Weather Channel’s harbinger of storms, knocking at my door. Cantore, however, a fan of hurricanes, tornadoes and drought, appears to shy away from the really cold stuff. What I’m hearing must be the wind or the dogs scratching to get back in.

I caught a tiny cutthroat trout on a handline last summer while hiking across the Bob Marshall Wilderness. It had been hot that day and I was trying to cool off in the White River when I saw fish gathering in the still water behind my legs. Dropping a Griffith’s gnat onto the water a few feet upstream I watched as one tiny cutt rose to the surface and inhaled the fly.

The atmosphere sparkles with ice crystals. The radio warns me to stay inside. There’s no relief in sight.

But I still feel that tug on the line.