Right now x-wife-#1 is sitting, curled up in the most uncomfortable position, in the front seat of the VW bus, reading a "romantic" paperback. She is bored, and cold, and unfulfilled. The sun isn't shining, the air is too buggy and I, sitting on my float tube to speed up it's de-airing, am personally responsible
for each and every detail of that. The temperature is about 65 degrees. X-wife-#1 refuses to fish unless the sum of the air and water temperatures are more than 150. There has been a single
dark cloud hanging over Silver Creek, actually our bus, wherever we went that day, keeping the direct rays from the land, the bus, and her it's-not-that-bad-at-least-I'm-warm sensors. Presumably, the cloud is my fault too. I hope the novel is very long, and very good, but that too would have it's downside. I would be blamed because her reality was not as exciting.
Being given 90 minutes to fish at Silver Creek is like being given 90 minutes to seduce any woman in the world. It takes that long just to pick out your fish, get your gear tuned to the delicacy of the situation, find the fly that's working, and basically work into the game. I had bobbed around just upstream of the bridge where I had spotted one or two occasionally regular risers. There was no real hatch on, but the action was sporadic. I had to guess at the fly, and finally settled on a floating nymph. I had worked on my leader to get the floats right, and finally was rewarded with a take from each of the two fish I was
concentrating on. Of course I lost them instantly in the weeds, but that wasn't the point. But 90 minutes? It was about 3:00 P.M and we "had to get going" on toward West Yellowstone, the Conclave, Henry's Fork, the Yellowstone, and Madison. This was a fishing trip, right? And there I sat, growing rapidly older by the day with apparent occasional 90 minute reprieves. This was going to be a very long week.
A cloud of dust up the road caught my eye. Someone was driving down the dirt road toward the bridge from Hiway 20 hell bent for leather. As the car came closer I could see it as a gleaming silver Mercedes, doing about 70. It literally skidded to a stop next to the bridge five feet in front of where I sat growing older, and it's lone occupant jumped out. She, yes of course SHE, jumped out and ran around to the
