Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • S U M M E R 2 0 1 7 38 You strip line from your reel, test the knot on your fly. You look backward and a ruddy face nods, so you turn front again and begin to watch the ever-varying line where the moving river meets the shore. Sky and hills disappear. You feel the raft slip into faster cur- rent. e willows, where they border and droop into the river, are moving upstream. Motion. All is chang- ing now. You pass a pinched bend and watch the lace of the current dance and widen; you watch the eddies behind a dozen rocks, the slower water beneath over- hanging willows, slight changes in the conformation of the shoreline that create a constant series of small moving targets, each different, each racing upstream as you float, never stopping. Targets, one after the other now: pinched pockets, patches of backwater spotted with foam, swirls. Targets. Every one of them slipping noiselessly upstream, back, past you and out of range. You begin to cast. ere is time for one shot, maybe two if you're lightning fast, a third before the target is gone. Inches are critical. Too far out and by now you know there will be nothing. You must watch the current: with fast water between you and the shore you must curve-caste properly, put the fly downstream of the line. Every muscle and nerve of your body is awake. Your eyes cannot turn for a sec- ond. You do not want to miss one likely spot. ere! And there! at run behind the boulder. Under the tree. In the slack water right up against the shore. Again. en into the pocket where the mudbank goes concave. Pick that pocket. Into the foam line. Into that two-foot eddy behind the boulder. It is like jump shooting, but fast — extraordinarily fast. e targets never stop. en down a quick sluice, a moment's rest, quick glances to both riverbanks now. Left or right? NICK LYONS has 400 articles and 20 books to his name. Aside from his love for fly fishing, he founded Lyons Press and taught literature at Hunter College. The press published classics and new authors, mostly in the genre of fly fishing. MSU Library holds some of its records in its Trout and Sal- monid Collection. Montana has been one of Nick Lyons favorite places to fish. D E PA R T M E N T L I T E R A R Y L O D E Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it... I am haunted by waters. ~ Norman Maclean S UDDENLY YOU'RE GLIDING. e rubber raft comes clear of the shore gravel, swivels, picks up the main currents, and the guide's oars grow rhythmic, then faint in your ears. Sitting in the front seat, with only inches between you and the water, you look out over the winding expanse of river before you, up at the yellowed cotton- woods and pink and yellow aspens, at the slope of the hills and at the stark gray buttes, up toward higher peaks — with jagged patches of snow at their crests. e air is crisp. e vast sky is pale cobalt, almost cloudless. River Touring by NICK LYONS ROBERT RATH

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