As bad as the economy is you would think the end of the world is close at hand. Wall Street types are looking over their shoulders…shopping for pain pills…searching for Dr. Kervorkian’s private phone number (oops, too late for that)…changing their names…moving their ponzi schemes to Key West.
Here in Ennis, Montana it ain’t all that bad…we’ve got snow-capped peaks, skin-tight jeans, ice-cold beer…and a whole bunch of hungry trout. Out in the Madison Flats the economy is booming. Thousands of fat and sassy rainbow and brown trout are living the good life…cruising around in a stretch limousine…dining on the finest of trout cuisine…dressed to the nines in gaudy pink, raucous red and golden brown…sipping on fine champagne laced with delicate callibaetis, dainty damsels, plump midge pupae, tasty tricos and crunchy chironomids (throw in a blood leech or two for dessert).
The Meadow Lake/Madison Flats fishery has miraculously escaped and survived the endless fly fishing hype of the River Runs Through It crowd…Brad Pitt ain’t never been here…and I don’t think Angelina could handle the deer flys. No “famous” names found this place…most have never heard of Dick McGuire, Frank Valgenti, Mel McCall, Bill Hemphill, Ed Schroeder, Dan Glines…who are these guys? They are the gurus, the ground breakers, the fly-tiers, the elegant casters…the technicians. Hours and hours, days and weeks and months and years…30, 40, 50 fish days…large trout…20″, 23″, 25″..on dry flys, wet flys, small flys…3x, 4x, 5x tippets. Don’t look for them in your favorite fly fishing video…or on You-Tube, or Facebook, or Twitter…ain’t gonna happen.
Let the blue chips self-destruct…let the hedge funds tumble…let the bond market implode in a cloud of irrational exuberance…who cares?
Tomorrow, I’m headed for the Madison Flats.