17. Double Rainbow

Mile: 1,881

The cars kept waking me up as they cruised by at 70 miles an hour. “Well, it is what it is.” I mumbled as I rolled out of bed finally at 6:15am. I had cruised up to the camp site that I found on google maps on my way out of Casper but once I got there I saw on the sign that they were charging $20 to park in a gravel rectangle to sleep in my van. Yeaaaahhh riiiight! I’m not paying $20 for a 10’x16’ rectangle of gravel. So I parked and slept in an 18-wheeler pull off right off Hwy 20. Not my favorite night of sleep, but it got the job done. 

Back in the drivers seat, but not before coffee, I really value my morning coffee. So after getting my coffee in hand I was on the blacktop. It wasn’t long until I saw her, deep blue with clashes of white as she forced herself around big boulders lying in her way as if God didn’t want to make it easy for her to travel through the canyon. The Bighorn. She’s a beaut. My eyes are drawn to every eddy and deep hole almost anticipating a giant trout to leap out of the water just to affirm my belief of what is lurking there. But I did not stop, remembering back to what Joel at the Ugly Bug Fly Shop in Casper had told me, “ohh man, the Indian Refuge, yeah I wouldn’t go there, it’s sketch.” He replied after I had told him where I was thinking of going next. “But why?” I asked with my curiosity peaking. “It’s sketch.” He replied. “Ok, but why is it sketch.” I was going to get the answer out of him. I was not about to forgo a place that I had read online holds massive rainbow trout just because a 25 year old guy says ‘it’s sketch’. “Well...” he started, “...I’ve heard of stories where people have had their fishing gear taken from them, their side arm taken from them if they’re carrying, and all kinds of weird stuff where they just do what they want and take what they want depending on their mood and if they catch you on their land, permit or not.” My head sat back on my shoulders as I took in this information. “Ummm...well...I might have a change of plans then” I replied thinking about continuing this trip having to buy all new fishing gear and my 9mm being taken off my hip while I’m entering bear country. “But...” he started back up, “you can fish right above it in Boysen State Park or below it at Wedding of the Waters and you’re not in the refuge. “Show me.” I replied getting my phone out to look at the map. 

I pull up to Boysen State Park and drive the gravel road that parallels the Bighorn from one end to the other looking for the spot I wanted to first approach the water. Waving to campers as they are just getting their water hot for their morning coffee I stroll through the campground. Their responses were much like someone who lives in a country neighborhood with one way in and one way out, seeing a car they don’t recognize driving down their street. A cautious wave here, a head nod followed by an inquisitive watchful stare. I take it in stride and keep rolling, I have bigger and more important things to be focused on than letting campers know that I’m not there to steal their firewood or encroach on their personal camping space. 

“There you are...” I whisper to myself as I round the far northern end of the park closest to the reservation. This was the place. Rapids were created by the narrowing of the banks and then turned into a swift moving flat body of water that looked like the top of a hot tub with the jets turned on low. The top of the water to turning over and back in on itself. I throw my waders on over my shorts, it was going to be a hot day today and no time to stop and take a layer off when it got too hot. It was better to start cold and put up with it till the sun warmed things up. “Click, click.” My fly fishing vest was on and ready to roll. My rod is alway ready to go to work. Sitting, patiently waiting for his time to shine he rests on the cedar wall of Pearl, just waiting. Now, he had been called upon. Assessing if he was ready for war I noticed a weird little knot in my tippet. I replace the old tippet with new and start down the embankment. Getting close to the water I notice a fisherman that I hadn’t seen earlier behind the tall grass already fishing the spot I had decided upon. I simultaneously internally applaud him and curse him for his ability to assess the best spot and get there before me. So I back off and walked down stream a couple hundred yards below him on the river. 

I find a deep pool and begin fishing it moving upstream a foot or two each cast. Throwing high up stream I’m allowing the double nymph set up I have tied on to sink down to the strike zone which I’m guessing is 5-6 feet below the surface with as deep as this pool is. I continue working my way up the river assessing each curvature of the current looking for any sign of a hideaway spot a monster rainbow might be resting, waiting for his unsuspecting prey to swim or float by. I see an eddy coming around the bank where it deepens as the water comes off the shallower shoal. I cast into the shallow water imagining how my nymphs are sinking as they enter the deeper water. “THHHHHMMB!” My strike indicator had sunk down and not come back up so, “when in doubt give it to em” is my motto. My hook set had been strong, correct, timed right. I see a flash of silver deep in the blue hole. He was huge! For sure a 20” plus fish! Making a lurching effort forward, he takes off to the deep water. “Pop” my line goes slack. “no no No NO NO NOO!” I yell! Whipping my rod back and forth as if I feel the need to show the monster how mad I am. He had just broken me off and had gotten away. As if I was having a bout of bipolar syndrome I sit down in a quiet slump just as quickly as I had erupted in shouting. I sit their just looking at the fly-less end of my tippet, back at the water, and back at my broken tippet like I somehow wasn’t ready to accept that I had done everything right and had a little bit of luck but yet, I was fish-less. I’m not finding the drive or the want to pick up my rod and I sit there for fifteen or twenty minutes. I sit for a while, realizing the fish is not going to swim up to the bank and jump in my lap, I began to tie back on. 

I stand up. Brushing my butt off I start painting the sky with my rod tip again. The fly line flows through the eyelets and leads my nymphs back to the water. Landing in the shallow, the flies sink, they cross over the shoal into the deep hole. Eight or ten casts later working across the deep hole, my strike indicator sinks once again. “THHHHHMMB!” I can’t believe it! Another fish in the same hole has given me another chance. And this guy is every bit the size of the last one. Big head shakes! I might as well be trying to bring in a washing machine that is being taken away by a tornado. We both give it our best. He takes me into the deep water and I have no choice but let him have his run, but then I bring him back. He makes another two long runs into the deep currents of the Bighorn and three and each time I hold on and eventually turn his head and bring him back. His tiredness begins to show more than mine and I pull him into the shallows. My net laughs at me when it try to hold the entirety of this fish. Even though this beauty is doubled over his tail still hangs out of the net showing that he is something to be marveled at. I notice that I’m shaking. In hunting you call it buck fever. I guess you can call it trophy fish fever? Whatever you want to call it, I have it. Hands shaking I hit the capture button on my phone and back away...10...9...8 I now have proof and a memory sealed forever. 21.5” of rainbow glory, my personal record. I am on cloud nine dealing with a bad case of tremors. That’s what I call happiness. 

Five minutes later I hook up with a 20” rainbow, coming out of the same hole at that. I land him. I can’t believe it. I had just lost a huge fish and now landed my two biggest rainbows of my life out of the same discrete little eddy filled hole that I had hopingly thrown into. What a day. What. A. Day.