Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/787068
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 67 U p until a couple of months ago, I'd never fished one of America's truly iconic western streams: Silver Creek. I'm still not sure why I steered clear for so many years. Maybe it was the rumor that the water was a little too deep for easy wading, or that the bottom was a quagmire of mud and aquatic vegetation, or maybe it's just hard to trade great Montana trout fishing for a long drive to southern Idaho. Whatever the reason, I'd never visited the legendary creek where Ernest Hemingway "saw more big trout rising" than he'd seen anywhere else, ever. That all changed back in September. I left the Flathead and drove south through Missoula, then through the Bitterroot, and up over Lost Trail pass into Idaho, where I motored along the Salmon (the river) and through Salmon (the town) and Elk Bend and Ellis. Before I reached Chalis the landscape turned even drier, with trees growing scarce and gunmetal clouds doing their best to hide massive peaks frosted with the season's first snow. There were a bunch of mule deer on the lonely road between Mackay and Moore, and for an hour or so I was dodging deer and getting peppered with leftover road construction gravel every time a car went by in the opposite direction. At least the rocks hitting my windshield kept me awake until I rolled into Arco, where I grabbed a burger and fries in a little restaurant that was as comfortable and familiar a slice of Americana as I've ever run across. I caught seven hours of decent sleep in an old, rundown motel with paper-thin walls—the snoring from the road crew next door was oddly comforting, as if I was listening to a herd of cattle lowing in the moonlight—and the next morning I drove southwest on the final leg of the journey. I bombed through the surreal lava fields of "Craters of the Moon," wondering, at 70 miles-per-hour, what kind of volcanic eruption could have led to such a bizarre, alien landscape. Then, after rolling through the tiny town of Carey and gassing up at the pumps in front of the Picabo Angler, I traded asphalt for dirt. Roughly 450 miles from my driveway, after a full day on the road, I parked in front of the Nature Conservancy's cabin on Silver Creek. fly fishing by todd tanner Hemingway's silver Creek proved botH frustrating and fulfilling. I should back up for just a second and mention that I didn't actually travel all the way down there to fish. I was scheduled to spend the next day filming fly fishing comedian/angling rock star Travis Swartz (a.k.a. "Hank Patterson"). It seemed almost criminal, though, to drive all that distance and not wet a line, so I rolled in early enough to enjoy a few hours on a creek known as much for big, rising trout as for Hemingway's historic patronage. I suspect I've mentioned this before, but there's something about spring creeks that just makes me smile. When I step into those slow, clear flows amid the weedbeds and mayflies and oversized browns and rainbows, I'm reminded of the Uncle Remus stories I used to read when I was a kid. You might even say that I look at spring creeks the same way that Brer Rabbit looked at those briars. "Please, Br'er Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch." Sure, a stream like Silver Creek can be awfully prickly, and the fishing is pretty damn technical, and you're liable to get your backside kicked on a regular basis, ernest hemingway circa. 1939—courtesy bettman/corbis