Hell, I Can Still Feel It

You close your eyes and you can hear the wind rustling the leaves, the current of the river, the waves lapping against the shore. The fresh smell of a spring rain. The damp fall leaves on a trail in the woods.

Some places just stay with you.

Man, let me tell you about the Flathead in August. I drove for hours up that road, stopping at every access point I could to get a few casts in. It's quite a challenge to hit the pockets without floating it, but I'll be damned if I didn't try. I climbed down banks just to crawl back up after getting skunked. So when I finally got those first fish in the net, God, what a feeling.

Some days I'm out there switching between casts and trying to get good shots of the landscape and the fish. This was one of those moments where I didn't even remember I had a phone on me. I just enjoyed it.

Still, when I think of wading the Flathead River, I don't remember catching trout on a purple Parachute Adams as vividly as I remember how it felt just being there. The cold glacial water working around me as if I wasn't even there. The sound of moving water drowning out every thought outside of that moment. I remember the broken clouds and low morning light slowly giving way to midday sun, the warmth on my back against the cold of the glacial water.

Hell, I can still feel it now.

I spent the rest of the day hopping from spot to spot as the morning hatch died down. I damn near built a spreadsheet in my head, laying out the exact hole locations for each stretch, what was hatching, what was working. This was a where else place.

It doesn't have to be Montana. It doesn't have to be a river.

Everyone has one. A trail, a dock at the cabin, a campfire with friends. The place you close your eyes and you're right back there.

To the where else moments.