Incident on the Clark Fork

      It had taken fifteen memorable minutes—from the time she was hooked, that is. Before that, he must have used four night crawlers, which she kept stripping off. He could feel her each time, big and emboldened with each success. He was just as good at bait fishing as fly fishing and he could not believe, with how cunningly he threaded the crawler on the hook the fourth time, that she would get away with it, but she did. He preferred fly fishing, but this early in the season on the delta’d but highwater Clark Fork, he fished bait the first part of the day. There was an art to it, which fly-men denigrated too easily because of the majority of lazy bums who practiced it grossly. But he had been taught better, by an expert who showed him precisely how to bounce a No. 3 split shot on the bottom so that it entered a hole repercussively; then you let the hook dribble, and, afterwards, lie and drift: it would generally be hit just then.