In the dog days of summer, I went to Montana to fish in the Madison, Yellowstone, and Beaverhead rivers. On the third day of amazing fishing my guide helped me hit the Montana Grand Slam and caught all 4 species in the Yellowstone watershed Whitefish, Rainbow trout, my first ever Cutthroat trout, and my personal best Brown trout.  All in the longest undammed river in the United States.  But this is not what got my blood racing.

At the end of the day, we saw him… he was sitting right next to our boat.   He was sipping nymphs and emergers in the slack water of the river. He had grown to monster size, a huge rainbow waiting for the food to drift up to him conserving his energy.   I tossed the fly that had been hooking up all day in front of him, a dozen times. Clearly, I was using chocolate ice cream when he wanted strawberry. I changed the fly tossed it another dozen times… must have been vanilla.  Taking a close look in the water to see what the nymphs and emergers looked like in the water, we changed the fly one more time. Once, Twice, nothing… no reaction… he just kept sipping those bugs. The third time was the charm. Strawberry ice cream! Line starts peeling off the reel the big fish makes a dash across the river with only 3-pound line on the rod I had to be gentle.  The fish made a dash down river. My heart races. I follow it walking through the crystal-clear river. I managed to get it out from under the trees on the other side of the river, gently drawing it across the river back to me, closer and closer. Twenty feet away from me, my heart racing, this powerful fish pops off…silence…emptiness…. peace.  A great moment, the one that got away.

It is not my Montana Slam that calls me back to Montana it is this monster that got away and the way it pushed my mind and heart…what calls to you in the dog days of summer?