Big Sky's The Limit

Carving Turns and Catching Trout in the Land of Lewis and Clark.

- Jack Ballard

EVERY SPORT HAS ITS HAZARDS. Sprint onto a soccer field and you might pull a hamstring or take a whizzing orb of leather to the face. Golf might be a low-impact sport, though poor swing mechanics will create a lifetime of tendinitis and lower back pain. Anglers face their own set of dangers and distractions, qualitatively different than those endemic to more traditional sports. Lose your footing while wading a big river and you may take a dunking. Point your pole toward exotic destinations like the Amazon or Kamchatka and there’s a good chance you might face blood-sucking insects, poisonous vipers and belligerent bears.

Gearing up for an angling vacation to Montana’s Big Sky, I’m fretting over another hazard—frostbite. A fly-fishing aficionado from the first days of spring to the last colored evenings of autumn, I’m here to fish, ski and discover whether the die-hards that float their nymphs in a snowstorm are to be praised or pitied. From an aesthetic standpoint, standing in a quiet river among stately evergreens draped in snow is as soulful an experience as imaginable. From a practical standpoint, it’s truly frightening. The blood in my feet can coagulate in 10-minutes on a chair lift. Will it cease flowing altogether when standing in an ice-rimmed river?

I express my freezing fears to Rick, a local guide whose job for the day is steering his charges in the direction of native mountain whitefish, rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout on the Gallatin River a few miles from Big Sky Resort. “There’s no need to be on the river at the crack of dawn when it’s frigid,” Rick chuckles. “We’ll wait ‘til about midmorning when it’s warmer. That’s when the fishing picks up, too. If you’re worried about your feet, put some warmers in your waders.”