Most people who fly fish Slough Creek in northern Wyoming do so for the experience of fishing the three giant open meadows, where one must crawl on their hands and knees to sneak up and sight cast to rising fish. I was not one of these people. I was more intrigued by the less easily accessible portions of the river that lay between these three meadows. Fishing here requires you to be constantly aware of your surroundings. It’s grizzly bear country, and these wooded stretches, with rocky hiding places, are the most likely place where you might accidentally stumble into one.

I came upon a deep, deep pool, sandwiched by massive boulders. It was fed by a rumbling cascade just upstream. And just downstream was another swift and dangerous section. Falling in here would not end well. Just getting to a spot where I could cast caused me to reach my max heartrate. It was all so precarious. But with the high mid-afternoon sun slightly in front me, I could see down almost 15 feet into the water, where giant rocks had settled hundreds of thousands of years ago. I know that sitting between these massive stones was a going to be fat, fat cutthroat.

I finally made it down to a single three-foot by three-foot rock platform near the tail of the pool. I stared deep into the water. I knew I’d only have one chance to get this right. One false cast and my fly dropped at the head of the pool. I saw him shoot to the surface like a nuclear missile launched from a sub. He would have come completely out of the water had he not been so fat. Finally in the net, I was unhooking the fish to release him back to the deep from where he came, when I suddenly had the thought – “God, I hope there isn’t a grizzly behind me.”