RUSTY taps on the ranch house door and greets Mrs. O’Hair with courteous reverence. After we cut our check, we drive downstream, sure to close the cattle gate behind us, and park by the warming hut. The early morning light illuminates the creek, highlighting patches of clean gravel, long, green weeds snaking in the current, and interspersed, the methodically tipping snouts of trout eating emerging midges.

Rusty rifles through a fly box to find a tiny brass-bodied midge. He pinches on a foam indicator, only five or six inches above the fly, then sends an angler to a casting spot at the creek’s edge just below the pod of fish. Rusty positions himself atop the bank and peers down at the run through a pair of field glasses. He says if you get close enough to watch a spring creek fish eat with the naked eye, you’ll spook him.

The indicator hesitates, but no hook set.

“You got bit,” he says. “Next fish over now. You don’t get two shots at these guys.”

Another hesitation. An excited hook set, one that would have made a veteran tarpon fisherman wince, busts off the fly on fish number two.

Rusty hurries down the bank and grabs the rod. He ties on another pattern, then takes a quick cast at fish number three. The indicator staggers, and Rusty sets the hook with a gentle underhand flick of the wrist, then hands the rod back.

“The rules you use out there,” he says, nodding toward the Yellowstone as the battle ensues, “go out the window on the creeks. This is where we find out who’s up to the big challenges.”

BY DAY'S END, we each netted and released a good number of fish on Armstrong Spring Creek. Most important, though, is that we were left with an impression that we had been taught by a master.

It isn’t so much about the number of fish you catch, says Rusty, it’s how you catch them. He wishes more anglers would abandon the “body count” method for measuring success. It is an old mindset, dating back to the days when the railroad first came to Paradise Valley. The locals had contests to see who could haul in 100 pounds of cutthroat trout the fastest. Sometimes, it only took an hour or two.

If Rusty could have it his way, there would be fewer people on the creeks, making the fish less skittish and more willing to eat “real bugs,” like hoppers and stoneflies. But counting fish, crowded streams, and picky trout are not really giant worries for Rusty. Beneath the cynical exterior is a man who possesses rare insight and a timely ability to put fishing matters firmly in perspective.

“There were 45,000 people born in India today,” he says as we load our gear in the back of his truck. “It doesn’t make much sense for us to worry about finding space in a river.”

RUSTY finally finds space and solace in October, hunting upland game birds in Montana’s scorched foothills, coulees, and short-grass prairie. On the first of the month, he ends his river guiding for the year so he can set out with his German wirehaired pointer in search of Huns. Rusty shoots sharp-tailed grouse and pheasant also, but the Hungarian partridge is his prized quarry. He says hunting season is the time when he works the demons out of his body.

“Grinding five or six miles up and down these hills behind the dogs works the tar and nicotine out of the system, and it helps me reflect on myself. I let go of some of the frustration that builds up over the summer,” he explains.

Rusty, like many Montanans, considers hunting somewhat sacred, even more so than fly-fishing. The productive hunting spots he has put together over the years are not meant to be shown to anyone, at least not to strangers, or for money. “There aren’t too many places left on this earth worth burning memories,” he says, “but I’ve found a few shooting.” He keeps their locations close to the vest.

“A few years ago, a guy decided to write a book about all the good hunting spots in this part of Montana, and within a few weeks, a good number of locals were lined up, ready to burn his truck.”

IT TURNS out that we were not only one of Rusty’s last guided trips of the year, but perhaps his career.

A year later, we return to visit him in his wood shop in Bozeman. He says he often fishes, but on his own terms. Rusty still floats the Yellowstone, and he cannot pry himself away from the fickle temptations of Armstrong Spring Creek. He also is passionate about dry fly-fishing on the Missouri. The big Mo, he says, is home to fighting trout beyond compare, and he often finds himself trekking up to Wolf Creek, looking to battle with the Missouri’s great browns and rainbows.

“I’ve often thought that if you tail-tied two fish together — a 20-inch rainbow from the Mo and an equal or larger fish from the Yellowstone — the Missouri fish would drag the other around until he drowned,” he describes with enthusiasm.

Rusty will not say he is retired from guiding. Instead, he calls it “indefinite hiatus.” It gives us hope.

You could say that one fewer guide on the water may well be a small blessing for the river, or for other fishermen, but you cannot say this with regard to Rusty Vorous.

 

River Notes

On the telephone with Rusty, he recommends that we stay in his hometown, Bozeman, to take advantage of its central location and proximity to the Gallatin, Yellowstone, Madison, Missouri, and many lesser-known rivers. When you think about it, says Rusty, you couldn’t fish all this water in two or three lifetimes, and we agree. We have hung around Bozeman enough in the last 15 years to see it grow and develop, like almost everywhere in the West, yet once you scrape beneath the Birkenstock veneer of students and tourists, there remains a small-town humility and working-class toughness rarely found in the ski towns of the southern Rockies. Montana, for all its recent change, is still some pretty rugged country and the year-round residents tend to reflect this fact.

We rendezvous at George Anderson’s fly shop in Livingston, out of the stubborn, late-September wind that seems to blow, in town, all the time. Rusty tells us to grab our coats, dry-bags, and fly rods that “can cast,” which means 6-weights. He is not sure where we will fish today, and he’s certainly not happy with the Yellowstone’s recent mood, but he thinks the great river might be worth a try. He wants to hunt down some “real” fish, plain and simple, and is willing to row ten miles for the chance. To beat the wind, we head upriver to float Mallard’s Rest to Carter Bridge, keeping our fingers crossed as we push through the current in his giant wooden dory, hoping to find banks of wind-blown hoppers and brown trout. But the fishing is a disappointment, mostly small cutthroats and stringers of whitefish that eat Pheasant Tails and Copper Johns. The “real” fish never materialize, not even for streamers before dark. Near the take-out, we spot two bald eagles in a stand of cottonwoods, which ends up being the day’s highlight.

We spend the next long-awaited day fishing Armstrong Spring Creek on the O’Hair ranch just south of Livingston. Part of playing ball on the spring creeks of Paradise Valley means paying daily rod fees and making reservations months, sometimes years, in advance. This often raises the hackles of many out-of-state visitors and even some locals who think everything in Montana should be free. But like it or not, Armstrong, DePuy’s, and Nelson’s spring creeks flow through the privately-held ranchlands of the DePuy’s, O’Hair’s, and Nelson’s, and they are not required by anyone to grant access to this remarkable trout water. The fact that they do reflects years of generosity, an honest willingness to share these resources with the public, and a need to diversify their cattle-heavy income. Be glad you can get on these creeks at all, says Rusty, the day is coming that some Silicon Valley CEO will make these people an offer that they can’t refuse, then all of this will be gone.

Until then, private spring creek fishing is what dreams are made of, at least on Armstrong Spring Creek. The currents are gentle and easy to wade, crawling with mayflies, midges, and terrestrials, and house tons of 14- to 22-inch rainbows and browns that eat predictably throughout the day. The handfuls of other anglers we encounter are deadly serious, yet courteous about their fishing business and mostly keep to themselves. The fish can be incredibly picky in the mornings as they pod up and pick at single midges along current breaks and drop-offs. By mid-afternoon, however, many of the trout, and especially the browns, loosen up and become more opportunistic, feeding on hoppers, beetles, and remnants of the mid-morning Blue-winged Olive emergence. Every fish we catch is earned with a careful approach and meticulous technique. These fish can be had, but you better bring your A-game, Rusty is fond of saying.

Tip: The use of field glasses to stalk and observe feeding trout before making casts is an often talked about but rarely used skill. Rusty is convinced that if anglers would take more time to observe the feeding patterns of fish, especially on the spring creeks, they would make fewer casts and catch far more fish. Most of these people march right in, beat the river for an hour, then leave, says Rusty. Hardly anyone takes the time to view these creatures in their natural habitat. Think of what they would learn if they did.