I couldn't even figure out how to fish it. Approach from either side was by high banks where I was visible to the fish. As I climbed down to the stream I'd see smaller fish scatter from the shallows to the hole, presumably alerting whatever big fish lurked there. One evening I started in about a quarter mile above the hole, wading back and forth across the river between the deeper spots and catching just enough small fish to keep my interest up. I arrived at the riffle above the hole just about dusk. My normal approach was the standard approved one for fly fishermen: I would try to cast up over the pool from below with a large floating fly. This time, however, unorthodoxy struck, and I crept through the weeds to a point near the upper end of the pool. The Gardner's fish aren't too particular about fly pattern; there's usually little need to imitate the prevailing insect activity precisely, so I rarely even think about such things. I had noticed, though, that on previous nights there were a good many large heavy-bodied crane flies in the air, flying just a few inches above the surface of the water, presumably mating (crane flies are those giant mosquitolike bugs that resemble flying daddy longlegs; their immature forms are usually aquatic, and the adults lay their eggs in quiet water). I couldn't imagine any self-respecting fish not noticing these big guys, and so I rummaged through my fly boxes for a likely imitation. The one I found was a graceful monster fashioned by my brother some years earlier of elk hair on a very long hook. It was well over an inch long altogether. Still crouched in the weeds, I fastened it to my leader and, somehow avoiding the high sage that waited to grab my backcast, I laid the line clear across the pool to the shallows near the far bank. Immediately the fast water in mid-pool dragged the line downstream, and the effect on the fly, on me, and on the fish, was electrifying. The fly floated quietly for an instant in the still water, and then, as the faster water hurried the long belly of line downstream, the fly was pulled out across the deeper water, skating hurriedly along on its light hackles and looking just like those big crane flies.

Its first such skating performance was uninterrupted but not, I was sure, unobserved. With a mild case of the shakes and a quickening pulse I let the line drift completely down, then, still crouched, I lifted it into a low backcast and again tossed it across the pool.

Again the line bellied and doubled in the fast current. Again the fly rested only a second, then began its quick skittering over the deep water. But it had moved only a couple of yards when a big brown trout shot from the pool near it and took the fly in a smooth downward motion. (Too surprised at that moment to consider this attack, I later realized how rarely it happens; fish usually just stick their heads up to the surface and inhale whatever is floating there, but this fish actually jumped high and clear of the water and took the fly on his way down, as he reentered the water nose-first. Perhaps prior experience with the crane flies had taught him that they escape if approached from underneath, or perhaps he just got so excited he missed the fly on his way up and lucked out and got it on the way down.) With a power that surprised me he bulled right up into the very point of the pool directly beneath the fastest water at its head. My leader was light, so I had to play him gently, and I figured on gradually wearing him out as he fought both the current and my line. I hurried to the tail of the pool to keep well below him, but I must have pulled too hard, for he turned and raced past me into a stumbling riffle full of snags and small rocks. I somehow managed to lead him past the worst snags to a grassy bank in the quieter water below, where I foolishly dragged him up onto the shore just as the fly fell from his mouth (again, this happens often in fishing books, but of the thousands of trout I've caught this is the only time it's happened to me). He was a little over fourteen inches, a fine fat resident brown, and a fish I probably shouldn't have removed from the gene pool but did.

The salmon hole is completely gone now, replaced by a shallow silty run that developed one spring during a violent spate of snowmelt. Its trout seem to have moved at the same time to a new big run that the river created about fifty yards upstream. I fished it recently after a long absence, and in about half an hour had at least fifteen rises to large grasshopper imitations, so I apparently didn't do the gene pool any permanent harm.

The brown trout came to North America in the early 1880s from the United Kingdom and Europe. It had reached Yellowstone (and the Gardner) by about 1890, where it quickly helped other nonnative trouts replace the local cutthroat trouts and grayling. One reason this happened is that brown are a lot harder to catch than cutthroats and therefore withstand fishing pressure much better. A preliminary study done in ponds near the park showed the cutthroats are sixteen times as easy to catch as browns (brook trout, known for gullibility, were only nine times as easy to catch as browns). People who have reason to think about such things wonder if cutthroats would be as easy to catch as they are if they, like the browns, had been fished over by savvy anglers since the 1300s. What must such predation do to the genetic makeup of a fish population, having the easiest caught individuals removed from hundreds of generations?

The question is of special interest in Yellowstone, where in recent years sportfishing has become primarily a matter of fun rather than of meat acquisition. Because there are too many visitors to feed each a wild trout, park regulations and modern sportfishing fashions have combined to promote "catch-and-release" fishing — fishing for fun, not meat. Under proper lure restrictions, practically all the released fish will live to be caught again and again.

But the browns, as hard as they are to catch that first time, are harder than hell to catch again. I learned that on my home river. A tiny step-across tributary ran past my quarters, bordering the lawn and then dipping into a sage field for maybe fifty yards before swinging behind a neighbor's lawn, where it widened into a small weed-filled pond. The water was partly runoff from the hot springs, so it was mineral-rich and supported heavy vegetation and lots of insect life. Brown trout were there, apparently remnants from hatchery ponds that had once sat nearby and had been fed by the creek. The pond was fished only by a couple of neighborhood kids who rarely caught anything, and the neighborhood osprey, who rarely put anything back. And me, for a few weeks one summer.

There was a narrow channel about three feet wide through the weeds, then the pond itself, about 40 feet wide and three feet deep at the most. The whole stretch ran no more than 120 feet, the length of one backyard. The trout rose easily to insects in the quiet water of the channel and the pond, and I could see them clearly, holding there within short casting distance. On hot bright days they all settled into a slightly deeper depression in the middle of the pond. From a hillock that bordered the yard I could see them holding there, in two rows. There seemed to be about fifteen of them.

I started fishing this stretch one evening after work. It was very civilized, standing on the comfortable lawn and dropping a wiggly little wet fly in front of each trout and snaking them out across the weedbeds as soon as they were hooked. I quickly measured each fish, clipped off a portion of the adipose fin (a harmless if insulting operation), and slid them back into the water. The first evening I caught five, measuring four to thirteen inches. The next night I caught five more, four to ten inches, and again clipped them all. The next night, two more. Five nights later, seven more. The afternoon after that I caught five more. The twenty-first fish I caught had a clipped fin; it was the thirteen-incher I'd caught the first day, a couple of weeks earlier. Over the next few weeks I caught a few more with clipped fins, but I'd learned a new respect for the brown trout. As informal as my little study had been, it had shown me what tough teachers the brown trout can be. I preferred easier.

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