By John Bulger jbulger@journalnet.com
POCATELLO — “I am haunted by waters.” These final words of Norman Maclean’s celebrated work, “A River Runs Through It,” always move me, regardless of the number of times I read the novella. Perhaps it was because, for 20-plus years, I lived in Missoula, Montana, plying the same waters Maclean wrote about fishing more than a half-century before. Maybe it was the sentences that preceded the finale — “Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand in my youth are dead” — which appealed to my Irish maudlin sentimentality. But mostly, I think it identified something within, put words to a transcendent feeling when, standing alone in a self-discovered wilderness creek, I hooked into a hefty trout that had perhaps never been fooled before. When I pulled up Montana roots and moved to Southeast Idaho in 2007 to join my wife-to-be, I left behind family, friends, career and a quarter-century of acquired knowledge of where and how to fish spots where few others ever cast a fly line. I was slow to wander out and find new waters, passing up fall fishing — the best time of year — for the first time in perhaps 25 years. Seated across from the Journal’s outdoors editor, I would be called over to view pictures of hefty rainbows and browns he had caught over the weekend. I complimented him but harbored a hidden resentment that he, a Southeast Idaho native, knew the secrets of the area and I was starting from scratch. Last spring, I finally ventured out with a friend to the Bear River. We got skunked in the turbid runoff waters, but it provided enough impetus to start exploring my new home. Within a few weeks, I had found a few isolated spots on the upper Portneuf to wet a fly. I spoke with a local fly shop owner who suggested several compass points to reconnoiter. In the ensuing weeks, I visited Springfield and McTucker ponds and a few other isolated spots which I feel absolutely no compulsion to reveal here. I think perhaps that I will really feel like a true Idaho angler come this July when we float the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. My new Idaho family and I put in six applications. Bucking incredible odds, we drew all four available permits on our July date, meaning we can take 84 people for a week’s adventure on the river. But I think we’ll keep it to a dozen or so. After all, we Idahoans aren’t prone to excesses.