Sitting on the back of my car putting on my waders is my favorite part of any trip to the river. At that moment you might be about to catch the biggest fish of your life, especially when you find yourself in this part of Montana. If that doesn’t get you excited, you shouldn’t be going.
But not this Sunday. I pulled up to Three Dollar Bridge on the Madison River to say goodbye to my friend Diesel. Three Dollar is the most stunning place I have ever fished and probably ranks among the most famous and revered among fly fishermen. The metal bridge stretches over the quintessential Western trout river with snow-capped mountains in the backdrop so perfect that they look fake. On a bluebird day, the stretch of river near the bridge might boast clear water running through a boulder field in a long, continuous riffle. God couldn’t have dialed up a much better hiding place for big trout. But today you couldn’t see any of that. The clouds socked in, lightning flashed, and the water was high, fast, and slightly off-color. I bet the fishing was good.
About twenty of Diesel’s guide friends and family members were huddled under tarps in the pouring rain on the far side of the bridge. His best friend, Catfish, walked over and asked if I wanted a beer. I was probably the last one to show, so it was almost time. I turned down the beer and put my waders on as fast as I could. Once I was suited up, a few of us sheltered from the rain underneath the back door of my 4Runner and waited for the family to head down to the river to scatter Diesel’s ashes.
Aaron couldn’t help but make a Big Lebowski reference by pretending to tap on a coffee pot and then wipe the dust off of Blake’s jacket.
“Oh shit, Dude, I’m sorry. Goddamn wind,” he said.
“What the f**k has anything got to do with Vietnam?! F**k, Walter!” Blake said.
“Come on, Dude. Hey, f**k it, man. Let’s go bowling,” I finished.
For us, everything comes back to Lebowski. Diesel was no Donny, but he would have laughed too.
I met Diesel almost exactly four years ago when I was working in the fly shop at Gallatin River Guides in Big Sky, Montana. I had just quit my job in Nashville and moved across the country, and I didn’t know a soul. Diesel was one of the guides and we were basically the same age. Mid-thirties. The difference was that Diesel had been there for over ten years. He had quite the head start on me.
I liked him instantly. Diesel didn’t typically say much until you got a few drinks in him. But he was kind. During my first week, he was hanging out in the shop and having a beer after finishing up his guide trip. I was totaling up the cash register and asked him if he wanted to go fishing. His only question was how strong of a wader I was. “Decent,” I said. Off we went. As we drove up the Canyon, I pointed to what looked like a good spot. Diesel grinned and said, “Don’t look at my river.”
We finally parked (somewhere else, by the way) and trudged up the Gallatin at a breakneck pace. I think he was impressed not so much with my ability to keep up but that I stood back and watched him instead of charging blindly into the hole when we finally got to the spot. Diesel was as smooth a caster as I had ever seen. He caught a couple of little rainbows before I had even tied on my fly. I was like a sponge. He then backed up the bank, took a pull on his Fish Whistle, and made it clear that it was my turn.
On my first cast, I got hung up in a tree behind us. Diesel said, “The fish are in the river.” After I got untangled, I tried again. When I got no eats on a few casts, he gave me the fly he was using: a Bloom’s Parachute Caddis. A fish rose on my first cast, and I landed it. That was enough for both of us. We reeled up and stood there in the river until one of us admitted that we were cold. We headed to Gallatin Riverhouse to drink, eat fried chicken, and talk about the women who showed up. Just like that, I had my first friend in Montana.
We fished together a lot after that. Diesel had secrets. He let me in on a few. But I loved how close he played it to the vest. Once when we were walking out from the river, we met a couple of guys who were headed to the same spot where we had just been. They must have seen us slaying them down there. One of them asked us what we were using. Diesel said, “Flies mostly.”
He used to mess with the young guides in the shop. Every morning Diesel would walk around picking out his flies for the day. The young guides would watch his every move and grab the same ones he had. After the young guides jumped in their rigs with their clients to leave, Diesel would say he forgot something and run back into the shop. He would quickly put all the flies he had grabbed earlier back in their bins and then pick out the ones he actually wanted for the day. He would just smile at me and head out to his truck.
The best part was that it didn’t matter which clients I stuck Diesel with – a little kid, an old man in a walker, a veteran with only one arm – they always, always caught fish. That’s what they paid him for, he said.
Without giving away the farm, my favorite thing that Diesel taught me was how to fish the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park during the fall brown trout run. Bloody Marys to-go from the Corral on the way down, lots of huge fish, capped off with breakfast at the Running Bear in West Yellowstone. Done by noon. On to watching football. Hell of a program. The first time we went might have been my best day of fishing before or since. I still refer to that time of year as the Diesel Days.
I moved up to Bozeman after that first summer. We hung out a few times after that, but Diesel belonged to Big Sky and the Park. He was never going to get too far away from either. We drifted apart.
The last time I saw Diesel was at the Corral last fall. The Diesel Days had already been going for a while. I had stopped at the bar to get a Bloody Mary to go on my way down to Yellowstone. He was cooking in the kitchen. I went back there and asked him how it was going. He said the fishing on the Madison had been amazing. For him, it almost always was. I managed to get only one that day, but I did it swinging soft hackles like he taught me.
A few weeks later, Diesel died. It was literally because his heart was too big. His family held a service in Pennsylvania but waited until June to come out to Montana to meet his fishing family.
We had a Celebration of Life at the Riverhouse that Saturday night. It was almost too loud to hear any of the speeches in the bar, but the video and slideshow that Catfish put together were perfect. There was a box full of flies lying on the table that Diesel had tied. His dad told me to take one and reminded me that Diesel always said that they were not souvenirs. I picked out a simple black Pat’s Rubberlegs (the “Turd,” as we call it), which, for all the hemming and hawing that we fishermen do, might be the only fly a person needs to catch trout in Montana.
But now it was really time to say goodbye. Followed by both his families – blood and fishing – Diesel’s mother and father made their way down to the boulder just upstream from the bridge where Catfish had put a plaque. Even on Sunday, the boulder sat in a nice piece of slack water near a grassy bank with easy access – a perfect dry fly hole. I got down into the river next to the boulder so I could read the plaque. Diesel’s family didn’t have waders on though, so they couldn’t get quite close enough to the boulder to reach it without getting wet. I was standing right there, so they asked me to place his picture next to the plaque. And then they added his ashes. And then his teddy bear. And then the Penn State sweatshirt that his mother said he died in. These they placed themselves, waders or no waders. I guess we’re all still our mothers’ sons.
I backed up a little ways but stayed in the river. Tears fogged up my glasses. The guides passed around a bottle of Jameson, Diesel’s favorite. When it was finished and the ashes were spread, we walked back up to the parking lot. Aaron and Blake were going to eat at Grizzly. Catfish and Diesel’s family were going to eat at Happy Hour. I just wanted to drive.
I took the long way past Earthquake and Hebgen Lake and then through the sliver of the Park in Montana along the Gallatin River. I stopped at the shop in Big Sky where Diesel and I met then headed to the spot where we first fished. The Taylor Fork was pumping in mud way upstream due to the heavy rain, and the river seemed unfishable. I had to give it a shot.
I tied on Diesel’s Turd fly and cast close to the willows near the bank. I got hung up the first couple of times. “The fish are in the river,” I remembered. I cast a bit further out into the current, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t catch a little rainbow right off the bat. Diesel’s clients always catch fish.
That was enough. I stood in the river until I admitted that I was cold. I hiked back to my car and went home to eat fried chicken, glad that Diesel had been with me.
Grant Dickson lives in Bozeman, Montana. A reformed corporate lawyer from Nashville, Grant reps several fly fishing, outdoor, and hunting brands in the Northern Rockies.
