Castwork: Dan Stein

Castwork: Dan Stein

Bighorn River – Fort Smith, Montana

It is raining hard. We are standing on the front porch of the Quill Gordon Fly Shop in Ft. Smith, Montana, scanning the gray bluffs to the west. The weather isn’t going to let up any time soon. A scheduling misunderstanding at the shop has our fishing guide running late, but none of us really care.

The monotonous dripping of water from a choked downspout is interrupted by the rumble of an engine in the trailer park across the road. We spot an oily cloud of smoke and soon hear the crescendo of a drift boat trailer jangling across gravel. An old Ford pickup veers past Polly’s restaurant and into the shop’s parking lot, where it skids to a halt. The driver throws open his door, splashes down in a puddle with a grin, then holds out his hand. After exchanging introductions, he looks at the sky and says, “Ah…liquid sunshine.”

There is no mistaking Dan Stein. Decked in wind-beaten waders, a tattered baseball cap, and a faded Brush-Popper shirt. He has a lit cigarette in one hand and a beat-up stainless steel coffee mug in the other. Dan is pure Montana. He comes from high on the eastern plains, Miles City, a part of the state most visitors barely glimpse while flying on to the mountain resorts. It is a land of wheat fields and farmers, of bitter hard winters and hot summers, of working cowboys and remnants of the great northern tribes.

Dan has a thick, wiry beard and sun-battered skin that reflects years of floating the Bighorn River and hunting the hills and northern high plains. He has a gangly cowboy gait and stiff joints from a life hard-lived. But beneath the rugged exterior is a person with an “aw shucks,” sometimes bashful, demeanor and a big kid laugh. Though he guides hundreds of trips every year and we only had fished with him once before, he remembers us. Meeting back up with Dan Stein is like a reunion with an old friend.

* * *

Some guides will tell you that they would do the job for free. They are crazy about fishing, crazy about rivers. They are happy to lead lives that revolve around currents and swarms of bugs. They are most content between the oars, or hauling gear along a trail. These are the people who would spend their days fly fishing no matter what, so the task of guiding is a dream assignment. After all, not only do they burn their hours knee-deep in a river, they get paid doing it. 

Dan Stein isn’t one of those guides.

There are other guides for whom leading fishing trips is a job, plain and simple. They approach their work like a cabbie hustles fares. It is a job they fall into, either because they grew up doing it, or they do not have much else they can do. So, they learn the fishing small talk, learn how to row a boat and not sink it, figure out how to catch a few fish, and every night they go home and think about all the places they would rather be.

Dan Stein isn’t one of those guides either.

He is quite proud to be one of only a dozen or so people who have been guiding trips on the Bighorn since the Crow Indians opened the river to public fishing nearly 20 years ago. When you watch him handle a fly rod, you would think he was born streamside. He can punch the better three-quarters of a fly line into a screaming headwind with ease. To view this is a humbling experience, even for the avid fisherman who considers himself pretty good, which, right or wrong, most of us do.

If you pay attention, you cannot help but learn from Dan. He will show you little tricks, like keeping your thumb locked in your peripheral vision will help you cast straighter and further. To clean weeds off your flies, give three strong roundhouse turns with your rod, so the flies slap across the surface. Dan feeds on questions because he loves to teach. In fact, he proudly refers to many of his regular clients as his “students.”

* * *

After spending a few hours in a drift boat with Dan Stein, it is easy to see he does not go for the “fly fishing is the only way to fish” line of thinking. He does not believe that trout are the only fish in the world worth chasing. The truth is, Dan is an unapologetic bait fisherman.

Tendinitis in his casting arm limits Dan’s fly fishing to half-hour bursts, and he rarely fly fishes on days off. Instead, he loves chasing trophy walleye on Bighorn Lake after a full day of guiding on the river. He often drags his 14-foot john boat up to the lake and fishes until midnight, using jigs, worms, and fathead minnows. Fished out, he ties the boat to the rocks, throws an old wool blanket over his shoulders, and grabs a few hours of sleep. When he wakes at dawn, he trolls for a couple more hours, drives down the hill, swaps his john boat for a dory, then speeds over to the fly shop to start another day on the river.

When Dan does turn his attention to fly fishing for trout, he lets the river and its fish direct his methods. He bristles at the notion that the Bighorn is a “meatball” river. To him, the fishing approaches and opportunities on the Bighorn are limitless, but you must be willing to work for them. He laughs at the standard practice of rowing the boat around in circles, pounding the fish with gobs of lead and bright, styrofoam strike indicators. Dan admits you will catch fish, but mockingly refers to this as “production fishing.” He is convinced that most anglers who visit here never will come close to appreciating the challenges this river can offer. For Dan, trout fishing on the Bighorn is unearthing all of the overlooked places, trying new flies in the hidden nooks and crannies, and finding himself and his clients alone in the most remote sections of the river.

“What doesn’t get fished on this river makes me sick,” he says.

* * *

The next rainy afternoon, we watch Dan reach down into his net to unhook a 10-inch rainbow. He holds the small fish up for an instant before gently slipping it back into the current. “Job security,” he says.

The ground rules with Dan Stein are simple. He respects the Bighorn. He treats the trout in the river like a shepherd looking over his flock. If he senses your appreciation, he will bust his tail to make your day, “headhunting” for rising browns and rainbows well past the time other guides haul out. If the conditions are right, he might even paddle you around Bighorn Lake in search of rising carp, a rare, but legendary treat the Fort Smith natives often keep to themselves.

If, on the other hand, you think you know it all, Dan will politely row you 10 miles of river, let you hook a few fish, shake your hand, and call it a day. He chuckles when he recalls the real tough case customers, whom he takes pride in positioning in downwind runs so he can watch them cast dry flies hopelessly into the teeth of a 20-mile-an-hour breeze. “Humbling,” he laughs, “but it doesn’t happen often.”

* * *

Dan sums up his outlook on being a fishing guide in the afternoon of our second day. We are floating by Crow Beach when the rain really starts to pour. He says he does not care for big cities, even though he has spent time in some.

“I can’t ever see myself in a place like Chicago or Los Angeles,” he explains. “Too many people all crowded together. I don't like to deal with people.”

To us, it seems like an odd contradiction. After all, guiding places a premium on “people” skills. We think of the thousands of beginner wind knots he untangles over the course of the summer, how he shares his boat and life with a season-long procession of total strangers. It is like a bar singer saying he cannot stand the smell of smoke. We have to ask: “How can you be a fishing guide if you don’t think of yourself as a ‘people’ person?”

“Oh, well that’s not the same,” he quickly responds. “The way I see it, if you’re into fishing enough to come all the way out here to the Bighorn, it means you either like it a lot, or you’re serious about knowing more about it. So that means we have something in common right from the start. It’s a way to see eye-to-eye. So in that way, we really aren’t like total strangers, not like in a city.”

* * *

Dan’s ancestors were Irish immigrants who settled around Butte, Montana, near the turn of the century.

His grandmother taught him to fish when he was around 13 years old with a glass rod, some split shot, and an angle worm. As for fly fishing, Dan is self-taught, having picked up what he knows by watching others. One of the things he likes most about guiding is that he quickly can teach people the things that took him years to learn on the river.

“I can teach people in one day what it took me about ten years to learn alone the hard way,” he says.

In the afternoon, we approach a pod of fish rising to midges in a back channel. Dan swings his boat beneath the risers, and we begin to wade up the bank, slow enough to avoid creating an upstream wake. He cautions us to watch our feet and be sure to walk on the mats of weeds, instead of letting our boots grind the bottom gravel, signaling our presence to the trout. As we move into position for a cast, Dan has us false cast away from the fish, and not turn our rod tips toward the targets until we are ready to let fly.

“Most fly fishermen lack patience,” he says. “I see these people all the time–they spot rising fish, jump out of the boat, and charge after the trout like a bunch of bulls. These guys can ruin two hours of fishing before making one cast.”

* * *

Just how Dan fell into guiding is somewhat of a mystery, even to him. Like “Little Big Man” who floated from Cheyenne warrior to snake oil salesman, from gunfighter to Custer’s scout, Dan’s career path has had some odd twists along the way. He was an airborne paratrooper with the First Special Forces Division, a fireman, paramedic, rancher, hunter, and trapper, among other things.

“In Montana, you have to have a lot of irons in the fire, or else you go broke, or end up in a job you don’t like for the rest of your life. I guess I’ve ended up guiding because it’s the deal I can work best,” he admits.

Of course, even this job has its problems.

“The river isn’t what it was when it first opened. Back in those days, the river was thick with fish, and there weren’t so many guides on the water either. If you wanted to catch a 22-incher, all you had to do was tell me what kind of fly you wanted to catch him on, and whether you preferred the morning, or the afternoon.”

* * *

Dan says he has 10, maybe 15, years of guiding the Bighorn left in him.

“Guiding’s a hard life,” he says. “People don’t last around here.”

His list of damaged body parts is seemingly endless: shot knees, first hurt in an errant parachute drop on Okinawa, then reinjured by falling through the second story of a burning house in Miles City; tendonitis in his elbows and shoulders; the usual cuts, scrapes, and bruises that go with the job. He visits the doctor regularly to keep on top of the damage the sun does to his skin and to have the “suspicious” blotches cut out. Although money is not all that important to Dan (when we fished with him, he had 12 uncashed paychecks stuffed in his wallet), he says he’s careful not to hurt himself too badly, keenly aware of the cold, working reality of the river guide's job.

“If you ain’t working, you ain’t making money.”

* * *

Dan is one of only about a half-dozen or so guides who live in Ft. Smith year round. When the fishing trips slow down, he says he mostly hibernates or works on his trailer.

Keeping his modest home patched up and watertight is an almost daily challenge. In the winter, when the endless blizzards sweep through eastern Montana, the wind blows so hard that his trailer creaks and moans like an old ship at sea. Dan says that some nights it gets so bad he wears earplugs to bed. The wind makes him ill tempered.

“The wind gets so bad that someone walks in front of you, and you want to shoot them,” he says.

The off-season does not last as long as it used to in Ft. Smith, now that more and more anglers have discovered the wonders of streamer fishing in late fall and cold weather midge fishing. Last year, Dan stopped guiding on January 10 and picked right back up in the third week of February.

* * *

You must be resourceful to survive as a Ft. Smith fishing guide. Dan rebuilds and improvises broken equipment. His favorite dry fly floatant is a home-brew mixture of hand cream and lighter fluid.

All the food Dan eats during the winter comes from the land and water: deer, grouse, pheasants, ducks, geese, turkeys, elk, and walleye. When he is not fishing or hunting, he works part-time on a nearby cattle ranch. The rancher cannot pay him cash, so every season Dan gets paid in livestock. He owns a few Hereford steers and a bull buffalo. When his guiding days are over he might become a full-time rancher.

“Ranching’s honest work, and something I understand,” he says.

When Dan tells us how he ate during the winter, we notice one conspicuous absence–trout. He has not eaten one in more than a decade. His explanation seems to make sense.

“They’re my livelihood.”

* * *

Often, it is hard to tell if Dan is pulling your leg or not. He told us about running off the top of another soldier’s parachute after getting bunched in a high altitude drop. He claims a 300-yard driving average on a local golf course and a personal record of over 120 trout caught in four hours. He is not afraid to have fun with people, evidenced by his description of the fishing record. “Baetis hatch on the Bighorn,” he explains. “Me and another guide were out just for fun. He got tired and quit fishing, so I told him to start counting. It got to the point that I was using my left hand to catch fish.”

But there is no denying that Dan is serious about the business of fishing. He tells us about how, a few years ago, a drift boat anchored just across the river from Dan and a few of his clients. It carried two attractive young women wearing bikinis.

“At first, I enjoyed the view as much as anyone, but then all the other boats started swinging by to take a look and it put the fish down,” he explains with a sour stare. “So, I ran those girls off the run.”

* * *

Dan will not tolerate “sloppy ethics” on the Bighorn. He is careful not to bother spawning or stressed trout, and keeps a watchful eye on other anglers during the spring and fall spawning seasons. If he catches someone doing something they should not do–fishing redds or chumming (shuffling) the bottom–he will chew them out. He protects his beloved trout with a brand of vigilante justice that excludes no man or fish, evidenced by his less-than-gentle treatment of mountain whitefish and a maligned river herring called a goldeye, both of which compete with his trout for habitat. We watch him give an unfortunate goldeye the business end of a “Montana handshake,” spritzing blood and the fish’s right eyeball over the side of the boat.

“Garbage fish,” he says. “There ain’t a limit on goldeye.”

He accepts the armada of 60 or more drift boats and dozens of walk-in fishermen that crowd the Bighorn, even in the “off” season, as just part of the job. In fact, Dan’s ability to play “Bighorn hopscotch,” timing his drift and working around boats to land in good runs at just the right time, is uncanny. He knows every rock, trough, and channel in the river. We lose count of the times he steers his old boat into a tiny chute of river that looks from the surface as if it holds no fish, only to have us hook eight or nine browns and rainbows. It is the kind of guide wisdom that cannot be faked, and it only comes from having spent half a lifetime on the river.

He is especially good at the art of “decoying” runs.

Dan will fish a run, then quickly leave before bothering the most visibly feeding fish. The next guide that comes along sees the rising fish, stops the boat, and never realizes that Dan has surveyed the run.

“By the time they cast, I’m already around the bend, working another pod of fish,” he laughs.

* * *

From a practical standpoint, Dan Stein’s world is not much larger than the 70 miles of Bighorn River from the Yellowtail Dam afterbay to the Yellowstone confluence. When we last saw him, he had not read a newspaper or watched television in months, always focused on the idiosyncratic shifts of the river, the web of bugs that ride its surface, and the fish lurking in the depths.

Dan sees things we cannot. He does not just spot rising fish, but tells us how and what they eat by recognizing their rise forms. All day, a battery of tout feeding descriptions: tumblers, slurpers, sippers, and last-chance risers. Dan identifies three or more different fish in close proximity to each other, eating, he says, completely different bugs. He spends so much time staring at the water that he usually has a headache. This one has lasted for two weeks.

Dan makes a fly choice, a Soft-hackle Baetis, meant to ride just beneath the surface film. He wants us to watch the simple, tell-tale signs of this feeding fish–the way it turns, flares its gills, or shows the white of its mouth to eat. Watch the fish, and you will know exactly when to set the hook, he says.

The imitation drifts into the feeding zone. Dan sees the fish turn left on the fly. “Got him,” he says, calmly, in the instant before the hook set.

As we walk downstream to net the fish, Liz lowers her zoom lens, and asks: “Dan, how did you know he ate the fly?”

“He winked at me.”

* * *

Some people say a car is a reflection of the person who drives it. The same might be said for drift boats. Some guides run slick fiberglass boats, with built-in boxes, latches, and thick-cushioned seats.

Dan Stein built his own boat 15 years ago out of teak and dark-stained oak. Its sides are blistered and chapped by the sun. Its bottom is littered with broken monofilament, sandwich bags, and cigarette butts. The oars creak loudly, and the only place to store flies is a scraggly patch of sheep’s wool next to the rower's seat. But she is water-tight and maneuverable. Dan is proud to say he is one of only a few guides who can push his boat through the heart of Bighorn Rapids when the runoff is at its peak.

One day while anchored to the bank near Schneider’s Channel, we ask Dan about drift boats, what he would recommend, what he looks for from a boat. After a few minutes of getting nowhere, we cut to the quick and ask, “Hey Dan, what’s the best drift boat on the river these days?”

He takes a deep drag off his cigarette and leans the red ash forward to burn through the tippet material in his hands. After blowing a plume of smoke over his shoulder, he looks at us, without hesitation, and says, “Mine.”

* * *

Dan has earned the nickname “Sarge” in Ft. Smith, not because of his former military rank, but because he admits to a less-than-gentle means of coaching tough case clients.

“There are some people God never intended to handle a fly rod,” he explains.

As our visit with Dan winds down, we begin to feel we have earned his approval. On his river, we can cut the mustard. Sarge leans back on a cracked, naughyde boat seat, legs crossed. He lights another cigarette, smiles, and watches his pupils work the last run of the day.

Suddenly, a big rainbow rolls near the surface. The fly line goes taught, and moments later, slack. Temporary adrenaline is replaced by the disappointment of having hooked the fish poorly. We wonder if Dan saw it happen.

“The fish ate that fly, but he shit it out…you’re too slow,” he shouts.

* * *

When the sun finally sets on the Mission Buttes, our time with Dan is over. Our last day, and we had been on the river more than 12 hours, standard practice for Dan. As we haul his boat up the 13-mile ramp, another guide and two haggard-looking customers wander over to ask us how we did.

“Oh, we’ve done better. It was tough out there today,” pipes Dan.

In truth, we had experienced an amazing fishing day, having caught dozens of trout during a spectacular black caddis hatch. We cannot understand why Dan interrupted us as we were about to recount some of the day’s notable highlights. We sure as hell do not grasp why his version of things is so different from ours. Once we get in his pickup, he explains. It has to do with “the code.”

According to Dan, there is a “code of guides” on the river. The good ones know it and adhere to it, the bad ones do not. It turns out the other guide was a buddy of Dan’s.

“I could tell those guys had a shitty day,” he says. “It was probably just because those fellas couldn’t fish. But it’s just not a good thing to talk about all the fish you caught if it’s going to make another guide look bad.”

“You keep that in mind from now on when you meet other fishermen. The good ones don’t do a lot of talking.”

* * *

River Notes

Of any of the guides, we have fished with Dan the most, primarily in the spring. Early May on the Bighorn is consistently overcast, rainy, and in the 40s. Perfect weather, Dan says, for Marlboros and fishing dry flies. At a glance, the river and Ft. Smith may look desolate this time of year, but it is not unusual to find 50 boats on the upper river and the dead, bankside grass crowded with nesting geese. Dan prays for the “really good” fronts to settle in, the wind and rain driving all but the hearty to their rooms to drink and play cards. Camera failures or not, we always stay and are rewarded with workmanlike hatches of Blue-winged Olive mayflies, midges, and countless flats of hungry, preseason trout. With careful approaches and tight trigger-casts through the wind, we are able to exercise some trout (mostly browns) on small Grizzly Clusters and size #14 Blue Duns.

During thick midge hatches, Dan likes to cast large hackled dry flies an extra 10 feet above rising fish, allowing time for naturals to “raft up” or cling to the feathers of the dry fly. By the time the Blue Dun, now crawling with live midges, reaches the feeding trout, it looks as good as anything they will see all day. With accurate, one-time casts this technique is deadly. We are not sure we have fished with a more genuine river predator than Dan Stein, or a river guide more in tune with the continually changing complexities of large spring creek like the Bighorn. Being “in tune” with the river has become somewhat of a cliché in the language of river guides, but in Dan’s case, it is not B.S. He averages 330 days a year on the river between guiding trout and jump-shooting ducks in the off-season. Staggering by anyone’s standards.

If the main river is not muddied by farm runoff from Soap Creek or other small tributaries, Dan works 30, sometimes 40 miles downstream from the afterbay; in water very few others understand or have the courage to guide on. There literally is not an insect emergence, a trout behavior, or method of casting a fly that he has not lived through and considered on nearly 70 miles of Bighorn River. Most impressive of his river skills may be his surgical ability to remove individual trout from feeding packs without major disruptions. Picking rear feeders first, measuring extremely low and accurate casts, then hooking, playing, and landing 18-inch “toddlers” quietly away from the others. Ultimately, clearing room for a shot at the one fish that really matters. With Dan, and if you are lucky, you always get that shot.

Tip: When approaching wild trout feeding in shallow water, always pay careful attention to the clunking and grinding created by wading boots moving over rocks and debris along the river bottom. If possible, wade or even “hopscotch” on underwater vegetation and sand to reduce unnecessary commotion. Unnatural, underwater vibrations always alert trout to your presence and make them more difficult to catch, even if they do not stop feeding.

This chapter is excerpted from Castwork: Reflections of Fly Fishing Guides and the American West (2002). Photo proofs: Liz Steketee