The Big Ugly

A few years ago Lori and I went to West Yellowstone, Montana on vacation. It was her first fishing trip out west and our first trip together. It was a magical time. We fished some of the great western streams, the Madison, Yellowstone, and Gallatin Rivers. We even shared Slough Creek with a grizzly. We would fish like demons all day. We had our lunch streamside and reveled in the wildlife. At night, after a late supper, we would walk through West Yellowstone stopping in every fly shop to read the bulletin boards and talk to anglers, guides, and shopkeepers trying to figure out where and what to fish the next day.

One night in one of the many shops we visited, Lori saw it, the big ugly. It was a huge stone fly pattern with a spun deer hair and foam body. It was garishly colored and had twelve rubber legs. It looked more like a bass bug than a trout fly. The guy in the fly shop assured her that this was the hot pattern on the Yellowstone and her life would never amount to anything unless she bought one. I on the other hand was not impressed. This was not my first time out west. Over the previous twenty years I had accumulated hundreds of patterns on various trips and I had all of them with me. I was sure that there would be no hatches we would encounter that I was not prepared for. As a fly tier it corroded my soul to pay $2.75 for a fly I could tie myself (if I had brought my vise and invested $25.00 in materials). I told Lori that the fly would be difficult for her to cast and I would be impressed if that ugly thing could catch anything. She immediately bought one and spent the remainder of the evening romancing it.

The next day we got an early start and drove to Buffalo Ford on the Yellowstone River. After lunch, which included an unexpected visit to our picnic table from an inquisitive buffalo, we were fishing near a blow down and observed a large trout feeding on the surface. There were probably five hatches occurring at the same time. We saw stoneflies, gray drakes, two different caddis flies and pale morning duns coming off. I tied on a gray drake and was fishing to some nearby risers. I smirked as Lori tied on the Big Ugly and cast toward the blow down. Her fly hit with a loud kerplunk and drifted downstream about two feet. Suddenly a monstrous trout broke the surface and rolled over the Big Ugly like a ton of bricks. It took off like a bullet and Lori's four weight was bent nearly double. The fight went on for several minutes but the huge fly was impossible for the fish to shake. The fight finally ended when the twenty-five inch native Yellowstone Cutthroat slid into my net filling it to capacity. It was a fat, gorgeous, brightly colored male. It was without a doubt the largest, best-looking Yellowstone Cutt that I had ever seen and was the biggest trout Lori had ever caught. As we were taking the photos she asked me if I was impressed.

That night I bought a Big Ugly.