Latest
Update: June
19, 2001 by Ben Marcus
21:34
MONDAY, JUNE 18, 2001 MIKE AND RICH'S CABIN, WISE RIVER, MT
Home,
home on the range! Sorry. It's 22:34 Mountain Time and it's finally
dark. I'm in the living room of the cabin Mike and Rich are renting
for $120 a night. I've offered to pay a third of it for letting
me use the phone and such. This place is nice. Out in a field
in the middle of nowhere, up-river from the town of Wise River.
I like it here.
Ike
is in the house, being a nuisance, as usual. I used their phone
line to log on and check my e-mail. The most important one was
a roughly-written account of what happened to Jay from a photographer
named Bill Morris, who was working on the O'Neill Fashion Shoot
with Jay.
This
is how it read, unedited: Hi Nick, Just got home from the O'Neill
gig. We quit a few days early as no one was up to it obviously.
I just read the report on swell and thought I would fill you guys
in on what went down. We were staying in the resort at Lohifushi
and just using a boat during the day to get around. The surfers
where needed to shoot fashion that morning on the Island while
I was out shooting the girls at Sultans on the boat and I didnt
get back until 1.30pm for lunch. Cory was the last of us to see
Jay late morning after the fashion shoot saying he was going snorkeling
near the pier before lunch. Some Brazilian guys were diving and
one of them said he did a couple of dives but Jay was going further
down the buoy rope, maybe 15 m and sitting on the bottom. The
guy said he dived down and seen him with his arms out horizontal
just sitting there, the guy came up and went back with his friend
and didnt check him again though he said he heard Jays watch alarm
go off which he was timing him self with but didnt see him surface.
That was around 1130. Larry was filming Cory paddling around and
underwater right over the top of him 2 hours later at 2pm. They
were there an hour or more. Cory noticed Jays back pack out the
pier when they finished with Jays fins in it and kind off flashed
on that being a bit odd but forgot about it when we went and shot
this small left with me for the rest of the afternoon. When he
never made it to dinner we checked his room than the pier for
his pack and it was still there. That was 8. 30 pm. We got the
dive school guys and they went out and found him straight away
on the bottom about 50 feet from the buoy he was diving on. The
current was very strong and it was a wonder they found him at
all. This shoot was for O'Neill Europe who Jay has been doing
these summer shoots with for the last 5 years. This was my 4th
year with Jay doing this shoot and everyone involved is deeply
shocked along with anyone else who knew him. He was probably the
nicest guy you could ever meet and thats an understatement as
you know. Billy
So
that answers a few mysteries but inspires others. Like, what was
he doing sitting on the bottom in 50 feet of water. How did he
die? Did he black out? And why wasn't he washed away in the current?
That's what I'm going to spend the next few days figuring out.
There
was other e-mail and I looked up the San Francisco Giants stats
for Mike. He was a great baseball player until he had a stroke.
Now his left side is mostly out of order, which makes fishing
an interesting proposition. They fished from the boat today and
got a few fish. This evening we drove up the Big Hole to fish
the banks. My wordy it was beautiful. Saw a moose out in a field,
lots of gophers or prairie dogs running across the road and mule
deer everywhere.
The
fishing wasn't too great. Rich hooked a trout and a couple of
whitefish. The whitefish are a drag. They're slimy and a waste
of time and they eat the trout eggs, so, to quote Lawrence of
Arabia: PRINCE FAISAL Sometimes they are dealt with harshly. BENTLEY
How harshly? PRINCE FAISAL More harshly than I hope you can imagine.
Enough
said on that. I hooked one little trout but didn't set the hook
and it got away. The Big Hole reminds me of the Owens River near
Bishop, but it is much better, mostly because it is loaded with
fish, and they are wild. No hatchery fish at all. The river winds
and curves through the thickest, greenest pasture with big, healthy
cattle grazing and the occasional deer and moose. There are very
few people around and there is a lot of mountain and sky. I am
in awe. Montana rules.
But
I'm getting ahead of myself at little. Back at Jerry's Creek I
fished for a little bit-still without a license, because they
don't sell them at Troutfitters. I tried the rig they sold me
there: a salmon fly up front with a smaller caddis fly behind.
At first I was using my smaller rod but I still had the sinking
tip on and salmon and caddis flies are meant to be fished on the
surface. So I started to replace the sinking line with a floating
line and that's when I got confused. Took me a while to tie a
bad nail knot, and I ended up putting the floating line on the
wrong reel. I tried casting with my spey rod for a while but it
was too much of a beast. So I stripped the floating line off again,
got it on my smaller rod and that felt better. I saw a few trout
come up in front of me and got one nibble, but that was it.
Ike
was right down at the water with me, rubbing up against my legs
and meowing and occasionally lapping up the very cold water. He's
having a jolly good time.
Leaving
Jerry's Creek I gave a ride to a kind of a dingaling guy from
Berkeley/Alaska. He drifted the river with his girlfriend today
and she killed it using size 14 flies, while he didn't get a bite
on the salmon flies. WE talked about this and that and he kept
saying "Canadia."
"You
took a gun into Canadia?"
"The
Yukon, that's in Canadia, isn't it?"
But
he was personable and had a few things to say. I dropped him at
his truck and unwisely took a hit of pot. That stuff makes you
stupid. I'm over it.
Head
spinning a little bit and feeling pot-anxious, I went back to
Troutfitters and got the scoop on where Mike and Rich were staying;
in a cabin a couple of miles up the road.
I
found them, and it was cool to see familiar faces in the middle
of nowhere, which is where I am. I logged on and got my e-mail
and read Mike and Rich that account of Jay's drowning. Mike manages
the O'Neill Surf Shops in Santa Cruz and he is very good friends
with Kim Moriarity. He wants to be there to give her a hug. Like
everyone, he feels terrible.
We
sat around for awhile and Mike and Rich decided between fishing
and dinner. Everything closes here at 8:00 and the sun doesn't
go down until 9:00, so fishing won. Mosquitos are a problem here
in the afternoon. Mike and Rich both wore long-sleeve shirts and
pants. I finally got to boost out the mosquito hat I bought in
Bodo, Norway. As all things Norwegian, it is a high-quality mosquito
hat, but as it turned out, I didn't need it.
We
drove a few miles up the river, passing epic spot after epic spot.
We stopped where a guy from Placerville was giving up. "Too many
whitefish," he said.
Mike
and Rich fished first with very light fly rods and lines and leaders.
My stuff may all be too heavy. Rich caught a trout and then I
tried. There were rises all over with a couple of big splashes.
The trout stick to the banks while the whitefish are out in the
middle. So we fished along the banks. Rich caught a little trout
and a couple of whitefish. I got one fish on but didn't set the
hook and lost it. But catching fish is just a side benefit where
we are. This place is absolutely pristine. We are fishing for
native trout on a river that is too far away from everything to
be too heavily fished. This isn't California or even Washington.
We are in Montana, and it's nice. The cows were mooing and there
were odd bird noises. The bugs weren't too bad but the fish weren't
very active. As soon as the sun disappeared it got cold very fast.
We
packed it up and came back to the hut. Mike and Rich are already
down. They had a long day on the river and they'll have another
one tomorrow. I'm going to work and do justice to Jay Moriarity's
memory.
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