The Blackfoot River Runs Through It Part 1 with John Maclean

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This week on the destination angler.

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The Blackfoot Valley is probably one of the least molested. Valleys left in Montana. When you drive up route from Missoula to Helena, and up to Rogers pass, it is surprising because there are places where you can go get up a little bit and look out and see things the way Meriwether Lewis saw them pretty much when he went through there in 1806, the first white man to do it, so it ain't all bad. The rich guys come out here.

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That was John McClane on the Blackfoot River. Welcome to the destination angler Podcast, the podcast for anglers who travel, and I'm your host Steve Haigh. We go right to the source the local guides and experts to build your knowledge of top fishing locations around North America. It's a big world out there now go and fishing.

Today our destination is the pristine waters of the Blackfoot River in Montana, part one with special guest none other than the acclaimed author and journalist John McClane. John's not just any writer. He's the son of Norman Maclean, the literary genius behind the iconic book A River Runs Through It. The Blackfoot River is a place of rugged beauty and renowned trout fishing. It's a slice of paradise that has captivated the hearts of Montanans for generations even before Hollywood took notice. But is its popularity a blessing or a curse? But we'll let John share his insights on that shortly. From his summers in Montana at a century old family cabin to his illustrious career as a Washington correspondent for The Chicago Tribune. Jon covered historic events like the moon landing, Watergate and the opening of China. Today, he's a dedicated fly fishermen and conservationists who regale us with his own tales from the storied River, the iconic book and the beloved film that captured the imagination of anglers, the world over propelling the fly fishing industry to unprecedented heights.

03:58

So let's hear from John. John, it's great to have you on the show today. Thanks for coming.

04:07

Well, thank you for inviting me and I'm looking forward to it.

04:09

Yeah, me too. Me too. So you know, today, we're definitely going to talk about the movie. We're going to talk about your books and your experiences in Montana and other places. But really, I'd love to start with the river, the Blackfoot River. Obviously it's a it's a special place for you, in your family. But what does it mean to you personally, this river that's so famous.

04:31

Well, Blackfoot River who has made a lot of things, memorable, possible events without the Blackfoot River, you wouldn't have the movie and the book. A River Runs Through It. We wouldn't be drawn back there. The way we have been in my family for decades and decades. So it is a lodestone. It's an anchor. It's a place you know one of this Things that people have picked up on with home waters is it creates a sense of place. That's very important. And a lot goes into that it isn't just the river. It's also the Blackfoot Valley, which is relatively unspoiled. It's the cabinet, see the lake and all that kind of stuff. But the river is at the center of it. And it keeps running. Right? Yes. I mean, I talked about that at the end of a book that you can catch a big fish and have an exciting adventure. And then you stop. And you look at the river, and it's running, but the real keeps going forward. It doesn't stop and fix everything. And then it's over. You can leave, don't bother coming back. It isn't like that. It's you know, we're here. We're still functioning, you can come back and do this again.

05:51

Right. I love the fact that we do have these beautiful rivers in our country that are still running, you know, that we can swoop in on, you know, on occasion and go fish.

06:03

Yes. There are organizations today, people who are trying to make them better.

06:09

Right, right. And what do you suppose the allure of the of the Blackfoot River is to the broader fishing community?

06:16

Well, it has a good side and a bad side. I think people often go there thinking that they are going to buy their way into the legend of the Blackfoot on the McLean's and the movie, and Robert Redford and all that. And that's the wrong attitude. I've talked to some other people about this. The Blackfoot today is overused, it's often the 60s and 70s, the number of winters to Montana, was about one to 1.5 million per year. And today, it's 10 times that it's 12 to 15 million people, I think everyone will black forever. You know, what are you looking for? If you come with a good attitude, but you're approaching the legendary River, fishers? Well, there's a proper way to approach it. But you're not going to be fishing not the way I did when I was a kid. And the way I can still occasionally sneak in and do it. On the lonely. It's got too much traffic, there are too many boats, or too many people. I was taking a boat trip down there last fall with some donors for American rivers. Gee, we got started, there was a long, nice hole with a good foam line. And there was a little hatch of gluing all of us and we matched them about a number 18 You don't have to get down to 2022 on the Blackfoot and catching fish. And they said, Okay, we gotta go. The guide said, so why we have to go. We're doing just fine. Where we are, there's another boats con, we got to stay ahead of the other boats. And I looked back and there must have been four or five boats coming after us. And turns into this kind of roller derby. Where you know where the hotspots are, if you're a guide, and you want to put your people on those, but you can't let them sit there and fish for an hour or two. You got to keep moving, keep moving, otherwise you will be overrun. They'll get ahead of you. And they'll spoil the water out ahead of us. This is not what we used to do. In the olden days, if you saw anybody else fishing during the day, it kind of spoiled it. And it happened. But it didn't happen that often. And there weren't the boats. That's post World War Two development. Or some of the guys came back with these rubber dinghies. The first ones were really awful. They weighed a ton. And they leaked. There were World War Two suits surplus. And pretty soon they started making them higher quality and what you have today is very high quality, right? That's how people do it. You know, and you can look on that river sometimes and just see nothing but on our motto.

09:08

Right? So how should we adjust our attitude and our behaviors when we come to because there's a lot of rivers out west that are crowded now

09:16

like it's happening all over the West. It's not just the Blackfoot, but it has happened to the Blackfoot because of work on the movie. And now book plural. And what you can do is come with a good attitude, but realize that this is what's gonna be get yourself a good guide. I think that's really the first step. If you're if you know the area and you know yourself and you know how to fish bank fish, that's one thing but most people come in there for two weeks vacation or whatever. They're not that far along, but get a good guide and there's some very good ones. There are three good shops in Missoula. There's a very good shop and a vandal, the Blackfoot anglers, and there are ones to avoid paws up is wanting to avoid bad guides, but they do one thing very well. And this is one way to do it. They take people down the Blackfoot River boats who don't want to fish. They just want the scenery they want the experience. And that's fine. No problem. And paws up does a very good job of them. They have lots of trucks that you know, and they often take a boat down in the morning and then recycle it and run it down again in the afternoon. This is overuse. But that's what they do. If you're going for the scenery, they're a good outfit to go with. Don't fish with them.

10:41

Right? So what is uh, how do I determine a good guy? I mean, really, you're calling a fly shop. Let's say you live in Chicago and you want to fish, the Blackfoot, you call out there you call and you talk to three fly shops. They all sound pretty good. How the heck do you pick a good guy?

10:57

If you look at the online comments on them, are often unregulated. If people had a really bad time, they will say so. You also look to see who sponsors them. Your Orvis is pretty reliable. I mean, they have high standards on what their guides do and I don't have kind of a tie to Orvis I've, you know, I just say this because in fact, they do have standards. And they do vet their guides. And they do do a good job. Or they're not you know, you're taking a chance. But if you get a mainline fly shop has been around long time and they have good reviews. And you tell them what to say look, I want a good guide about this. I want to catch some fish. But I'm really there because I want to experience the Blackfoot River. What it should be. Tell them about. They should respond to that. Yeah.

11:55

I think if you call way ahead of time, like if you're calling two weeks at a time, you're probably not going to get the best guide. You're gonna get the kid who doesn't have a trip? Because he's new, maybe. Puerto Rican? Yeah. So I read about the much more whole I can't remember who's in your book or your your dad's book. But anyway, what's the story with I couldn't find a whole lot about it.

12:16

Oh, my God. The much more whole is the one place on the Blackfoot River that can be positively identified as a scene in a river runs through it. Or other river scenes were very knowledgeable people have gone out and tried to find out exactly where this happened. And you can't nail it down. Most people happen to include my father, the his longtime fishing companion, George Cronenberg's went out one time and trying to find the place near the bottom Belmont creek for the last fishing trip among my dad, his brother, and his father occurs and they couldn't nail it down. So it has to be somewhere near here. And that's me somewhere near Belmont great. But dad said You know, I can't remember exactly where it was. So some things are better left in the mists of mythology, much more whole not. So it's a beautiful hole. It's got all kinds of interesting water in it. And it has become a magnet for the guides and for fishermen that come down to their boats. And very often they sit there for far too long on this hole, sometimes for a couple of hours. That is not sportsmen line. The last time I was there last fall went down on the boat, and the much more Hall was fishing. It was hot. And I looked up and said, Oh, my God, we've been here for 45 minutes. It's time for us to get out of here. And there are two boats and I said we've got to leave. This has gone on too long. We shouldn't have been here this long. And I just caught a 20 inch cut throat. Nice. So there has to be some sense of personal restraint. But the much more whole is the reason I wrote home waters. Well, it's a long story, but it's worth telling because this this kind of thing happens. I had a friend in Chicago who was a businessman, an entrepreneur, and he got a big loan from George Soros, the famous financier to with a partner bio phosphate mine in Canada. And they bought it. They worked very, very hard to turn this thing around and turn it into a good business. You know, they go to work with a bag lunch, you know, nothing fancy, and so on. The company went public, and they worked along. He was a big fan of a river runs through it. And he and I became friends. And he and his wife went out to Montana and we're driving around looking at places and I saw this ranch that didn't happen to include waterfront a much more whole If it was up for sale for about $3 million, which was, you know, way beyond when you're taking a bag lunch you don't think about buying a $3 million ranch. So they went back to Chicago and worked and worked. The company that would come out at $16 a share, was bought out at $60 a share. And suddenly he bought the ranch and he gets the ranch, builds a nice place there and continues to acquire land with Blackfoot River frontage. To the point now he's got about eight miles of frontage and he turns his holdings into a an environmental custodianship his trust fund, and so it can't be screwed up. And then he's got a friend across the river as much more than he does the same thing. And other guys do it elsewhere in the valley and they're mostly incomers and who have a bad reputation, right? Well, this is a case where the incomers created these easements and locked up the land. There is public use of the Blackfoot River you can't keep people off of it. Right. So it's not as though they're stinky people. Right. But the Blackfoot Valley is probably one of the least molested. Valleys left in Montana. When you drive that route from Missoula to Helena and up to Rogers pass. It is surprising because there are places where you can go get up a little bit and look out and see things the way Meriwether Lewis saw them pretty much Yeah, no kidding. When he went through there in 1806 the first white man to do it yeah, right. So it ain't all bad the rich guy has come out here anyway the much more whole has been is there

16:54

we've seen in the movie is tied to the much more

16:57

well the movie was not shot on the Blackfoot. Oh, it's not okay. No, it's not have to go back and watch it again to be 100% Sure, but I don't think anyone has ever identified as being that hole in the movie.

17:10

I gotcha.

18:25

that the movie was shot on the Gallatin primarily, is that correct?

19:39

They were shot on the Gallatin, one of the scenes with the boat going over the falls was shot in Wyoming. They never came up to the Blackfoot except to do a scouting while there and their excuse for not doing it on the Blackfoot was that the hills are have been nibbled by logging and that would be apparent Remember that River Runs Through It, the movie won the Oscar for cinematography. It's a beautiful movie, right. But for I also heard was that basically things were not set up, or a movie company, so that you would have to drive out from Missoula 5560 75 miles every day and back with everybody. You'd have to have catering come out and back every day, that I figured it would cost him six figures extra per day to do this. So that may have factored in, I am not privy to private negotiations. I'll tell you this. My father's been alive, he wouldn't allow that to happen, I would have insisted that it'd be on the Blackfoot. But he didn't. He wasn't there to do that. And my sister and I who had the rights to it did not insist.

20:52

And your father actually never saw the movie because he passed away before it was released. Correct?

20:57

That's correct. And you passed away before your mountain fire came out?

21:01

In How do you think we're jumping way ahead, but we might as well go there. How do you think your your father? How would he feel about the movie?

21:09

Oh, he would have had critical things to say. And he would have loved it. A little bit of both. Oh, yeah, very much. So let's start with not being on the block. But that wouldn't have happened. He negotiated to a point where he had veto power. And he would have exercised to do would not have been shy about exercising that. So the movie may never have been made. Please take note that it was not made during his lifetime.

21:36

Do you know Robert Redford flew out and visited him in Chicago multiple times to convince him to even allow him to do this?

21:43

That's correct. And there was a script because my dad didn't like for very good reason. It began with a scene on Seeley Lake where Paul was at the end of a worth testing and it catches a big rainbow trout brings them in and holds him in his hands and crack. He snaps the neck of the rainbow trout violence scene and my father just went through the roof on that. He was written by a jerk who had connections to the movie. He's dead now. And I'm born by me. And certainly by would have been my my dad, but it was just bad. And my father's reaction was so negative. That I think Ron forgot the idea that this is you're not going to have an easy time making the movie with. I have no proof of this, but I think he just waited them out.

22:39

Oh, no kidding. Well, who cracks the neck of a fish with your bare hands anyway? I mean, most of its catch and release. But even if you decide to keep one I don't?

22:47

I don't know. Well, there was no back.

22:51

I noticed that. I noticed that I you know, part of my 50s or the 60s. Went ahead did you guys do with all those fish? I mean, if you're catching your limit almost every time you go out there, back in the 19 teens and 20s. Where did you put all these fish? Oh, you did? Okay.

23:09

Oh, absolutely. I mean, nobody's throwing fish away. We froze them. George Cronenberg's would put them in his freezer, you had milk cartons, and you put like take the heads off a fish and put them in the milk cartons and fill it with water and then freeze them. And they're good. And some of this was subsistence. When George Klinenberg, who was our right friend there and the fishing partner was a railroad engineer. You know, it was not a wealthy guy meant a lot to have that kind of protein available.

23:44

That's it's super interesting. I want to get into the movie some more. But let's go back to the Blackfoot for just min a couple of things you said you talked about, you know the rafts that came in after World War Two. When did you start seeing people showing up in waiters because nobody's wearing waiters in the movie? I noticed.

23:58

Right? Well, we had waiters, but remember that, you know, in the 60s, they were very primitive. They were very heavy, kind of rubber waiters and yet hip waders. Yeah, but chest waders didn't come in. I don't think until the 70s you know, give or take. I'm not an expert on this. But we certainly didn't see them around. And the materials that are used Gortex and the lighter stuff that make it possible to to put on chest waders and still walk without falling over dead from dehydration. Right. Didn't come in until later. So we waited wet early part of the season that could be really interesting. That's gonna be really cool.

24:41

Oh my gosh, it's hardcore man. John, can you kind of break the river down for us? You know, like if if I'm coming out to the Blackfoot? You know, what am I likely to see? Like, where does it start? What's the river like up high and as you kind of get closer to Missoula?

24:55

Right. The Blackfoot River joins the Clark Fork at Bonner, Montana. which is six or seven miles out of Missoula. And by then it's had all its tributaries poured in there, it's pretty good sized River. From that section on up for about 15 to 20 miles is the lower Blackfoot. It is paralleled as it is for almost the entire length by route 200. You get snatches of it along the way. And sometimes long, long stretches, especially in the lower Blackfoot while we're the canyon is very narrow, where you can see the river that is heavily used to lower Blackfoot, and it's productive. There's nothing wrong with it, it's perfectly good water, then you get to near Potomac, Montana, which is a big valley with a small town and it was agricultural land. And at that point, route 200 goes through Potomac, and the river goes off to the north, and you leave the river, there is a road that parallels the river that used to be until this past year on nasty dirt road, which was good because it kept a lot of people out of there. And they've paved part of that now. So as you can drive in there, and that is been reserved, thanks to an enlightened timber company, as public land was given us public land, and the BLM runs that thing. And that is this, another section, whole section, and runs from what we call Whitaker Bridge, which is a bridge that goes across after about eight or nine miles of the parallel road. And you can put in a political bridge and take out at the point at which the river departs from 200. And that's one nice run. And then you get into the upper Blackfoot. So that's a section which runs from Whitaker bridge, down for about 10 miles. And that's a nice section. It's very accessible, and there are camping sites along the way. Then you get into the upper Blackfoot. And you go through nine mile prairie and you hit the Blackfoot River again, that's with route 200. So you pick up route 200. And then you can continue on to the east. And there are places along the way where there are puddings and takeouts. And it's easy to get a map. Good thing to have, which shows all these efficient map of the Blackwood river you can get them online, all the shops have them. And take a look at it before you go and discuss those with your guide. You know which section you want to do. The most scenic section is the box canyon. You see about one cabin in the hallway. And if you want to know what it looked like back in the day, that's really, and a lot of people go there for that reason. And that's it's heavily used, and it is overused. And it includes the much more whole at the end. The takeout is at Scotty Browns Bridge, which is after you come out of the canyon. But it's a beautiful run, not to be knocked. And that's it now too much of a destination. There have been times when the put in on the North Fork of the Blackfoot for that stretch this out 100 rigs parked there. Now, that doesn't include the people who were there and dumped off their boat and then left and went to a pickup spot. So it is grossly overused. But if you discuss this with a competent guide, they can take you along and keep you moving along. You know don't expect to sit on a hole for a long time. That's the other thing about how to approach a legacy River. Don't count fish. I've got a catch 10 or 15 or 30 fish. I've got to have a 30 fish day. That's not it. You know, what are you looking for? You know, are you looking for something of reverence for for water? Are you looking for the magic of the stillness of water? Or are you looking to check off something on your bucket list? You earn respect with the first two and you lose it with the last one. And there are a lot of people who go in there, you know, Bang Bang Bang, I'm going to my first cast, I'm going to catch the movie of a river on his throat. And my second I'm going to catch Norman Maclean. You know, ain't gonna happen partner. Yeah, you gotta get in there with a different attitude. And if you do that, you can't stop people from going there. So if you do that, that's the way to handle this.

29:34

That's a great message, John. It needs to be out there.

30:49

You know, I fished the Blackfoot twice. I fished it in the early 2000s with some buddies and it wasn't you know we I don't think we saw any other boats that day. And we had a great day we did really well. And I just fell in love with the river then. And then we fished it just a few years ago and it was it was definitely more crowded and it didn't fish as well. That how do you think the river is fishy with all this traffic, how's it affected the fishing?

32:13

Well, the river was in bad shape at the time the movie came out. It had degraded through a whole variety of causes. But the movie brought in an awful lot of money for the Blackfoot and it was handled very intelligently, both by government people and by private people. And it was channeled through two organizations the Blackfoot challenge and the Blackfoot chapter of Trout Unlimited. And they worked and they were staffed and peoples by locals. There worked very closely with local people, so people knew each other. So you would go on to a ranch to work on a tributary that had been turned into a ditch. And you wanted to meander it and turn it into a good spawning stream. And you had talked to a rancher you know, some of these guys are kind of tough minded, they don't watch on their property. But if you're a neighbor, you know if you know him, you can approach it like that. And they did. There was engagement by the affected people. So they put up fences to keep the cattle off it but still allow them access to the water. That's very tricky. Because the water level rises and falls, and you have to kind of work at it. That doesn't always work. But it keeps the Blackfoot from being an open sewer for cattle. Right. And Buffalo was a buffalo herd on one of the ranches. Okay, and I would hear stories about this, you know, we went on to this guy's ranch and we got permission to go ahead but he was very skeptical. And he would come out and watch us doing things. So we're working on a meander and we need some timbers to, to put in there to block the river and turn it and we don't have them and he says, you know, well, you know, been watching it. I got I got some of those in my barn and he go get them and become part of the process. That may be a little apocryphal, but that tells you the spirit that worked. Yeah. Blackfoot fishes today better than I did when I was a kid. Really? It was yeah, it was hammered. I mean people lived out of it. You know a lot of people took a lot of protein out of that place. And it was degraded for several years after the Microsoft dam which had a lot of mine tailings in it. That's up at the headwaters after that broke. There was cadmium in the river and for years we didn't fish it because the fish were poisoned. That is now down. It's still there. But it's sunk into the bottom and the fish are okay and besides, you know, you throw back nearly everything now. They have a very what I think is very foolish policy of totally favoring the cutthroat and saying well you can take the rainbow of a certain size and the Browns you After all those, and we hate brook trout, the native fish thing has gotten a little out of hand. Yes, cutthroat are the native fish there and white fish and in some places gray line. But the rainbow are about as much of a black would fishers you're gonna find Blackfoot rainbow is the signature of that. They fight better than the cutthroat. Yep. Brown Trout lives generally in water where they're not that much competition with others, you know, they can take the warmer water, and totally favoring, because they're native. Seems to me warped, if you the rainbow and the brown have been there for over a century when you get to be a native. Nor was there some anti immigration policy. You know, when you think of it in those terms, it gets a little different, you know, it's a nativist policy. I'm glad that they have brought the cutthroat back. And the way to do that is to improve the spawning grounds up in the mountains. And they've worked hard on that. We have the Blackfoot or water stewardship Act, which has been held up by Senator Danes, and continues to be held up by Senator Danes, very foolishly and greedily. He wants to have stuff that has been put into watch wilderness watch, taken out of that and returned to multiple use, not just price for doing that and just stuck, that kind of an effort. And other efforts to get the upper tribs in really good shape for clubs are responding or have been very helpful. And

36:34

it sounds like you've got a lot of partners out there who are pulling in the same direction. A few that aren't, but most sounds like most of them are.

36:41

Well, the blockbusters ship act, Blackbird Clearwater stewardship Act has over 75% approval by Montanans in poll after poll after poll, and the approval rate has only grown. Why is you as a Montana senator, Senator James, continuing to oppose this. Come on? What do you have said in a public hearing which I listened to, but you were going to meet with Senator Tester who is a sponsor of it and come to a compromise and you haven't done it. You've Hold out your old demand, the stuff that is this held up in study has to be taken out of that. I don't see why there isn't a compromise there. I mean, some of it probably shouldn't be taken out. He's probably right about some of it. Yeah, but not all of it. Not all of it. Yeah, but kind of separate issues. Give him some of what he wants. I'd be for that.

37:34

Yeah, but let's move forward. That's always the problem, isn't it? You covered Washington for a few years.

37:40

Well, this thing has been around forever. And it is gotten overwhelming support. The people in Montana. They're not all like that. Sometimes they get a special conservative conserving legislation, and it has, you know, 41% approval. It's got over 75.

37:58

Yeah. Nice. Fantastic. Well, let's shift gears just for a minute. Tell me about the hatches on a Blackfoot? I mean, is it known as a bug factory? You know, what's it like?

38:07

It can be a bug factory. You know, that's the problem everywhere because of climate change. There have been summers, I've been there where of the hatches get burned out and by September one, but the ones I liked her in the fall, there's usually a BW Oh hatch. You can fish that river with a number of 14 or 16 Parachute items, virtually anytime of the season. Yeah, and do reasonably well. You can fish it with a grasshopper rehabilitation. And it is wise to go to one of the flower shops and ask about that. And buy the ones that are current because those grasshoppers will be green one year I'm small and fatten yellow The next really very follow. Yeah, it's weird, dominant strain that works. And if you're off that substantially off of it, you're not going to have a high success ratio. So visit the flower shops and take their advice. The hatch I like best is the October caddis. It's great big bumbling flies. deficient drive. You can also fish on what but it's really the most fun deficient dry. Big strokes, big fish. Big Fat flies easy to see. Those are my three favorite flies there are a grasshopper imitation, dry or wet or depending on the season. Aquila simple yellow Quill is good anytime the October cat has a parachute animus but what everybody fishes with now some two and sometimes three flies. So the hopper on a dropper cada Sena dropper. You can drop a really teeny little nymph off of off of number 14 Parachute Adams if you dope them up. been drying them out every third test. And my work? Yeah 80% Of what fish takers subsurface? Right. But you know, let's face that nymphing is extremely effective fishing.

40:14

What style of fishing Do you like? Are you and all the news? The new tightline stuff? Or what do you what do you like to do?

40:21

I like dry flies. I like nine foot five weight, or Oh, Winston. More on three bucks. With about a nine foot leader. You don't have to have an enormously long leader. Okay, it has nine feet is just fine. Forex is plenty light enough. If you want to go to five. It is. Five is fine. A small drive fly. You're good to go. It's not like the east where it's highly selective. The Black Swan has been fished so hard in recent years that it has become much more selective. But compared to the east, it's still way way behind the Fisher. Yeah. So if you see a B, one and B who hatch and it looks like it's about a number 22 You can get there with an 18. No, you don't have to go all the way down. You may be a fisherman who likes to go all the way down. And that's fine. Yeah, go for it. You don't need to want to join the 2020 Club. Number 20 Fly on a 20. Rainbow. That's, that's great.

41:30

Are you in that club? I am. How about that?

41:33

I've done it. I don't do it every year. Enough to do it every year. I've done it. Yes.

41:39

All right. So George Cronenberg Do you Do you still have patterns that George tied in your fly box, or somewhere in your house?

41:46

I have a lot of them. No kidding. And they work. They worked everywhere. I used to use them in the east until I got out of wet flies pretty much in the dry flies. They're working Alaska, they work in New Zealand. They may not be you know, the hottest fly there. But the yellow quill on a six or an eight. Big thing is yummy for the first stages. And when I have a very slow day on the blackboard and I can't get anything to move on the surface. I will go to that and get some action.

42:19

Do you actually fish flies that he tied still? Or do you just Oh, you do the his flies? Oh, no kidding.

42:26

I have some that I've saved that are beautifully tied. And then he did two kinds, he would send friends and me a handmade box of flyers. He'd make these boxes or beautiful little things out of cardboard. My friend who owns almost a ranch on the much more gotten one of those ones. And he wrote back to Georgia, so Oh, gosh, George, thank you so much for this. I've put these things in a shadow box. And they're beautiful. And George Magnus said, no, no, no, no. Those are for fishings. Yes. Another set. You will fish with these. Okay.

43:03

Yeah, time flies to just look at here. You know, I would love to see can you snap a couple pictures of those? I bet people would love to see pictures of these original flies that you guys are so in love with out there your family.

43:15

Lots of pictures up on the boxes too. But either wonderful. Yeah, the first one I ever got. That's kind of interesting. My tore it up and threw it away. And the second one I got. Why did I ever do that? These things are craft. This is folk craft. The box he came in? Yeah. I mean, he was this great big guy with six foot three fabulous athlete. Great big hands. And you know he railroad engineer. Yeah, he would make these little things perfectly. Yeah. All the detail was really meticulous, or his nickname for himself was careful, George.

43:57

That's great. Oh my gosh. Can you talk about the tributaries as much as you're willing and able I fish the North Fork. I mean, it's pretty well known. That is a amazing river. We got a buddy Mike got it.

44:10

You know, some of the worst markers should hold fish doesn't. And some of it does. And there are guys now who just blow through that. They don't fish it at all. And I put in there just go right to the mainstem. Okay, you know, leaving funding for the rest of us, but you have to pick and choose on the North Fork. You do. The little trips. The lenders work used to be good, but it's gotten burned out. The ladders work is right up against the mountains just before you start going up toward the continental divide. And the Alice Creek fire burned in there a number of years ago, and I burned all the beautiful willows and things off of elanders fork so that it became hot. Yeah. It's a roadway. I mean, it's used by shots that are moving by cutthroat that are moving. But they're not holding in there at all. There's nothing there. Which is a great loss. Yeah. When there are others farther into a creek and so on. They're fishable. But you're choosing not to fish to blackbrook. And starting to fish lesser water when you do that.

45:24

Yeah. All these. I'm just playing around with my trout routes app here, which is a super cool app, you're talking about getting those maps from fly shops. And that's for sure. And then you can also just put trout rods in your pocket, which is super cool. And you can see the public and private areas, all the landings, the fly shops and everything. And all these trips are on there as well. Yeah, one thing I also want to ask you about the Blackfoot was your dad wrote about this in the book about how the Blackfoot River was formed this this glacier dam that broke loose, I don't know 10s of 1000s of years ago. Talk about that a little bit?

45:57

Well, the last glacial advance, began to retreat. 10,000 years isn't most easy figure was all along just south of the 49th parallel. You had it in Wisconsin, yeah, across the eastern part of Montana and the Dakotas, and so on. And once you get to the western part of Montana, you're into the mountains. And there it was very different. When things started to melt, they would melt on the Great Plains and North Dakota, and just kind of slop down all at once. It happened gradually. But what I mean is it wasn't channeled. When you're getting into mountains, it's channeled. And you have ice blocks in the mountains that suddenly give way, and there's this huge lake behind them. The one that is relevant here is glacial lake Missoula. And when you're in Missoula, especially in the winter when there's serrated snow on the hillsides, and you can see where the old edge of the leak was. And then 10 or 15 feet below that will be another layer where it was and you see all these see all these horizontal lines on jumbo Amman Sentinel, which are around Missoula. So the glacial lake Missoula backed up just about to a vandal in the Blackfoot Valley. And when you stand Crixus, saloon, and restaurant, vandal, and look back at 200, you're on a little high point. And that the geologists tell us that's as far as it got. But it was also shallow. There, whereas farther down, there was more water and it was deeper. And when it began to recede, and the action was much more violent. The glaciers had pushed down and pushed still up against the, the guard up mountains. And when all this melting happened, it was tipped so that a river was created up against the mountains, and push the pill out of the way. And there's still these big mounds of till that you can see as one bank of the river. And then the granite mountains on the other side, where the glaciers couldn't push it any farther. And the river is pushed right up against her. And the river is pretty much the way it was 10,000 years ago. Pretty much you know, it hasn't meander the way says the better it does, the better it meanders year to year. You know, if you like a hole in the better at this year. It may not be there next year. The whole thing maybe shifted around because it's in the bottom of the valley. Yeah, it's all pebbly and it doesn't hold. The Blackfoot for the most part holds those holes in the upper reaches. Once you get in the lowest reach, it's very narrow. That Canyon is very narrow. And there isn't any room for it to swirl around. It's where it was. So that's the geology on it. You can still see the places in the prairie around a vandal where the glacier left ice balls and that'll be a pit and then eventually the ice balls melt and there's a pawn used to be great duck hunting, you go in there and jump hunt ducks and the little mounds that were left and Lewis remarks on that in his journal prairie of the mountains.

49:49

That's fascinating. It is that trail that they took I you know I've read the journals many times and a lot of these trails were well worn Indian trails, can you still see that trail in some spots? As

50:01

you can see, there are pieces of output are still intact, and some are known and some are not well known. When I did home waters, one of the things I did was go back and try to recover as much as I could of the road to the buffalo, the road to the buffalo RAM alongside the Blackfoot River, and it was essentially an interstate highway for centuries, if not millennia, for the Indians who lived west of the continental divide. It was their way of getting out onto the plains east of the Continental Divide, to hunt buffalo. And they would usually do it twice a year do it once in the summer. And I found out by pushing my research pretty hard, but they wouldn't do it again in the winter. mentioned doing that in the winter. Yeah, right. Anyway, they wore a trail. And originally, probably it was people and dogs and then with horses, it became a much more distinct, and it was the road to the buffalo. The one that kind of parallels route 200 was a gathering route. There are trails that come down from the north and a few from the south, where the Indians would use the little trails to get to the big trail, but they would all be on this main link. And they would go over the Continental Divide. That's been identified today as our Lewis and Clark Pass, which is north of the Rogers pass about eight miles. Mark never did it. Louis went across baton as a small party about nine guys and the dog. And it may have been up at Lewis and Clark. Yeah, it does know how to present it's, you know, 95% and you can hike up there. You go to the Alice Creek Trailhead and take the hike. It's supposed to be a mile and a half. Its longest mile and a half hour walk straight out. I'd put it the mile and three quarters and close to two. And it isn't straight up. It is it's not a killer hike. That is one reason that argues in its favor. If you go over Rogers paths going from west to east, it isn't bad going up. But then when you get to the other side going from the Continental Divide farther east, it is really, really rugged and long. That's not so much the case with the Lewis and Clark past. Yes, fascinating. The left side road anyway, Lewis was told and he had some Indians with him that was first when he left Clark and camped for the first night in July of 1806, before you started the trek through the Blackfoot Valley, and he assumed incorrectly that the Nez Perce would go along with him and the act as guides. They said now rod going with you because it's a Blackfoot, Indian. Those guys, they are rough outfit. Yeah, we don't want to have anything to do with that. But we will tell you this, you will not miss the trail, really, so that by that time, they had worn a well worn trail. When I was doing the book, I was guided by a local historian who knows it and has worked on this for 25 years, and has discovered places where there are sections of that trail that are still intact. And you can tell them because they're not wide enough for a truck or a car. They are much wider than a game trail. And they are just right, or a travel hauled behind a horse. And when they are on a slope, there will be a cut of six 810 inches on the upslope side. Because it's been cut into the slope. And then it trails off on the other side. And you can stand where Lewis and his crew and generations of Native Americans pass by. And that's a big thrill since the book came out. So some waters came out. People have continued the research into this and found other sections of betrayal. And that I think that's wonderful. Yeah, keeps going. And there is now a retired Missoulian newspaper reporter can bring them an old friend of mine who does tours of the road to the Buffalo. And this is just great. You know, it brings back that history. Yeah, a couple of things to remember about that. When Louis and his party set foot on the road to the buffalo in July of 1806, that marked the beginning of the end of a culture that had lasted on the plains and in the mountains for many, many centuries. It was on its way to over Yeah, but white man had arrived. It was rich trapping country within a very few years. But trappers were all over that Fighting the Blackfoot being killed by them killing them in order to get the beaver so that whole way of life was going to vanish as a consequence of Lewis's journey.

55:12

Yeah. Great stuff. John. I love it. You're a historian obviously and you're well read and you know this stuff well. Well, that's it, folks, part one with John McClane, thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed it. Please come back in two weeks for part two of my interview with John where we dive deeper into the book the movie and John's family. Be sure to check out our Instagram and Facebook pages to take a look at some of the one of a kind photos John sent me. You can DM me or email me with comments and suggestions at shaigh50@gmail.com And if you'd like to show please share with a buddy. as always our music is by A brothers fountain. hope you enjoyed the show and we will see you again soon. Tight Lines everybody