Messenger - Vol. 2, No. 3, Page 25 Summer 1993 Alumni Profile: Flyfishing Montana's swift cold rivers Many rivers run through western Montana, and Greg and Carol Mentzer, both Delaware '72, have cast flies, leaders and lines in most of them. For the past 20 years, the two Delaware school teachers have spent their summers fly fishing for wild trout. And what was a personal angling odyssey became full-time summer employment eight years ago when they became licensed fishing outfitters. From their base lodge in Craig, Mont., the Mentzers now guide two select clients per week to spring creeks and mountain streams, where they can fish and release rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout. Greg, who teaches elementary science at Tatnall School in Wilmington, Del., first tried fly fishing on a small pond in nearby Pennsylvania for sunnies and bass and then moved to White Clay Creek in Delaware. "These were like pet fish," he says. "It wasn't the experience I was looking for, plus I didn't get the sense of solitude I was seeking." A member of Trout Unlimited, he says he believes that the water in Delaware is marginal for trout anyway. "It's too warm and there is no evidence that there has been a naturally reproducing trout here," he says. Friends urged the couple to try the limestone streams in the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania, and they cast lines into the Big Spring, Letort and Yellow Breeches. "Of course, everyone there told us we should have been fishing those streams 30 years earlier," Greg says, "because by the time we arrived, the banks were crowded with fishermen and the streams were less productive." "I don't enjoy competing with maybe 50 other fishermen for a spot," he says. "When I am fishing, I like to forget about everything else. "Fishing for me is like a religious experience. What I am interested in is solitude and an opportunity to interact with nature. That can mean watching a blue heron stalking dinner in the shallows during the evening or hearing a beaver splashing the water with his tail as I drift by on my boat at night. I fish to have an opportunity to be alone in a beautiful place and maybe experience one of these things." Since Carol, a mathematics teacher in the Christina School District, also had her summers free, the Mentzers began to spend their vacations camping and fishing throughout the Northwestern U.S. and Canada. Finding themselves spending more and more time in Montana, the Mentzers decided by the early '80s to develop a business around their favorite recreational sport. Greg received his outfitters license in 1985 and since 1986, the Montana River Guides spend from mid-July to the end of August escorting fishing enthusiasts to special spots in the state on the Missouri River, Yellowstone National Park streams, several private mountain lakes near Livingston and the acclaimed De Puy's Spring Creek. Clients, who are generally from the East Coast, are housed in guest ranches, with some breakfasts and dinners at the Mentzer lodge. For a fee of $1,845 per person, they navigate large rivers in a MacKenzie River Boat, wade small streams or float in tubes on mountain lakes. They are urged to bring their own rods, with extra line for "the hot fish." "I tell all clients to have a reel with 75 yards of backing in addition to the 90-foot fly line," says Greg. "I remember one client from Baltimore who made an upstream cast and the fish instantly ate the fly. He set the hook and it was a hot fish. As the fish started to make a run, I asked the client if he had backing. 'Oh, yes,' he says. So, we let the fish run. The next thing I hear is a 'ping,' which can only be good news for the fish. The client had been thrifty, adding only 10 feet of monofilament, because he had never needed all that length in Maryland streams." Greg says he doesn't teach casting with "a four-count rhythm between 10 and 2 p.m.," as suggested by the elder Maclean in the popular movie, A River Runs Through It. "In that film, they used the traditional, fixed elbow," he says. "With the old way, you were told to put a book under the elbow, but, if you remember in the film, one brother broke free and began rhythmic casting. Everyone thinks of casting as a continuous arcing motion, but I want to see elbow, wrist and rod tip moving in a straight line." Carol, who learned casting in Montana from Lee and Joan Wulff, well-known fly fishing personalities, acts as guide in Yellowstone Park and DePuy's Creek. She says she grew up ocean fishing with her family off Cape May and Wildwood, N.J. "I remember always wanting to be there when the boats came in, and I still have photographs of me helping my grandfather to fillet the flounder and cut up squid. Even as a child, it was a satisfying experience to catch a fish." Today, she particularly enjoys the camaraderie of fishing companions, both male and female. "I enjoy sharing my catch with Greg, who is also my best friend as well as my husband and business partner. You can't ask for much more in a relationship," she adds. Fish stories about tremendously large river trout are just not true, the Mentzers say, pointing out that the average fish for the Missouri River is 15 to 17 inches. And yet, Carol has the ultimate fish story from a float tube fishing trip on Mission Lake in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. "There was a group of three women and three men. We had drifted far apart but our voices carry well over water," she recalls. "I fought that fish for 20 minutes, calling for everyone to come help. My line went straight down and came to a halt. I knew this was the fish of the day, so I dropped my line and the fish came up. "That fish took up the whole net, easily a 23-inch, 7-pound trout. The men still didn't come, although one woman did help with the net. I knew I had outfished them all this time, but they never believed me-until the photograph came back." -Cornelia Weil