Old Missoula

David Roberts – Cincinnati Enquirer (1990)

David Roberts was the son of Frank Allen Roberts, a well-known Missoula attorney. He was born in Ohio in 1897 and came to Missoula in 1910. His father, according to a Missoulian article, was the chief legal representative for several important Missoula businesses, including the Missoula Mercantile, the First National Bank, and the South Missoula Land company. David was a four-time state interscholastic declamation champion while attending MCHS in Missoula. At one point he was hailed as a “Young [Edwin] Booth.” He held his first newspaper job in Missoula in 1912. Along with 43 other students he graduated from MCHS in 1915. He served in the U.S. Army in France during WW1 in 1918 -19. Both David and his wife, Ernestine Helm Roberts, were graduates of Beloit College in Wisconsin. He began working as a journalist in 1921 and worked for numerous papers, including 35 years at the Cincinnati Enquirer and another 16 for the Post. He started 3 other suburban weekly newspapers, which he sold in the late 1960’s. He was a featured outdoor and travel writer whose work was “picked up by national and international” newspapers. Throughout his career he reported from all over the world. He gave “on the spot coverage” of Castro’s revolution in Cuba in 1959. Especially fond of outdoor writing he was the founder of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. Ernest Hemingway was known to be a guest at his home. Missoula author Norman Maclean cited David Roberts in the acknowledgements section of his book ‘A River Runs Through It,’ stating that Dave Roberts and George Croonenberghs were “two of the finest fly fishermen I know.”

Roberts died at his home in Virginia in 1990 at the age of 93. A daughter, Jean Packard, survived him in Fairfax, Virginia. A brother, Frank Jr., who also graduated MCHS, became an attorney and was a county prosecutor in Clermont, Ohio. He died in Ohio in 1968.  Some of the information above is from Dave Roberts’ obituary which appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on February 4, 1990.

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Dave Roberts was a fishing phenomenon. He got to fish the Missoula area while it was more or less undiscovered. He fished with several of Missoula’s best-known anglers, including members of the Maclean family, Jack Boehme and Floyd Kack of Orchard Homes. He later wrote hundreds of stories about fishing, most of them while he worked for an Ohio newspaper, The Cincinnati Enquirer.  Below is a rare short article about him from The Sunday Morning Missoulian of September 6, 1936:

“A fishing quartette composed of Floyd Kack, Jack Boehme, David and Frank Roberts, Friday fished the Missoula river from 8 in the morning until 6 in the evening.

“They had excellent sport, bringing home 48 large trout, filling four baskets.

“Rainbows that weighed four pounds, red bellies that weighed two and a half pounds, and five golden trout, a novelty in this region, were among the catch.

“Besides that, the fishermen saw a big black bear swim the Missoula river at Frenchtown. It was a profitable 10 hours that they spent on the stream, between here and Frenchtown.”

Dave Roberts later wrote about the above fishing expedition and many others throughout his career as a sports writer. This and a few more of Dave Roberts’ outdoor articles, mainly appropriate to Missoula, are quoted below:

 

With Rod and Gun By Dave Roberts (1939)

Missoula Mont. – Long years ago I fished these Western mountain streams with Dr. J. N. Maclean, as fine a gentleman as ever cast a fly. He was younger then, and I was only a kid, learning from a master the rudiments of the fly-rod and the lore of the trout rivers.

We fish again with Old Maclean these days. He can’t fight the heavy water as he once did, and he likes to start out about 4 o’clock in the afternoon instead of 4:00 in the morning. But still he tosses a lovely fly, and still he brings the bacon home.

It isn’t always the fishing that attracts the angler, as every man-jack of you who follow the lakes and the streams know. Sometimes it’s the beauty of the country through which we pass, and sometimes it’s the company of our fishing partner.

Old Maclean is a great man to fish beside. In years behind the Presbyterian pulpits of his adopted state, the Scotch gentleman has learned much of men and matters. His views are fresh and brittle; his opinions are rooted in knowledge and thought. And his fly-rod is true and accurate.

I’ve seen him in a hundred circumstances, and found him calm and capable in every one. I’ve seen him land many a monstrous trout; I’ve seen him in hunting and in fishing camps; he comforted me when my father died a long, long time ago; and not so long ago he and I talked for many hours about his younger son and my good friend who died tragically in Chicago last winter. Always he is the same; always confident of life; always true to a firm and wholesome philosophy.

We fished Montour Creek yesterday, the doctor and I. You’ve never seen a lovelier stream, and if the trout aren’t as plentiful as they were when we fished it just before the World War started, back in 1914, still a fellow can take plenty for supper – and breakfast too – in a couple of hours of casting.

It was a hot afternoon the day we fished Montour, one of those burning hot western afternoons. The grasshoppers were clicking in the prairies as we walked across to the watercourse. High against the blue sky a fish hawk soared; snow glistening on the distant peaks. No wind sang among the pine trees, and the sun beat mercilessly down. The trout were slow in taking, and you couldn’t blame them, for they must have been as languid in the heat as the fishermen.

But when the sun had dropped behind the western mountains and the pines were turning black on the eastern slopes, they came to life, those fish. Montour is only a tiny stream, as Western waters go. It is no stream for any of the coarser types of tackle to which, alas, your correspondent often is addicted. It is a stream for flies and flies alone. And as evening came the trout began to rise to our flies.

We took a plentiful supply from beneath the alders, playing them gently in the pools as the gentle stream insisted. And when the sun went down the chill of the river rose about us.

The sweetness of evening in the high hills, after a hot afternoon, is difficult to describe. Not only do you feel the coolness wrapping itself about you, but you smell the clean sweet scent of the river and the pine trees, the balsam and the fir. And to the west the sky is ablaze with the glory of another sunset.

Tired, wet, and happy we squat by the brookside at dusk, cleaning our fish. Clean, fresh grass is laid in the basket and, as the fish are washed, they are placed carefully upon it; then more grass is added and more fish until all are in. And then we wash and have a cup of hot coffee as we sit and watch the light fading on the eastern peaks.

There’s more to fishing than catching fish. There’s the beauty of the country and the company you’re in. But when you’ve fish, and beauty and fine company all together, the day you’ve passed has been a pleasant one.

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on August 11, 1939.

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With Rod and Gun by Dave Roberts (1940)

When the skies are cloudy and the streams are gray, and the rain comes tumbling down to spoil your fishing, I wonder if you, like many another angler, thumb through your recollections looking for a tale to soothe your smoldering spirit.

It’s right nice, at such a time, to settle back before a bold log fire, to light your pipe and cast again along the Neversink, the Raging Rogue, the Bitterroot, or Bon Secour; it’s soothing then to watch your pointer team range out across a Southern hillside, or to hear the wings of mallards as they glide against the rising mist, with dawn a-cracking in the east.

When the fire glows warm and the ice settles in the glass, and comfort lies deep against my bones, I like to think of Old MacLean; Old MacLean, the Scot, sandy of hair and red of beard, with a hand that tosses a fly so delicate and deft that a brother bug, passing by, might tip his hat as the counterfeit alighted.

A minister, Old MacLean – a minister who had learned his fishing in the tight little hills of Nova Scotia, where trout and salmon run. But his life was spent in the friendly mountains of Montana, where streams are white and crystal, roaring through the pines and tamaracks, rushing among the cottonwoods and alder bushes.

Often I recall days we spent along the Big Blackfoot, back before MacLean became Old MacLean; back when his strong legs guided us both across the brimming rapids in search of duck [and] grouse (sic); of rainbow trout or cutthroat. And always, at such times, I remember the Muchmore hole.

Muchmore really was named for a rancher who, long years ago, cut hay from the valley not far from where the great pool spun between the mountain peaks.[1] It was named for him, but to many the name meant that the waters always held much more trout than those we took away. And this was true, for the river here was great for fishing.

On this particular day we fished the pool long, and netted fish after fish. Cutthroat, or natives most of them were, for the rainbow then were in the minority in the Blackfoot. We had taken some good fish, but none was as large as the one the Doctor hooked on a Queen of Waters at the tail of the upper riffle; none so large and none so dashing, daring in his fight.

The skillful Scotsman played his fish carefully; time after time the trout – it was a rainbow – leaped and lunged, filling the air with showers of silver as he shook himself in the sunshine.

As I sit before the fire, with the windows streaked with rain, I can see that fight again; the fish in all his glory, the angler smiling, excited; I can feel the breeze, hot in the pine trees, and hear the river roaring among the great rocks.

The fish at last was brought to net, his colors glistening red and silver in the sun. He was lifted out and admired, and then a crack across the head ended life – or so we thought – and he was stuffed into the Doctor’s basket. Lines were again played out and the fishing started anew.

It was in the next five minutes that a remarkable thing happened. The lid of MacLean’s basket slipped its catch; the big trout not dead at all, made a flop and into the stream it went. We tried to grab the rainbow, both of us, but he sped away like a streak of light, and seemed gone entirely. But it wasn’t to be. He was marked for the pan, that trout, for instead of heading toward the depths of the pool where he would have been safe, he sped toward a spit of gravel across an eddy. Out he shot, his great speed carrying him clear of the water – out he shot on the gravel bar.

The Doctor stumbled toward him across the eddy, falling twice as he went. Down went rod and line; hip-boot lengths were forgotten as the fisherman sought to retrieve the fish which had been his, but which now seemed about to slip back into the stream. But no, the big trout had breathed his last, there on the gravel, and when he was slipped again into the basket, made never another move to regain the green depths which once had been his home.

Yes, I think often of Old MacLean, when the rains come and spring seems lost in the robes of winter. I laugh at his salty wit; his dislike for men who fish with worms, a dislike which wrung from him the classic remark that, while he had his opinions of bait fishermen, he could not express them since he was an ordained minister of the gospel.

I’m glad, then, to know that summer after all must come sometime and that when finally she does arrive, I shall fish again with this dean of angling parsons among the roaring rapids of the Blackfoot.

The above article appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer on April 21, 1940.

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With Rod and Gun by Dave Roberts (1943)

Missoula, Mont.

You may not know it back in Cincinnati, but here in Montana the first days of fall are at hand and the winds down Hell Gate chilly with forebodings of winter. Ducks are restless on the marshes, and wedges of geese circle their home lakes, strengthening their wings against the migrations not so far ahead. There is gold in the cottonwoods, and in the high hills the nights are filled with frost.

We’ve been able to do a little fishing in the last few days, although work has kept us more confined than, under normal conditions, we’d like to be. With Jack Boehme[2], the Missoula fly-caster, we floated the Clark’s Fork River a day or two ago – and the results were gratifying. The rainbows and natives were big and mean. Each gave a good account of himself in the clear, fast water of this bold mountain river.

Many are the times we have boated this great stream; never has it failed to produce an excellent basket of large fish. It flows through the mountains of our youth, where each peak and ridge brings memories of boyhood adventure. So, aside from the thrill of fishing, a float trip down the Fork is interesting and exciting.

Our boat usually is launched in the Bitterroot, just above the point where its waters join the Clark’s Fork. We start the trips early, for the jaunt is a long one – some 20 miles by water – and the pools are numerous. It’s a long day of angling – but it pays big returns.

There are several holes along the stream which your old correspondent always will remember. Time and flood bring certain changes, but most of the spots are about the same as they were in the years of our boyhood. The fish, of course, are almost the same. The ratio of rainbows to cutthroats now is greater than it was then, but the old sockdolagers hit and fight in the same way, and the water roars and rushes among the rocks and over the gravel bars, just as it did when Captain Meriwether Lewis passed along this route.

The first of these memorable pools is at the juncture of the Bitterroot and the Fork.[3] It is a big, swift bit of water, and I remember it best, not for the pool itself, but rather for the riffle of the Bitterroot which lies above it. For it was there, casting upstream, that this old gent hooked – and later landed – one of the largest fish of his career. It was a leaping, scintillating rainbow and the antics and capers he cut, both in the fast water and later in the slower waters of the pool, are stamped in gold on my memory.

There is another riffle, on below where “Bad Luck” Frank [Dave’s brother], Boehme, Floyd Kack and this writer each landed a good-sized golden trout on a trip many years ago. It was the first of this species we had taken – in fact, it was the first we’d ever seen. To take four of these rare fish from a single pool in one afternoon was something of a record. It is doubtful if it has been duplicated, before or since, in these particular waters.

There are many other excellent spots, of course. One rapids, known as Old Reliable, almost invariably produces several big fish. On this last trip it didn’t fail us, giving out with six big rainbows which almost filled a basket. They would have filled it, in fact, but the largest – a four-pound trout – was carefully wrapped and laid aside for later mounting by the versatile Mr. Boehme.

The handling of a boat in this river is an interesting, albeit a sometimes difficult task. There are stretches of flat, still water where the current hardly ruffles the surface, but there are also long, boiling rapids where the boat goes tearing along in race-horse fashion. I like most the shallow riffles, where the water runs white, but where you can see beneath, the colorful galaxy of the rocks and boulders on the bottom.

Ducks were everywhere as we moved along. We saw them in every slough and pond. There were some geese, too, although the best of Western Montana goose-breeding grounds lies farther to the north. The abundance of waterfowl presages an excellent shooting season for Ohio’s nimrods – provided, of course, shells are available.

We ended this last float – as we always do – at the Village of Frenchtown, which huddles in the rich lands of Grass Valley, just at the foot of Squaw Peak. Our fish were cleaned there, and the boat loaded for its return home. Two 25-pound baskets were packed with fish, some of which, later on, will grace the Roberts table in Mount Washington. Boehme – as is the way of fishermen – crabbed a little about the trout he had hooked and lost. Facing a catch which would make the best of our North Midwestern streams pale and tremble, he allowed that, given a bit more luck and skill, he could have made a pretty good haul.

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on August 26, 1943.

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With Rod and Gun (1947)

Spirit Haunts Rocks And Hillsides.

Old Maclean is gone from the valley of the Blackfoot, and the riffle above his favorite pool no longer knows the feel of his wading shoes. But now and then, we imagine, his spirit – and a great, magnanimous spirit it must be – haunts the big rocks and the tamarack hillsides, and – in early August – hunts for grasshoppers on the seared grasslands which skirt the clear, white waters of the river. For it was in August that Old Maclean enjoyed some of his best fishing, and it was in August that he would stoop, on occasion, to use the lowly hopper in place of a well-tied trout fly.

The doctor – “Old Maclean” was the name he gave himself, actually he was a learned Presbyterian clergyman – the doctor taught me more than any other man of the pleasures and intricacies of trout fishing. When I was a lad he took me to the many streams around our homes in Western Montana, and showed me where the big fish lay, and how to make them rise to a well-placed fly. He taught me, too, to hunt duck and native grouse which, in those days, were plentiful in our woods and sloughs. But more important than all these skills were the other things he taught – the appreciation of birds, trees and streams; the grandeur of the mountains and the plains; the contentment a man can glean from nature.

He came to Montana from the hills of Nova Scotia, and brought with him a love of the out-of-doors. He was sandy-haired in his younger days – as a good Scot should be – and he spoke with a pleasant, clipped accent which reflected his learning and his congenial understanding of people. He did many things well – having been reared in the pioneer tradition. But best of all, it seemed to me, was his fishing.

He knew trout and trout water and he had a fine feeling for the fly.

A minister, the Doctor used to say, must have time for thought; time for pondering the philosophies and the weaknesses of man. Such time could be spent in his study or in the cool shade of a cottonwood tree. But – for him at least – it was best spent along a dashing mountain river, with the current tugging at his knees and the glory of the forest all around him. Under such surroundings his mind worked smoothly – and of course his wrist worked with it, lifting a Royal Coachman or Parmachenee Belle lightly from the water and dropping it, just as lightly, close to a boulder where a big cutthroat might be lying. The work-a-day worries of a work-a-day world fell from his shoulders then, and his spirit soared upward toward the purple peaks around him. His Sunday sermons, at once practical and aesthetic, showed clearly the excellent results of his close association with nature – which, in the final analysis, must be God.

In a few days I’ll be fishing the Blackfoot, walking the same trails and casting the same pools the Doctor introduced me to those many years ago. I’ll take some fish – but they won’t be as large or as fierce as those we took when both of us were younger. Time has a way of shrinking a trout somehow.

The 12-incher of a lad of 10 can’t compare in size or in excitement with the 22-incher he may take when he’s 45! But there’ll be excitement and there’ll be sport; and the hills will be blue as ever they were, and the song of the water, and its pleasant pull against my wading shoes will be the same. But with it all I’ll miss Old MacLean – miss his quiet humor, his sparkling wit and his chiding when at the day’s end, his creel was heavier than mine. Perhaps, if the weather is hot and the trout won’t come, at midday, to the fly, I’ll catch a grasshopper or two, carry them to the head of the Goldrock pool and, hooking them carefully as he taught me, will let them drift down the current to the eddy where the big ones lie.

They’ll do the business – I’ll bet you a touch of brandy on that! But don’t let the Doctor see us when you payoff. Never a man for drinking, Old MacLean!

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on August 7, 1947.

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With Rod and Gun by Dave Roberts (1949)

A Trip Back To An Old, Familiar Stream.

Spokane, Wash., Aug. 13 – (Special) – No one, I suppose ever will resolve the question as to whether it is more interesting to fish old streams or new ones.

Thrills lie around every bend of each strange watercourse, but the old, familiar scenes are thrilling, too.

I sneaked away from this touring travel party long enough to visit a few of the Western Montana rivers I had known in my early youth. They haven’t changed much. Those clear trout pools, the memories they hold, haven’t changed at all. There is an old bridge across the Bitter Root up near Hamilton where a long time ago I did my first Sunday angling.

My father was a strict Presbyterian and he felt the Sabbath should be strictly observed, but one fine Sunday afternoon as the family held a picnic on the edge of the river just below that bridge, I announced wistfully: “I imagine that it would be fun to toss a fly into the eddies below.”

To my great surprise, and even greater joy, he suggested I try it. The family car then, as now, held a full supply of tackle and trout cooperated remarkably and we went home with a full creel that fine July evening.

The bridge still is there and the pool below hasn’t changed a bit as I dropped a brown hackle across its sparkling surface a day or two ago. It wasn’t a fat, middle-aging fellow who did the casting, it was a youngster of 14 who still was wondering, for all the parental approval, whether or not he was doing the right thing up the Blackfoot under a steep black bank of granite. Another deep pool swirls on a great rock at the break in the riffle.

Dr. J. N. MacLean used to sit a long long time ago and drift his flies with the current. He took many a good fish there, did old MacLean.

He’s been dead these many years, but I saw him again on this trip, his red hair dancing in the mountain breeze, his blue eyes studying the rippling water for signs of rising rainbows.

Up Rock Creek, where we camped back in the days of my early youth, I waded the same waters I’d wade back in those fading times. Tiny Brewster Creek, a Rock Creek tributary, still purls between its canyon walls exactly as it did when Bad Luck Frank, my lawyer brother, took his first trout from a tidy pool beneath an undercut grassy bank.

He used salmon eggs on that trip, if he remembers it, while a proud older brother coached his efforts. He wouldn’t stoop to such lowly lures these days and Bad Luck could give his bothers pointers in this later stage of our careers.

The Rattlesnake sings its way down from the lakes and into Missoula, just as it did when we were kids. The same small rainbows and natives rise from salmon flies among its swirling pools, pools which the years have changed but little, and Babcock Creek, where Eastern brook trout played, still curls across its hay meadows, and the Easterns still are there.

You’ll travel far to find this particular fish in abundance in other Western Montana streams. Yes, old steams are good to visit on occasion, particularly when such old friends as J. Sandbar Brown, the irrepressible, the unchangeable, are along to add color to the trip.

Of course, the fish aren’t as large now nor as numerous as they used to be, but that may be a trick of imagination, for distant fields always are greener.

Still, the angling is as good as any continent affords and today, as yesterday, I’m happy to report that J. Sandbar is unable, for all his frantic efforts, to match his catches with mine when evening shadows drift across the valleys and the moon perks a silver head above the summit of Old Jumbo, who for centuries beyond counting has guarded the canyon we know as Hell Gate.

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on August 14, 1949.

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With Rod and Gun by Dave Roberts (1952)

Trout Fishing Most Thrilling Experience

There are all sorts of fishing in this world – and all is good. But the best of it, to this old-timer at any rate, comes when trout are striking in a cold mountain stream; when water is pressing at your knees and the current is doing its best to toss you on your backside with every step you try to make.

That’s trout fishin’

I’ve done other kinds – and liked ‘em too. It’s wonderful to sit in a boat and drop a fly in the exact center of a rise ring which a thoughtful brookie just had left on the glassy surface of a lake. It’s thrilling to have him rise again – this time to the lure you’ve tossed there for him. He sucks the tiny spentwing deep; you set the hook. The rod bends pleasantly – and you give line. Then, as the fish begins to tire, you see him, all red and gold through the clear water beneath you.

Sure, it’s swell!

Who’d turn down a chance to stand atop one of the great rocks in some eastern Canadian river and toss his flies into the currents where big trout lie waiting? Who’d sneer at a canoe down a strong-flowing Michigan river, where dark deep eddies cut beneath the alders where the rainbows feed? Certainly not me. I think its grand.

But you can still give me a strong mountain river with water that chills where it strikes – and with trout that know just how to take advantage of every run and rapid. I even love the fir trees that grab – and hold – each careless backcast. I cuss those boulders – slick as ice and twice as treacherous – but I love ‘em!

Guess that’s my sort of fishin!

It’s no game for a lazy man – this wading of trout rivers. The fisherman puts in a busy day from early morning until the shades of tall mountain ridges fall across the foaming water. He’s tired and his shins are sore from intimate contact with granite. But – if he’s me – he’s happy as a lark. Even when he knows he has to walk four miles or more to camp.

As a young fellow in knee pants, I spent a lot of time fishing with a Scotch Presbyterian minister named Maclean. “Old” Maclean, as he called himself, was a master of the fly. But he stooped at times to such lowly devices as grasshoppers, rock worms and spinners. He taught me lots about true flyfishing; was the first to introduce me to the deadly Colorado spinner.

This latter act of charity reacted almost immediately to the Doctor’s disadvantage – proving, it seemed to me at the time, that good deeds aren’t always rewarded. It happened up on the Blackfoot.

The Blackfoot is a great trout river. It’s fairly large – so large that you can wade across it only in a few places, and only when the water’s low. We used to fish it often in September, when ruffed grouse were plentiful in the popple flats, and ducks were thick on valley sloughs. We’d set up camp among the tamaracks; fish a part of the time and hunt the rest.

After duck shooting one dull morning, we took to the river in quest of trout. The night before, around the fire, we’d been talking about flies and the doctor had reached into his fly book and taken out a small contraption which was new to me. It was a Colorado, made of mother of pearl. I doubted its ability to take fish. He told me to keep it and give it a trial.

We fished in opposite directions that morning, he working up stream and I, down. Business was slow for an hour. Then I thought of the spinner and tied it to the end of the leader.

After a few minutes I was convinced that a great discovery had been made. Here was a thing that would take trout when nothing else would!

I’ll never forget, if I live to be 100, how the rainbows and cutthroat went for that mother of pearl. I couldn’t cast it well, for its weight and resistance were unfamiliar. But distance and finesse weren’t necessary. When the spinner was flicked out on a riffle the current carried it downstream. As it followed the curve of the line’s bow, big trout took it. At the end of one pool I almost filled a 25-pound basket.

I was back in camp long before Old Maclean. I wanted to take the rifle and get a few grouse, but didn’t dare leave. It was mandatory, on this glorious afternoon, to be there when he arrived. He came at last trudging wearily across the flat in his great gum boots. His basket was almost empty.

“T’was a bad afternoon David,” he said as he hung his rod to a broken limb of a small pine tree. “The fish were obstinate as Nova Scotia salmon. Three is all I’ve taken.”

His eyes popped when he lifted my heavy creel and spread the fish out on the rocks before him. Then he looked sharply at my rod – and saw his Colorado spinner still at the leader’s end.

“Tut, tut, tut,” he admonished himself, not me. “To think a Scotsman could be so liberal – and at such a time, I gave you the only spinner in my book, David. I hope you won’t forget that.”

I haven’t Doctor. Not till this day!

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on June 8, 1952.

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Dave Roberts – Dave Goes Back A Bit

Don B. Riley, of 6529 Stoll Ave., Cincinnati, writes to tell me that he’s a great admirer of Mr. Bendy McElbo and wishes to know more about him. Several people have asked me how Bendy spells his last name and for the life of me I can’t find out. “Sometimes its Elbo an’ then ag’in it’s Elbow” is all the old boy ever tells me.

Anyway, Don Riley sorta gave me a dose of homesickness when he went on in his letter to say he was soon heading for Seeley Lake, Mont., on a hunting trip. Seems he and K. O. “Kenny” Richards are heading, via pack train, for the South Fork of the Flathead where they’ll do a little shooting.

Seeley Lake has changed a lot since I first saw it – back a lot of years ago. Frog Demears and I rode into the Clearwater basin from the Jocko country, across the lower end of the Missions, back before there were any roads at all. We went over in late June, cutting our trail most of the way. We spent the night at the only ranch in that part of the district – I forget its name now, although the old ranch house still is there – and we took some mighty big cutthroats out of the Clearwater where it leaves the lake. There was a ranger station up on the lake which was our last point of contact with the outside world until we got over the hump and into the little town of Big Fork, something like 80 miles to the north.

We fooled around in those hills for quite a spell, camping on what is now called Lindberg Lake but which as I recall was Crescent Lake at that time. We stopped in at Holland Lake, too – but we didn’t ride on over the high ridge into the South Fork. The whole place was full of deer and bear. But I doubt if there were as many bear in those far-off times as there are right now.

Deer, however, were everywhere. We spent a couple of days with a fellow named Joe Wabbilig [Waldbillig] who had a cabin on the head of Swan River where he trapped and hunted and tried to raise a few crops. We rode with him through the timber one afternoon and counted deer by the score – I suppose we must have seen 100 or more. Joe had a bunch of big, husky Airedales which he used for tracking mountain lion and bear. He was everlastingly grateful to us for bringing in a sack of mail from Seeley Lake – first he’d had since the summer before.

Frog and I made the whole trip – I guess we rode a couple of hundred miles or more – with a single packhorse and our saddle mares. We were just kids, and our fathers thought we should have a guide, so they engaged an old Indian who was about as useless as he could have been. He spoke nary a word of English and he couldn’t cook and after he got out of the Jocko country he didn’t have the least idea where he was or where he was going. He turned up missing one morning and we didn’t regret his going. The cooking was a lot better after that – and the dishes didn’t get a bit dirtier than they had been before.

Anyway the land of Seeley Lake – and Placid and Salmon and Alta and all the rest – is a lot different now. Old trails we used to plod are highways and fine modern “cottages” stand on our wilderness camp grounds. I couldn’t even find the Wabbilig cabin when I was last there, and Lindberg and Holland lakes today boast excellent dude ranches. But it’s still a fine country from which to jump off into the real wilderness – the big, wild empire which lies behind the wall of mountains separating the Clearwater from the Flathead’s south fork and rising eastward to the pinnacles of the Continental Divide. There are wild and jagged peaks to the west too – the main ridges of the giant Missions, among the most beautiful mountains in all the west.

So Have a fine time Don Riley, and give the old timers at Seeley my best regards. Fact is, I’ll probably be out there about the same time you are. Bud Beard, over at Ovando – a former Seeley Lake ranger – writes me that ducks will be ripe in early October, and that trout are raising the very dickens in Duck creek! Maybe I’ll be seeing you.

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on August 15, 1957.

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Back In Missoula (1960)

By Dave Roberts

Sometimes, inadvertently glimpsing the drivel that flows over the air waves, I’m struck by the present poverty of the American theater. Perhaps that’s not quite right – for we still have excellent actors and powerful plays. The poverty is rather that of the general public – for unless one travels to theater-rich New York he has no opportunity to enjoy the truly great performances. The vast majority of two full generations has grown to maturity with no exposure to the true art of the legitimate stage. To me, this is a crying shame.

Such is not the case in many parts of Europe – and especially in Russia – where even smaller towns have their own ballets and opera companies. It was not always thus in the United States. When I was a youngster the cream of the opera, drama and comedy crop “went on the road” almost every season. And they didn’t mean Hartford, Boston and Philadelphia.

These hardy thespians, steeped in the real tradition of the theater, made one, two and three night stands across the country – from Atlantic to Pacific. They hit larger cities such as Cleveland, Chicago, Minneapolis and Seattle. They also played Madison, Fargo, Spokane, Butte, Boise, Omaha, Kansas City, Portland and many more – including Missoula, Mont., my old home town.

Missoula, which boasted a population of around 10,000 when I was a kid, had a pretty good theater called the Harnois. It would seat possibly 800 cash customers. And it had winter season which sometime gave Missoulians, in a single week, more outstanding stars than Cincinnati in the desert days, gets in a couple of years.

Big names took to the road in those earlier times, traveling by train, of course. Since two transcontinental railroads passed through Missoula, it made a good stop. Few of the great actors, singers and comedians of the era passed it. For 50 cents I was able to climb to the hard seats of the upper gallery – and revel in the best theater of the century.

I can remember many of the names and some of the plays. Such stage quality in these soft times never would leave Broadway except, perhaps, for a bit in Miami or Las Vegas. But in the early 1900’s Cornelia Otis Skinner brought “Kismet” across the land and played the Harnois. De Wolf Hopper struck out Casey time and again as a “Mikado” curtain call. We saw David Warfield as “The Music Master” and George Arliss and Elsie Janis, E. H. Southern and Julia Marlowe – she a former Cincinnatian – brought us the best Shakespeare each winter. Minnie Madern Fiske came our way – as did great old Harry Lauder, the incomparable Bert Williams, the magnificent Robert Mantell and the comedy team of Weber and Fields – than which none ever was better.

Missoula opera fans – and they were many – had opportunities to see and hear the top musical figures of the day – Schumann-Heink, Tetrazzini; Geraldine Farrar, the great Madame Butterfly, and Mme. Melba, outstanding as Carmen. Even Enrico Caruso graced the Harnois stage on at least one occasion – offering rather startling contrast to Lew Dockstader – in those days a king among minstrelmen, who played the following night.

These – and many, many more – trooped through the small towns of the nation back before the movie stars, soap operas and “westerns.” In fact, many communities in which the great stars stopped were much more western than anything a modern script writer could dream up!

Contemplating the sorry state to which the vast bulk of our entrainment has fallen, one wonders how a civilization which has gained so much in certain fields, should have lost so much in this particular phase of living. This seems particularly tragic when one recalls – as I have just done – our great theatrical tradition and the broad opportunities, for artistic enjoyment which we’ve allowed to go down the drain.

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on August 29, 1960.

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Dave Roberts

The Rattlesnake

Among the rivers I’ve known, large and small, the Rattlesnake lies closest to my heart. The sprightly little stream comes tumbling out of a wilderness, to sing a short, but lovely course through a rural countryside, to purl through a growing suburb and, at the last, to merge its crystal water with the currents of the Clark’s Fork of the Columbia River.

From source to mouth the Rattlesnake runs hardly 15 miles. Thus it is a river a boy can come to understand, for it is a juvenile – at least when compared with such a fine old adult watercourse as the Ohio. One could wander this valley for a lifetime, for it is almost 1000 miles long, and still never know it all.

But the Rattlesnake is different. Even in the course of his teens a young explorer can meander the whole course of such a rivulet. If he’s a fisherman he can come to know each pool and riffle – as he learns the alphabet. Once learned, that knowledge won’t desert him – even if he waits for many lonesome years to see that stream again.

My first sharp picture of the Rattlesnake was imprinted on some inner cranial recess on clear April day, when a warming sun was crumbling the last of the winter’s ice and a song sparrow, knowing spring was coming, was singing as if to burst his throat. The alder bushes, too, knew that winter had retreated, for their leaf buds were swelled, willow branches were bright as gold, and, out on the prairie, south of town, bitterroots were blooming.

My mother, my brother Frank and I walked from home on that fine, soft morning, down fragrant streets, across the bridge over the Clark’s Fork, and into Greenough Park, through which the Rattlesnake ran chortling.

Most of the Rattlesnake is fast, white water. There are pools, of course, but they’re not long, flat pools such as you find along the East Fork; rather they’re places where the stream, while it still runs fast, runs deeper and a little smoother. Such a pool lay then – and it still is there – just above our picnic ground. A small rock groin had been thrown out into the channel to divert water to an irrigation ditch. Just below where the ditch opened, a little pocket of still water stood. It looked deep and fishy and near the shore was a small flotation of pine needles and leaves, not more than a foot or two across, but offering the perfect hiding place for a hungry trout.

I’ve caught thousands of fish from this stream since that time. This one is the best remembered, perhaps because he was first – or perhaps because after I’d cleaned him my grandmother cooked him, with bacon, above a campfire, he was the best trout I’ve ever eaten, before or since!

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on February 26, 1963.

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Dave Roberts

On The Rattlesnake

If you read my last column – hope you did – you know something about one of my favorite trout streams, Rattlesnake Creek, in Western Montana. From the time I was 12 until a war came along, I fished this brawling watercourse with studied regularity.

It was – and still is – a diverse little river. It rises high in the mountain wilderness. It is the source of a city’s water supply. The hills that feed it are not inhabited. Its waters, when I was a youngster, were clear and pure from source to mouth. Its pools and riffles were full of trout.

Since the Rattlesnake was close to home – we could drive to delightful picnic spots in a few minutes – our family went there often. And since it was a place to which a young fellow could walk or ride his bike, your correspondent could have been found somewhere along its 15-mile course almost every summer’s day.

It was of a size exactly right for a lad who still was growing up. While the stream was a series of white rapids, there were places where one could wade from bank to bank without too much trouble. Its maximum width wasn’t more than 25 feet. I doubt if any of the pools were over four feet deep.

You could almost find any sort of country you wanted along the Rattlesnake. Its lower course ran through town. Just above town was an attractive little park – not a well-manicured park, but a natural section of streamside which had been partially cleared, and where people could have picnics. While we picnicked there quite often, not many other people did.

Above the park for about three miles the valley was farm and orchard land. Still the stream itself seemingly was not touched by this bit of human intrusion. I never heard of any landowner objecting to the presence of a young fisherman. In fact, they didn’t object if a fellow picked an apple or pulled, washed and munched a nice young carrot at lunchtime.

Above the farm area was a fairly high dam, which held the town water supply. The pool above was only 100 yards long, for the valley was a steep one. Above the pool was more river – a wilder river.

The character of the creek bed varied but little, but as one moved upstream the valley changed. A road of sorts followed the rivulet for a couple of miles above the dam and ended at a ford. A horse-and-wagon could continue a few miles more – up across what we called “The Hogback,” a spur of mountain which ended in a sharp cliff below which the river ran. Beyond the Hogback a few miles was a deserted cabin, and beyond that not even a wagon could move. From “Franklin’s” to the head of the stream, and thence over the divide into the Jocko country, only a horse trail ran.

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on February 27, 1963.

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For Fish, Too (1963)

My father was never a very good fisherman and I think it was because he didn’t care much whether or not he caught anything. In that we differed greatly. When I went fishing I wanted fish – and still do!

They say angling isn’t competitive, but when a bunch of good fishermen get together on a trout stream, each one’ll try to out-fish the others – although they’ll hotly deny any such design. Still the fellow who comes in with the biggest string will be puffed up like one of those blowfish we catch off Herb Alley’s dock down in Tavernier in winter time.

I guess kids are more enthusiastic fishing competitors than grownups – or anyway, they were when I was very young. That made it worse for Frank and me, because the competitive spirit went beyond our own successes. It extended at least as far as our father – who insisted on having fun instead of getting out there on the Blackfoot and fishin’ his head off. We wanted him to beat the sox off Dr. MacLean.

The good doctor, a trout fisherman of great skill, was dedicated to the thesis that it is better to land a fish than to let him get away. The result was that when he and father fished together, father always came in second. Since the doctor had two boys about our same ages and since we all often went camping together, Frank and I often were embarrassed by our father’s fishing failures. We wanted him to win once in a while!

The gates of opportunity opened wide one fine August afternoon when we all were together on the Blackfoot. The doctor, as usual, had been scoring high every day. Father, as usual, wasn’t catching much. Frank and I were holding our own – and that was about all. Those MacLean kids were tough competition.

On this one morning I had raised a lunker of a rainbow in a small pool just above camp. I couldn’t wait to get father up there. I felt sure that if he could take this one fish, he’d be top man in the size category even if he wasn’t so long on number.

The first cast father made – in the proper spot – hooked the big fish deep. The first jump showed, without doubt, that this great rainbow, once landed, would be something for us to brag about for years to come.

Father fought him well. He took every brilliant leap with a calm, steady hand. Finally the trout was whipped. Father led him gently toward the net which I was holding.

It was a prodigious moment – with victory in the creel, so to speak. I made a sweep with the net, missed the trout – and the hook pulled out! The prize of prizes swam slowly but surely back to the depths from which he came.

I could have cried. Maybe I did. But father didn’t seem to mind a bit. After all, he said, he had all the fun. What matter whether the fish was landed?

That’s why our father never made a great fisherman.

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on October 8, 1963.

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Dave Roberts – Trout, Yes (1964)

In the current issue of an outdoor magazine Joe Brooks, my old friend and angling companion, comes up with a good fishing story about the Clark’s Fork of the Columbia River in Western Montana. I’m always interested in a Brooks tale. I was especially interested in this one because the Clark’s Fork has been one of my favorite trout streams over a long period of years.

Joe tells of a recent “rejuvenation” of the stream which, he says, had been so polluted that “not even in the memory of old-timers had there been any trout” in its waters – a statement which would have made the late Jack Boehme restless as a tumbleweed in March.

What our Joseph wrote was partially true. The trouble was that he took in too much territory. That part of the river which lies below the dam at Bonner, Mont., and wanders for 100 miles or so toward the Idaho border – and that’s the major part of the watercourse – has been excellent trout water for over 50 years to my knowledge.

Back in the early part of 1900s, most folks thought the Missoula River, as it was then known, carried such a load of mine pollution that it wouldn’t support fish life. Mr. Boehme, who for almost a half-century operated a sporting goods store in Missoula, disproved that theory in the summer of 1911 with a story which appeared in the Sunday Missoulian. Jack told of catching some crackin’ big red bellies in the stream – and he had pictures to prove it.

Fired by this article Jimmy Mills and I set out one fine July afternoon to try our luck. We fished within the city limits – and I caught my first really big trout. I still can remember that fish perfectly, as I remember the pool from which he came.

From 1932 to 1960 I fished the Clark’s Fork every summer and can’t remember a day when we didn’t make catches which ranged from good to fabulous. On the wall of my study is a mounted golden trout which carries the inscription “One of six goldens caught in the Clark’s Fork on Aug. 7, 1936.” That was unusual – and as far as I know had never been done before or since. We landed enough big trout on that day to fill a skiff!

Even the upper waters, to which for the most part Joe referred in his article, yielded good fishing as far back as 1945 when I floated the stream from Rock Creek to the head of the Bonner Dam and took a fine basket of trout. This, however, was prior to a drenching of pollution which took a tragic fish toll a few years ago.

After that the pollution was controlled and the Clark’s Fork, even ‘way up above Drummond, is now producing some whopper rainbows. I’m delighted. But there’s no use being mystified as to where those big ones came from – as Joe and some of his Montana companions apparently are.

They were bo’ne an’ bred in the Clark’s Fork, boys – from stock which has been carryin’ on there since Old Boehme and I began catchin’ ‘em more than 50 years ago.

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on October 23, 1964.

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Rod and Gun by Dave Roberts

Birds Plentiful In Sun Valley

Special Dispatch to the Enquirer

Sun Valley, Idaho, Nov. 5 –

Three of us old Montana boys and a British Army officer from British East Africa got together on the pheasant fields of Idaho yesterday, under the expert leadership of a former Northern Kentucky citizen.

Taylor Williams, brother of Phil Williams, well-known Cincinnati clay target shot, had laid out the trip – and he’d done an excellent job of it. We found birds in great numbers – and had one of the nicest days shooting I’ve ever experienced. Taylor, born in Dayton, Ky., more years ago than he’ll admit, has been in charge of Sun Valley’s hunting and fishing program for more than a decade. He’s one of the best big-game hunters, rifle and pistol shots in this part of the country.

We had other expert nimrods in the party, too. Pappy Ernest Hemingway, a native of Red Lodge, Mont., was along, carrying his ancient and strictly dishonorable Model 12 Winchester pump – a gun he has shot so many times she rattles at every joint when you shake her. The barrel at one time was close bored. Today you could drop a grapefruit through the muzzle and it’d never touch metal! But what Old Man Hemingway can do with that blunderbuss is a caution!

Col. Dick Cooper of Kenya, British East Africa was with us, too. According to Senor Hemingway, he is one of the outstanding elephant hunters in the world. He shoots a mean 12 gauge in the field – that I can vouch for.

Another Cooper was in the party – one Gary Cooper, formerly of Helena, Mont. It has been said that the tall, gangling cinema star also wields a mean fowling piece. I wouldn’t know. He hunted by my side most of the day, but spent his time giving shots to the guys around him, smiling and chuckling in a happy fashion when they missed. I did see him fire one shot – at a raven soaring so high above us that he looked like a stunted jenny wren. Needless to say the raven still is soaring.

Despite the inattention and reticence of Judge Cooper, the day’s shoot was most successful. Starting at noon – Idaho’s opening comes at midday as in Ohio – we drove down through a short field of standing corn. I was flanking one side of the field and saw, just as the drivers entered, a great cloud of pheasants rise from the sagebrush beyond us. I don’t know how many birds were in that flock – 50 at least – but it seemed likely that that would be all, so far as that particular corn patch was concerned.

Bat Lawsy Man! Hardly had Hemingway and his drivers started down the rows when ringnecks began to boil out. The little patch was full of them – and most of them were cocks. They flushed far ahead of the hunters, and there were only a couple of guns at the far end, so not many were killed. But it was a sight to see the long-tailed fliers roaring and soaring away toward the desert brush – reminded me of the Dakotas and the great bunches of Chinks we used to find there.

This part of Idaho in which we were driving is largely desert country. Cultivated fields lie only in irrigated territory. Where the water doesn’t reach the land, the soil bears only sagebrush, small cacti and sparse desert grasses. In such country pheasants will run far ahead of the hunters. But we hunted across some of the sagebrush – hot and dripping under a searing sun – and took a few cock birds as we went along. But it wasn’t the birds that interested me most – it was the rabbits!

A Southern Ohio rabbit hunter would go clean and completely nuts hunting that desert! The brush literally crawls with jackrabbits and cottontails. There were times when, within the limited area close around me, I could see 25 or 30 at once.

They ran at you, away from you and crossed back and forth in front. They darted, jumped, crawled and stood on their hind legs. We killed quite a few for the rancher to grind up for feed. He would have been pleased had we killed a couple thousand. They play the very dickens with his alfalfa and other growing crops. Fact is, after seeing the hordes of rabbits, one wonders how any crops at all can survive.

In Mid-afternoon we went to the ranch house for dinner – and what a dinner. We ate fried chicken, mashed potatoes – and all the trimmings – there beneath the yellowing cottonwoods. No one wanted to hunt after the meal was over, but Old Man Williams pushed us to it again, allowing only a brief respite for snoozing under the friendly sun.

Later in the afternoon we flushed sage hens – the big, lumbering grouse of the dry lands – by the score. They got up ahead of us in twos, threes and larger groups, easy targets they would have been had the season been in. But we probably wouldn’t have killed them anyway, since the sage hen at this time of year is poor eating.

Along toward sunset, as we waited to make a final drive across the corn, a station wagon drove up. Loaded in the rear was a fine five-point mule deer, together with a smaller one. The big buck had fallen to the gun of Mrs. Mary Hemingway the day before and was being carried to town for processing. Mary, a good wing shot, as well as rifle shot, was with us in the field and she accounted for a full share of the day’s pheasant kill.

We drove to the last corn patch just as the sun was dipping behind the western mountains – mountains whose snowy ridges belied the heat of the November afternoon.

On that last go-round we flushed almost as many birds as we had on the first drive and I saw Pap Hemingway make a beautiful double on fast-flying cocks which, foolishly, had chosen his corner in their vain attempt at a get-away. Gary Cooper, standing off to the side, did fire a couple of times he told me and, I think he said, he killed a pair of cocks.

But that I didn’t see. So far as your rambling reporter can report only one barrel of Coop’s gun was dirty last night, the one he shot at a raven which, had he killed it, certainly would have spoiled before it hit the ground. That bird was ‘way, ‘way up in the air, son!

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on November 6, 1947.

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The last Dave Roberts article, quoted below, is picked because of its historical interest, though it may not reflect so well on the writer. Leaving it out was a temptation. It wouldn’t go very far in today’s world – given its racist bent, but it has value in that it likely exhibits aspects of Missoula’s culture that existed at that time. Does it generally represent Missoula’s thinking from that era?  Probably not the majority of citizens. Would Roberts seek to revise it were he alive today?  Would he acknowledge that the Salish had camped on Missoula’s flats hundreds of times before any white man opened a store there? Who knows? One could only hope he would have taken some time to explore local Indian culture for its intrinsic value and written about it using his prodigious talent.

 

World Beat

Off Reservation

Swede Holmes, whose father ran a livery stable in Missoula and I used to go out to his corral on Saturday afternoon and catch a couple of riding horses. I don’t think we ever rode with saddles. A length of quarter-inch rope with a slip knot around the horse’s lower jaw was the only bridle.

There weren’t many fences in those days – and we stayed away from ranches that had them. We’d often gallop across the open flats toward Ft. Missoula, and sometimes we’d cross Clark’s Fork and the Northern Pacific railroad tracks and head for the low, rolling knobs that skirted the north side of town. Cresting the shoulder of one of these greening knobs one afternoon we sighted, far below us, a string of horses, dogs and Indians. They were spread out over a lot of terrain and were headed south, making quite a hullabaloo as they went. We sat on our horses for a long time watching them until some of the young bucks came riding up the long, clean slope of the foothills toward us. They passed us – saying nothing and pretending not to look in our direction.

We eased our horses downhill toward the moving knots of nomads and watched as they straggled by. They were quiet now – except for the dogs which kept up their yapping – and they never turned a head in our direction. A couple of the teepees stopped short of the railroad tracks and set up camp. The rest went on and we saw them – or at least a part of them – as we went back over the bridge toward home at twilight. They were set up on a gravel bar close to the river and their wigwams gleamed white against the dark background of the stream. A few days later, when we rode out toward the fort, there must have been 50 lodges on the flats grown like mushrooms after a soft autumn rain.

The villages stayed on the prairie each spring for a couple of months – maybe three. I don’t know how much bitterroot was gathered by the [Indian women], but they didn’t devote full time to the task. Most of them spent every day in town, sitting on doorsteps in front of business places or sifting through garbage and trash in the town’s alleys. They came in from their camp afoot and on horseback, carrying their small fry on their backs. I can’t recall any plentitude of ambulatory youngsters on downtown streets, although they were numerous around the lodges on the prairie. But it was a rare store into which one could walk without wedging his way between or over a fat [Indian woman] or two. You saw braves in town but rarely – and they always were on horseback, looking cool, collected and completely detached.

We often rode into the clusters of wigwams just to see what was going on, but we never were received by the Flatheads. Sometimes, a couple of teen-age boys would come galloping along in open challenge to a race, but that was about as friendly as they ever were. We were free to walk around the teepees, to look inside if we wished, but it was as if we weren’t there. The Indians didn’t seem to see us at all. None of them spoke English – and we knew no Salish.

Each tent had its own cooking fire and its own kettles. I don’t know what the Indians ate, but the fare must have been simple. The main item of diet was dried venison, and I’d guess they bought, with their government allotments, some other foodstuffs. It always was rumored around town that they did a lot of stealing, but I suspect this was largely rumor. Perhaps they did pick up a stray slab of bacon or side of beef now and then, but the Salish people were generally considered among the best of the “good” Indians and they caused very little real trouble.

During the spring bitterroot harvest the men lounged in their lodges, smoked their pipes and talked. So far as I could see they never worked, either at their own tasks or “for hire.” At that season of the year lots of small jobs would have been open – but the Flatheads would have none of that. I can’t say whether it was because they were lazy or because they were proud. The young men did a lot of dashing around on horseback, running races and showing off for the benefit of the young [Indian women]. But they never did any work.

Along about the end of June the wigwams began to disappear as silently and unheralded as they appeared. We’d ride the flats one day – and see ‘em by the score. We’d go out a few days later and maybe there’d be four or five, the smoke from their lonesome camp fires standing straight of a quiet, summery evening. The Flatheads were moving back to the reservation for the summer dances which marked the beginning of a new movement – the one to the hunting grounds at the head of Swan River, over beyond the Clearwater country, which was reached by a trek through the mountains to the head of the Jocko.

The above article appeared in The Cincinnati Enquirer on September 5, 1960

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