You may have heard about the derailment of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train into the Wind River just south of Thermopolis last week.  Two locomotives and four freight cars derailed on Wednesday afternoon after slamming into a boulder in the Wind River canyon.  One locomotive and one freight car slid 60 feet down the bank and were partially submerged.  BNSF estimated that 3500 to 7000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled into the river.

When you’ve got a bunch of hazmat in a blue ribbon trout stream and need a jet boat and an expert jet boat driver, who ya gonna call?  Sweetwater! Sweetwater’s jet boat and operator, Scott Schumacher were contracted by the Whitewater Rescue Institute of Missoula to help with the clean-up efforts and biological assessment.  Scott was down helping with the effort for two days — shuttling clean-up workers and biologists, placing containment booms, and removing diesel fuel from the Wind and Bighorn rivers.  With the wreck being in the canyon and having some serious whitewater to negotiate, he also got to see some wild shit, including the sinking of the other jet boat helping BNSF.  Luckily, no one was hurt (other than the jet boat driver’s pride.)  Way to go sweet co!

The Yellowstone begins to change. First green, then olive, then brown then hopefully back to olive. Underneath its foam lines and riffles lies THE biomass, millions of Brachycentrus occidentalis (Mother’s Day Caddis). They are becoming restless in their little homes and with that comes restless trout. Soon the bio-mass will be released, and all hell will break loose until runoff comes to wash it all away.

Every year it’s the same. It slowly works its way into my psyche like a bad habit. I find myself staring at the river longer and longer, watching the Yellowstone slowly brew up its annual feast of bug soup. I begin to twitch a little. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I can no longer look at the bobber, or if I’m just tired of listening to the Serbian kid go on about how he only fishes during the week and hasn’t fished a nymph all spring. All I know is that Caddisflies mean two things: that winter really is over and I can now fish dry flies to big, gluttonous trouts. I will skip out on work and make excuses to my wife with the well polished justification that my binge will soon end and I will repent come high water.

Who ever can come up with the best description of what the Rockwell Retro Encabulator actually does gets a dozen crappy flies from Sweetwater Fly Shop.