I'll miss my Yellowstone fishing friends this year

It was 50 years ago this month that I first fished the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. I was working for an outfitter in Cooke City and had been asked to accompany an elderly couple into the canyon and tend the horses.

I don’t remember how the fishing was but I suspect it was good, good enough that I soon began making the trip on my own on foot.

In the ensuing half century I rarely went a summer without at least one trip into the canyon. The cutthroat were plentiful and 40-fish days were common. I caught my age in cutts when I was 55.

Since then, however, the fishing has been in decline. Last...