Originally published on hintofriches.com (May 9, 2021)
Below is an excerpt from a book published in 1938, when Forrest was a boy, fishing along the Madison.
There are some remarkable similarities to what Forrest wrote in Ramblings & Rumblings:
“They used to lock the gates to Yellowstone Park at 1000 at night. No one could get in or out after that time. So dad would take the car just inside the gate and park it so we could get up at 0500 and go fishing, before the gate opened. The Madison River in the park had three good fishing holes; the Slow Bend (five miles up,) the Nine Mile Hole (you guessed it, nine miles,) and the Water Hole, (about eleven miles). These were our secret names and the great fishing spots were also TOP SECRET. It was important that we beat my grandfather (old Charlie Simpson) to these fishing places, especially the Nine Mile Hole that had room for only one fisherman.”
— Ramblings & Rumblings, by Forrest Fenn
Compare the story about Forrest’s dad leaving the car inside Yellowstone’s gates to that of the “local fish-hog” in the excerpt below. Forrest’s comment about Nine Mile Hole having “room for only one fisherman” resembles the author’s comment below, about “waiting his turn” for an “outgoing tenant” to leave.
“Among the famous “holes” is one which you will come upon a little further down-stream from the meadows. It is called the Nine Mile Hole, so named because it lies about nine miles east of the west entrance to the Park. Therefore by simple calculation it should be something over four miles from Madison Junction coming in the other direction. You will recognize it by the little promontory of grass with a big round rock standing by itself at the water’s edge. There is a steep little run down onto the promontory from the road and another one back onto the road.
It is the most overfished of any hole that I know, this Nine Mile Hole. Time and again I have run those nine miles, only to find it occupied. I have stopped on my way home of an evening and found anglers settling in on the promontory for the night, so as to be first on the scene at dawn. Yet, despite all the attention it receives, it is still a good bet for a brace of heavy fish. You must try it. On the far side you will observe two patches of floating weed. Start fishing about a hundred paces above the upper patch of weed and fish slowly down, taking care to cast your fly well over to the far side of the hole. You will of course need high waders. Unless you see a fish moving near the surface, which I doubt, use a heavy fly; or, if your fly be light, pinch on a split shot to the leader just above the fly. You will do best if you go down to these fish instead of asking them to come up to you.
On one occasion, when I was waiting my turn, the “outgoing tenant” came over and spoke to me. It seemed he was a local angler. He claimed that some years back he was “one of the discoverers of the hole,” whatever that meant. He went on to inform me with ill-concealed pride that not so many years ago he had, in one morning, killed in the Nine Mile Hole 15 trout weighing over 74 pounds. “But,” said he, with an injured air, “those days are gone forever.”
“No wonder,” I replied, with equally ill-concealed irony; but I fear my meaning was lost upon him.
I got one good laugh out of this hole. Staying in my camp in West Yellowstone was a delightful old angler who much favoured the hole and who loved to get an hour to himself on it. Morning after morning he would rise betimes and, “after being connubially kissed,” he would start out to be the first through the Park gates, which open to vehicular traffic at six o’clock. Yet upon arrival there he would invariably find, up to his waist in the good Madison, a well known local fish-hog, standing like some evil heron in command of the water. Time and again the incident would recur until I suggested to my old friend the explanation, which was simple, for all that the fish-hog had to do was to park his car inside the gates over night, walk in at 5.50 A. M. and get a ten-minute head start. The remedy, I suggested, was equally obvious, a well and truly incised puncture by the dark of the moon, but whether my friend ever resorted to it I did not care to ask. There might be such a thing as being an accessory before the act!”
— The Waters of Yellowstone: With Rod and Fly (1938), by Howard Back
