And if there was ever one thing my dad didn ' t like on an evening like that, it was to be interrupted. •
“ Milwaukee Addition,” an act I thought at the time was pretty presumptuous for a town the size of Hettinger, three young men I didn’ t know lazily drank Budweiser from a red cooler and watched their bobbers float in what couldn’ t have been more than 3 or 4 feet of water. I didn’ t stop, nor did I notice any action on the bobbers. The young men seemed to be there more for the relaxation than the fishing, I thought as I walked by.
But at the east end of the lake, a different story. As I crossed the spillway and headed back north toward town, I could see, silhouetted by the setting sun, two anglers of a different sort. Fly fishermen. I paused. I knew there were a few fly fishermen in Hettinger, or used to be, my father among them. A few things about these fellows were readily apparent.
Perhaps 150 yards separated them, yet they seemed oblivious to each other-- and to me. One, I discerned, was old Charlie Carter. I didn’ t know him all that well, so I paused to watch the other. As he turned sideways toward the orange ball of the setting sun, I recognized the slight stoop in the shoulders( although, as I think about it, and I don’ t think it was my imagination, he seemed to stand just a little straighter wearing waders in three feet of water than he had last time I saw him standing in his office wearing that old brown suit) of the old smalltown lawyer who had probably helped my parents a half dozen times with small legal things, and whose front window we had protected by keeping the big kids off the softball field: Jimmy Clement.
I knew Jimmy well enough to visit if he was of a mind to, so I stopped and watched for a minute, then two, then five, then ten and more.
It was the perfect time of the day for bluegills on a dry fly. Back and forth, back and forth, with just the slightest flick of the wrist, the right arm seemed almost part of the long slender rod and 40 feet or so of line that moved in the easy fluid motion of 50 years of practice. Pause as the line( braided, I think, with a clear monofilament leader) caressed the water; pause, twitch, pause, twitch, pause, twitch as the left hand pulled the line slowly back, until, at 10 feet, with no fish rising to take the fly, the slow, rhythmic motion of the right arm began again.
It was the only movement on the entire lake. His legs, encased in rubber waders in nearly three feet of water, didn’ t move. His head, as a golfer’ s head on a back-swing, held deathly still. His torso, turning ever so slightly from side to side every second or third cast, and his arms, were the only movement.
I don’ t remember today if he caught a fish. If he did, he surely deposited it through the slit in the top of the ancient leather and straw creel that hung under his left arm.
In 10 minutes and more, his eyes never left the water. This was his world, and this was the way it should be on a summer night in August in Hettinger, North Dakota.
I thought about calling out to him, some 30 feet from shore, for a visit. I decided against it. There was no reason to, really. I’ d have had to ask how the fishing was, and we both knew that it didn’ t matter if he caught a fish or 10, and other than the fact there was no wind blowing on a perfect summer night and my mother is doing just fine in Bismarck and he still goes to the office most days for a while and I still play on his son’ s volleyball team, there really wasn’ t much for us to talk about that would have been as important as what he was doing right then.
And so I walked on, marveling that things really don’ t change much in 30 years. Except for the years when the lake silted in during the 60s and 70s, the bluegills and crappies and sunfish in Mirror Lake had provided thousands of evenings like that for Jimmy and my dad and dozens( but probably not hundreds) of other true fly fishermen.
And if there was ever one thing my dad didn ' t like on an evening like that, it was to be interrupted. •
Jim Fuglie is a former North Dakota Tourism Director and Dakota Country staff writer covering Badlands issues. He lives in Bismarck.
Page 78, Dakota Country, September 2025 www. dakotacountrymagazine. com