Thanks to Ron Sorensen, we caught a bunch of chunky monkeys on the Missouri River near Craig last week. Jim Hepworth got this wallow-hog. Mid-August has been like early spring around here with rain and highs in the 60s.

Since Hep has been my publisher on and off over the years, he’d get me distracted from fishing by talking about how I should be writing a novel and I’d miss my strikes on hoppers. He, on the other hand, could focus on fishing no matter what he was talking about and spent much of his time posing so I could take pictures of him and big rainbows. When the rain started and we switched to nymphs, I thought I might catch up with him, but then, just as I tied into a really nice one, he said, “Keeler, you should write a novel with whores in it,” and my rod pretty much went limp. After that, everything turned vicarious on me, especially when I was compelled to shoot him and Ron with his 25″ brown.