Hooking a whopper in Wyoming

Above: Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney. Below: Brad Judy, Terry Iverson, Vice President Dick Cheney, John Nitcy and Crosby Tajan beside Wyoming's Bighorn River. Photos, courtesy of John Nitcy

For ten years my teaching colleagues, Terry Iverson and John Nitcy, have spent the last few days of July and the first few days of August on their annual fly-fishing trip to Wyoming. Over the years, other friends and colleagues have joined them, and some pretty good tales of fishing, other adventures and a calamity or two have grown with the tellings.

Well, this year, the guys hooked on to a whopper while standing alongside the Bighorn River where one 13-mile stretch teems with 9,000 big fish (ranging from 16-26 inches) per mile, and it's a sure thing they'll be recounting the experience to anyone who cares to listen. In this case, the whopper measured about 70 inches and weighed in at approximately 200 pounds.

Not your typical native cutthroat, but then again, this year's was not the guys' typical trip to the Bighorn.

This summer, Terry, who's a retired U.S. government teacher, and John, who teaches business/computer classes at SHS, took along big Brad Judy, a former SHS DECA instructor who now teaches in the Tri-Cities, and even bigger and lovable Coach Crosby Tajan. Most of us taught Crosby who later played football at the University of Idaho and then joined our ranks as a teacher himself.

Instead of simply fishing for the lunkers, the guys also took along some 4-wheelers and enjoyed scaling upward over boulders the size of chairs to bask in the beauty of magnificent vistas on Bighorn Mountain between Greybull and Sheridan, Wyo.

"It's gorgeous," Terry told me over the phone last night. "Rolling grassland, lot of round boulders, big mountains, all kinds of wildflowers . . . you could sit there all day and get lost in it all. It's a Federal forest with lots of trees and lots of history. We saw old logging flumes for the railroad coming West where they cut railroad ties.

"You can stand on top and see 40 miles in all directions," he said, "It's a 4-wheeler's Heaven. We also visited an old look-out tower at 10,000 feet. I called Edna, and she was at Ground Zero in New York City."

Beauty and all, there were fish to be caught, so the guys also fished the Tongue River, and after three or four days went to Bighorn, where every year about the same time another angler shows up and fills up the Orvis Lodge with his entourage of buff 30-somethings, packing 9 mm. pistols and other intimidating gear.

The Idaho boys first got a hint of this well-known angler's arrival when they started spotting Blackhawk helicopters hovering overhead. Then came the Chinooks, out of which rolled the black SUV's aka "hard bodies." That means "bulletproof."

"We've gotten wind of him going to be at Three Mile Landing at about 9 a.m., so the four of us drive down there," Terry recalls. "Most of the fishermen have already left. We see a lot of young non-fishermen with pistols, sunglasses and baseball caps . . . Up comes the motorcade. It's headed by a state patrolman, a Crow Agency Native police car, followed by a county sheriff.

"Then come the black Chevy SUV's, followed by an ambulance and more police cars. They pull up and, as I call them, 'the kids' form a perimeter and look outward.

"Then, Vice President Dick Cheney gets out of the car and goes to the boats.

"The fishing guides are all wearing white shirts for the Secret Service to easily identify them. I'm standing and talking to a Secret Serviceman about his job. Pretty soon, John yells down to Cheney, 'Would you let us take a picture of you and us Idaho fishermen teachers?'"

"Sure, come on down," the vice president says.

"So we go down," Terry says, "John's going to take the picture. Cheney motions for the Secret Service to take the picture. We talked about the river and fishing. He was cordial, light-hearted, not abrasive, a bit soft-spoken . . . he just acted like another fisherman on the river."


According to my colleague John Nitcy, who supplied me the photos for this posting, the guys and Vice President Cheney did touch on one other topic.

"After I shook his hand, I asked if there was beer in that cooler, or does the doctor not allow it," John told me.

"There's something in it," Vice President Cheney told John, leaving the rest up to supposition.

John also shared with me last night that our characteristically outspoken friend Terry kept uncharacteristically mum around the Vice President.

"Iverson is Mr. Talk . . . anti Bush," John explained. "He was right there with a big ol' smile [for the Vice President]."

Unlike a past excursion involving the Vice President, this chance rendezvous made no big headlines, except maybe among the family and friends of the Idaho teaching anglers.

"I think for the most part you're meeting a U.S. dignitary, and you're kinda awestruck by the whole scene of security, which we're not used to seeing," Terry told me. "We put all politics aside; that's not what the river is all about."