The Cooper Clan
For many a visit to the Missouri River is a one-time Fly Fishing Bucket List trip. Some immediately fall under her spell and end up returning year after year. We routinely host guests who’ve been fishing here for much of their lives. It’s always interesting to hear their stories and to hear their perspective on how things have changed over the years.
Occasionally we like to feature some of our guests here on the pages of our blog. In the case of the Coopers, I’ve been wanting to feature their story here for as many years as I’ve know them and just had never gotten down to putting pen to paper. The annual Cooper visit to Wolf Creek Angler for two weeks each June always marks the onset of primetime at WCA. This year was no different and I actually made it a point to get together with David Cooper and let him know what I had in mind. Not only did he like the idea but being a newspaperman by trade, he offered to do the work and write the piece himself. I couldn’t turn down that kind of offer.
It’s been a great pleasure getting to know this family over the years and we look forward to more adventures with the Cooper Clan for many years to come.
The following is a guest blog by David Cooper.
The Coopers and Fly-Fishing in Montana, 1984-2017
We first fished the Missouri River in 1984 with Montana River Outfitters’ Neale Streeks and Craig Madsen. With only a few years’ exceptions, we have been back every year since.
June 2017 was our latest visit, with Wolf Creek Angler, which bought MRO’s Wolf Creek fly shops, cabins, rooms and operations from Madsen several years ago. Jason Orzechowski, the owner, has made improvements each year.
We were a family party of 10 our second week, with grandsons Kendall and Gray Cooper, Kendall’s fiancé, Kristi Elkins, nephews Andrew and Mike Whinery, Mike’s wife, Meghan, and Bridget and Stan Durham, Kendall and Gray’s mother and stepfather.
It was a great week of fun, laughter, sightseeing for newcomers to Montana, and some good fly-fishing. Kendall was top rod with a hefty 23-inch brown trout, but everyone caught some trophy fish, held back only by high upstream winds on several days.
Between 12 and 15 years ago, Joanne and I brought each one of our five grandsons to Montana so they could learn to fly-fish for trout. They included my other grandsons, Steven and Daniel Cooper, and James Perry, Joanne’s grandson. We delighted in camping at River Junction on the nearby Blackfoot River in expeditions outfitted by Craig Madsen’s MRO.
MRO also introduced us to the wild beauty and rugged limestone canyons of the Smith River, and we made seven or eight guided trips on the Smith over the years with family and friends, catching and releasing trout and enjoying gourmet meals and wine at our riverside campsites. We have fond memories of our Smith trips and the guides we got to know well over the years, including Neale Streeks, Brian Neilsen, Brian Scott, Joe Aanes, Mike Reitz, Dan Kelly and others.
As we’ve grown older—I turned 84 in 2017—we have stuck with the Missouri and our base in Room 12 at Wolf Creek Angler. And we have delighted in fishing with new guides, especially Justin Lawrence and Jerrell Beougher. Jason has always made sure that everything is just right for our visits.
The Missouri from the Holter Dam to Cascade is a special place for us. Whenever we fish it, we always think of the 1805 Lewis & Clark Expedition and what its stalwart voyagers must have thought and marveled at as they made their way upstream from what is now Great Falls and into its magnificent canyons, etched and tossed toward the sky millions of years ago.
The trout in the Missouri are large, strong and numerous. We have great memories of those landed and released and those that somehow got away, even right at the net. But the landscape itself, the river, the wildlife and Montana’s Big Sky are also what have kept us coming back year after year. Health permitting, we hope to do so again.
