Lilly attended MSU on the GI Bill, graduating in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in Applied Science. He later earned a master's of education and for 20 years served as a high school teacher in Roundup, Deer Lodge and in Bozeman, where he taught an accelerated science classes for advanced students.

"Like a fool," he remembers, "I thought I could live off a teacher's salary." When he couldn't, he and a friend started a summer car wash business in West Yellowstone. When Wally Eagle offered to sell him space for a tackle shop in his store near the entrance of Yellowstone Park, Lilly asked a friend for advice.

His friend said, "If you want to starve, buy it."

That was 1952, and the rest is fly-fishing history. Except for one major hiccup-the 1959 earthquakes ruined fishing for two years-Bud Lilly's Trout Shop was successful. It was a family operation, with Lilly's sons Mike and Greg doing the guiding, as well as his daughter, Annette, who was Montana's first licensed female fishing guide. His late wife, Pat, operated the art and clothing section of the store.

Lilly attributes his growing awareness that a trout could have value beyond its jumping ability and the succulence of its flesh to the customers who came through the door.

While Lilly recalled that he had regularly filled a creel "large enough to hold alligators," fishing luminaries including Al McClane, Ed Zern and Ted Trueblood brought a more enlightened set of ethics into the store. They had witnessed the decline of fisheries in the East. But it was Art Neumann, then executive director of Trout Unlimited, and others in that organization, who had the greatest influence.

Along with Pat Sample of Billings and Livingston tackle shop owner Dan Bailey, Lilly founded Montana Trout Unlimited.

"Dan had the knowledge, Pat had the money, and I had the willingness," he recalls.

One of their first projects was to oppose the Allen Spur Dam proposed by the Bureau of Reclamation, which would have guillotined the Yellowstone River south of Livingston. With a wild trout program, catch and release, special regulations for sensitive waters, adequate water flows to ensure spawning, the challenge to save Western trout rivers was engaged.

"Clean air, clean water equals good fishing," Lilly says.

As I rise to leave, I remind Lilly about meeting him during my first fishing trip to the West. At the time, I had thought that the part he played in my success was limited to advice; I hadn't realized that the trout in the rivers were largely thanks to him, as well.

He can't remember the brief meeting, which is understandable. But he remembers the places he told me to go, and soon we are poring over a hand-drawn map.

"Yes," he says, pointing his finger at a spot on the map "that's the first place I'd make a cast." And, "It's all in the angle of the presentation."

And for a few minutes he seems like a kid again, the buoyant enthusiasm dancing in the kind eyes that I remember so well.

As he once said himself of the wonder of trout fishing, "Goddamn! Goddamn!"

Photo by Stephen Hunts

Keith McCafferty is a contributing editor at Field & Stream magazine and an award-winning writer of books, novels and articles. The finalist for the National Magazine Award is recognized as an authority on survival in the outdoors. However, he says his best writing is about people. He lives and works in Bozeman.

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Return to regular view	Text-only	Published: 4/27/2009