ABSAROKEE – By the time he moved to Montana, Bob Kimball was 70 years old and reluctant to venture into the mountains to pursue his favorite pastime of fly fishing. “I should have come up earlier or sooner,” he said. It’s about the only regret Kimball expressed about his 90 years of life, 20 spent in this town built near the confluence of the Stillwater and Rosebud rivers.
And despite his age, Kimball exudes lots of enthusiasm. “I’m still kicking, big time,” he said, a wide grin spreading across his gray-bearded face. Home shopping Kimball lives on the town’s main drag.
It’s a house that’s hard to miss. Hanging on the porch is a cooler that looks like an oversized white and red fishing bobber next to a large black fishing net. Under the porch’s roof hangs a mounted northern pike.
Two signs also adorn the porch, a wooden one that simply says “FLY FISHING,” and the other that advertises the retiree’s Absarokee Fly Shop. It’s a part-time business the retired physical therapist and Louisiana native began about 12 years ago. Stacked inside his living room, next to where his dog Girly Girl spreads out on a recliner, are boxes of fishing flies.
In the summer, he sells them from tables set up on his porch. Every fly is $2.50.
“Hell, I’m 90 years old, I can’t figure change in my head anymore,” he joked. The feel is keenly down-home, far from the glitz and ambiance of a high-end retail shop. So much so that selling flies sometimes interrupts his home life, with customers ringing the doorbell as his wife Patricia is frying bacon on the stove or he’s sitting down to dinner.
Since Kimball likes to chat with fellow anglers, supper may be cold by the time he gets back to the dinner table. “A lot of the customers I see just stop by for information,” he said. “They don’t buy anything.
They’re just killing time and won’t take their hands out of their pockets.” Rod building In his home office is a table where Kimball builds rods for sale, a hobby he took up in the 1970s while living in Colorado because he couldn’t afford to buy a quality, manufactured rod. A beginner’s fly rod can now be purchased for as little as $40, but ones built with graphite can cost around $1,200.
A hand-built bamboo rod can sell for $4,500. Kimball sells all of the graphite rods he builds for $400. “I try to make a quality rod, and I think I do,” he said.
So far, Kimball has assembled about 50 rods for anglers, he estimated. Fitting the purchased rod blanks with guides, a handle and reel seat takes him about a month of work. “This is a hobby for me,” he said.
“I’m kicking back.” Friendly advocate Absarokee outfitter Wanda Wilcox met Kimball at Bible study where they struck up a conversation about fly fishing. Together, they initially made rods for donation to local school children.
Then Wilcox talked her friend into making rods for other anglers. “My dad was a fly fisherman,” Wilcox said. “He had two girls who didn't know what a spinning pole was.
” Her friendship with Kimball extends to having him teach fly fishing to some of her uneducated clients before they leave on horse packing trips into the Beartooth Mountains. His advice to those newbies is to not expect to catch fish. “There's more to fly fishing than just being able to cast your line,” he recollected.
“The presentation that you make with your fly, it needs to be a fly that can just drift and settles down on the water like a normal bug would and not slap it on the water and scare the hell out of the fish.” Wilcox said she thinks the rod and fly businesses have helped keep her “genuine friend” going despite his advanced age. “Having the people stop by and visit him is really a wonderful blessing to him, I think,” she said.
Closer to thee For Kimball, fly fishing is not about how many fish he can bring to hand in a day. It’s also not about catching large fish. In fact, he prefers to fish creeks as such small waters see less angler traffic.
“Fly fishing is really a spiritual sport, particularly if you can get out and be by yourself,” he said. “It's just a way of getting closer to nature. It's also a way of getting closer to the Lord.
” He calls the isolated streams he likes to fish “thin” places where he feels nearer to God. “Bob, he just loves fly fishing,” Wilcox said succinctly. Kimball prefers dry fly fishing because of the excitement of watching a fish swim to the surface to snatch the fly.
He also likes the rhythmic quality of casting, a beat that he can hum to. But mostly, for him, the sport is about visiting beautiful waters. “If you learn to fly fish and get out there, you are getting away from the humdrum world of chaos,” Kimball said.
“That’s good for your mental health.”.
