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 ho.