Gonzalez in his happy place—wading the banks of Montana’s Bighorn River this past January. (Bill Buckley/)
Phil Gonzalez lucked into his first fishing rod. He grew up near a big bend in the Yellowstone River in Huntley, Montana, about 15 miles east of Billings. To keep the river from washing over its banks and flooding the town, workers for the Rural Electrification Administration would use their boom trucks to stack old cars, pull-behind combines, tractors, and other defunct farm equipment as riprap along the bend.
Gonzalez was 9 years old, and the stockpiled machinery was his playground. One day, the workers dropped off a vintage Buick sedan with portholes along the front fenders. He loved to ransack the discarded cars and trucks, looking for treasure before they went into the river. The trunk on the Buick was locked, and Gonzalez wasn’t able to get into it by cutting through the back seat like he usually did.
“That thing was built like a Sherman tank, but the longer it kept me out, the harder I tried to open it,” he says.
After three days of failed attempts, he managed to pop the trunk with a pry bar. “And lo and behold, there it was—a metal telescopic rod with a windup reel. It was pretty prehistoric.”
Gonzalez throws a streamer while the author guides the boat down a gravel run. (Bill Buckley/)
That day in 1956 marked the beginning of Gonzalez’s fishing career, one that would play a pivotal role in the history of the Bighorn River in the years to come. His earliest forays were in his local waters, Pryor Creek and the lower Yellowstone, which was not the pristine river it is today.