A grizzly bear in Grand Teton National Park wrestles with a bull elk carcass in the Snake River as a bald eagle looks on. I was distracted by a small clearing in the trees filled with slow-moving water that glittered spectacularly in the sunlight. The river left a section of grassy bank on the opposite side where I was sure a large cutthroat was waiting, eyes skyward and waiting for a fly to fall through the streaming sunlight. The cast was perfect. My foam bug hit the opposite bank and bounced softly into the current while my line settled several feet away. I watched the foam bug drift casually. Then, in the space of a heartbeat, a large shadow streaked from under the grassy bank and struck the fly ferociously. I timed the set perfectly this time, lifting my rod as my heart leapt inside my chest. I held the line taught for a sliver of a moment. Then the fish jumped, spraying glistening droplets of water into the air. The slash of crimson beneath its jaw and its golden flank reflected magnificently in the sun. It was big, but I remember more notably that it was beautiful - exactly the sort of fish one would expect to live in a sunlit pool surrounded by tall pine trees rising spectacularly from a flood of water. In another heartbeat the fish was gone. It managed to wrap my line around a tree downstream and use the torsion to wriggle the hook from its mouth. I thought it probably would not have been fair for me to land such a beautiful fish in such a beautiful stretch of river anyway when the haunting sound of an elk bugle again penetrated the trees. It was much closer this time, and I had crept only a few yards upstream when I saw him. A magnificent bull elk stood in shadows among the conifers and he held his head up and tasted the air. A beaver nibbles on twigs in Spread Creek north of Jackson. Wyoming Wildlife | 43