From the forward seat of a drift boat, Bert Berkley floats a dry fly to a quiet eddy of aquamarine water near the willow-brushed banks of the Beaverhead River. His presentation is close to flawless, and as guide Jeff Lyon invokes the standard incantation to the fish gods in these parts — “Eat it!” — Berkley is handsomely rewarded. A hefty rainbow trout smashes the fly, leaps in a splash of technicolor and zips downstream in a sizzling run that gives Berkley’s 4-weight Sage fly rod a workout.
“Tip up,” Lyon says reflexively — advice that elicits a good-natured response from Berkley. “I believe I’m doing that,” Berkley says as his rod bends in a perfect arc against a pristine Montana morning sky.
After five decades of fly-fishing all over the world and landing everything from trophy bonefish to Atlantic salmon, Berkley knows a thing or two about fighting a trout, even one that’s running “hot” like this one. Or as Lyon, a guide on this river for 21 years, will later tell me: “Bert is probably better than 85 to 90 percent of the people I take.”
“Outside of the guides and some fly-fishing instructors we’ve had here, Bert is probably the best natural caster I’ve ever seen,” adds Jay Burgin, the longtime owner and operator of Five Rivers Lodge, where Berkley has fished pretty much annually for the past 28 years.
Any fly angler would love to earn such accolades, given that among the guests coincidental to Berkley’s yearly stays is legendary casting instructor Doug Swisher, a Berkley friend who is enshrined in the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame. But the praise is particularly resonant because Eugene Bertram “Bert” Berkley is 98 years old. Or young, as might be a more appropriate description. To call Berkley spry for his age is to underappreciate the term.
While many men two decades younger struggle to put on their pants each day,
