"The time to get drunk," Terry used to say, "is Monday morning. All the jerks get drunk on Saturday night."

Terry thought an alcoholic state was more fun when the rest of the world was normal and that a drunk had gained nothing at all when he consorted with other drunks. Since Terry might get drunk on Saturday night too, his logic is a little devious but there is satisfaction in breaking off from the crowd pattern, even in fishing.

There is a spring creek in Montana that is packed with trout and is famous around the world. Beginning in late spring the faithful come from everywhere to pay a fee and fish for snobbish brown and rainbow trout, spending endless hours trying to match the tiny flies that hatch in the creek. Nearly all of the fish are released, and eating an Armstrong Creek fish is rated along with cannibalism.

But come November, the fishermen are gone from the spring creek. Most of them disappeared when the cottonwoods turned gold and the willows became red. Now the cottonwoods' leaves are gone and mallards flush from some of the pools. The Canada geese and muskrats are getting ready for winter.

The fishing at the spring creek is almost as good as it was in summer for the water maintains a consistent temperature near the springs--even when there's snow on the banks and ice over puddles.

Yesterday the temperature was just comfortably cool and the sun was bright. The fish were taking some tiny gray flies and although they'd keep coming to my imitation I couldn't seem to hook very many on a number 20 fly.

Maybe I wasn't as attentive as I should have been. I saw a cock pheasant sprint between a couple of bushes and some ducks kept sliding by at high altitude, wishing I'd get out of their favorite protected pool because it wa windy away from the creek.

The magpies kept trading back and forth across the creek, flying the same patterns again and again. They're scavengers and cover a well-organized beat in order not to miss anything good to eat on the ground.

Somewhere between me and the highest snowy mountains that line Paradise Valley were some distant rifle shots...maybe 10 miles away but brought in by a quirk of the wind. Elk season was already open.

I finally caught a trout, but no credit to me for I had missed a dozen chances because of plain awkwardness in the whipping wind and the rippled surface. I simply could not see my fly.

And I kept thinking that there's one good thing about outdoor scribbling. You can do your writing at times when you can't hunt or fish and you can be at the edge of the Rockies in late fall when other fishermen have gone and the trout are just as hungry as ever.

That was when I noticed the wind had changed and up the valley there was a shifting gray curtain of something headed my way. A little rain shower, I thought. But suddenly the wind turned colder and it was snow, not rain, that blotted out the peaks and made a ghost of the ranch house on the little hill by the creek. I shivered and reeled in my icy line.

You can't tell this time of year. That's why the other fishermen are gone.