The Passion of Dick Cheney

The Weekly Standard: Fishing The Snake River With The Vice President

(Weekly Standard) 
But these are all sideshows to the competitive main event: the daily Big Fish contest. Members ante up 10 bucks a day, and the biggest fish takes the pot (Cheney used to pay by check, but since Scarlett kept one as a souvenir, refusing to cash it, Cheney will now only pay in cash). According to the estimates I gather from friends and guides, Cheney is the pot-winner anywhere from one quarter to one-half of the time. Scarlett, who is equally competitive, and who's been fly-fishing since he was a small child, does not mince praise for the man who is often his boatmate.

"Dick Cheney is an excellent fisherman," he says. "He throws a mean dry fly. He goes in where the big fish are in the most difficult places. He can place a fly from 40-50 feet out, into shrubbery, in between bushes where the big fish lay. Where most people are fishing two or three feet away from the bushes so they don't hook up, Dick can place a fly on a saucer at 40 feet. He is very, very good."

"The guides will tell you he's one of the best fishermen they guide on the river," Scarlett continues, and indeed, several do. "Other than myself," Scarlett hastens to add, ever the competitor.

While his friends say Cheney isn't a trash-talker like some, they concur that he takes the Big Fish contest very seriously. Cheney later admits to me that, one year, "I had a picture taken of a brown trout I caught up here, blown up, life-size, and sent it to [Kemmerer], as a reminder of who caught the big fish that year."

Sensing my work is cut out for me, I head out west a day early to fish solo with a guide and acclimate myself to the South Fork, presumably lessening the vice president's chances of outfishing me. I drive about an hour outside of Jackson, through the switchbacks of the Targhee National Forest, to Irwin, Idaho. There I will launch with the same outfit that we will be using the following day (and which Cheney has been using for years), the pristine Lodge at Palisades Creek.

All knotty pine and rustic cabins (decades ago, the laundry building used to be a house of prostitution servicing the itinerant workers who helped build nearby Palisades Dam), gourmet meals and single malts are served up in their Liar's Den restaurant, and there's a full-service fly shop on the grounds.

My guide for the day is Jaason Pruett, a 34-year-old former college hoops player, who is not some delicate Orvis-catalog-issue trout teapot, but a take-no-prisoners river rat. The bed of his pickup truck is littered with Twisted Tea and Budweiser empties. His dashboard is carpeted and stuck with many of his sentimental-favorite flies. He wears a denim bucket hat from a car dealership, an "Abercrabby and Fish" T-shirt, a red swimsuit, and green Crocs for wet-wading.

The South Fork of the Snake is a tailwater that runs fast and cold out of the Palisades Reservoir. The guides here double as rowers for the ClackaCraft drift boats which, in addition to the middle bench for the oarsman, have swivel chairs for two fishermen in the bow and stern, along with leg brackets so you can stand and cast without falling into the drink, as the river is often rough. (Pruett says he's saved drowning people multiple times, and that less adept civilian rowers see the river eating about four boats a season.)

We do a 10-mile float through what is truly God's country. It is wallpapered with wildflowers and golden willows, mountain maples and cottonwood forests, populated by bobcats, moose and black bears. Red-tail hawks and bald eagles patrol the skies overhead.

More important, however, the river is thick with trout--browns and cutthroats, rainbows and hybrid cutbows--about 7,000 fish per mile. These aren't the SNIT's (standard 9-inch trout) I'm accustomed to back east, either. There, the relative scarcity of good water means that our overpressured streams hold fish that are bombed with so many flies they ought to be issued hardhats. On the South Fork of the Snake, trout are 15-17 inches on average, with 20-inchers not out of the question. They feed aggressively, and they are slutty for dries (flies that sit atop the water, which make fish rise so you can see the take). It makes perfect sense that this is one of Cheney's favorite runs.

As Pruett rows and sets me up on fish, he speaks of the hazards of being a guide: of the yuppies who spend all this money to come out and avail themselves of his services, but who then spend all afternoon telling him how to catch fish in his own backyard. Sometimes, he has to teach them a lesson, such as the know-it-all "who thought he was the cat's meow. So I cut the hook off his fly, and he didn't know it. After about the sixth fish in a row that he missed, I said, 'Man, I thought you were good--why aren't you getting these fish?' He's like, 'Jaason, what am I doing wrong?' I said, 'Do you wanna listen to me? Let me change your fly out.' He listened."

Pruett and his guides have no such problems with Cheney. There are inconveniences, to be sure, such as having to sweep his truck and boat clean of any mysterious herbal substances and leave behind his gun, which he otherwise likes to pack on the river--just in case--in order to pass muster with the Secret Service. But Pruett says the guides regard Cheney as a gentleman without pretense, who's a pleasure to row.

Cheney isn't some fussy streamside entomologist, either, sifting water with a cheesecloth to see if he can match the hatch. But he knows his stuff, and when he doesn't know something, says Pruett, he is eminently coachable and invariably polite, even if he's not renowned for his smalltalk. He takes both fishing and solitude seriously, and the river is his place to escape. Other drift-boaters will often float by having no idea that they just passed the vice president of the United States. ("We don't have a sign on him," Dick Scarlett tells me).

Pruett says that the sight of Cheney on the river is so unexpected to some that, once, he even saw a young man who worked for Idaho Fish and Game, who was checking fishing licenses, "but in sneaky spots," head out of the brush, walk right up to Cheney, ask to see his license, and still never put together to whom he was talking. "Clueless," says Pruett.

Pruett is not just a guide, it turns out. He is a stalker of fish. If trout had access to the courts, they'd hit him with a restraining order. He knows their names and unlisted addresses, and he constantly says things, like, "We're gonna get out of the boat here, I have to check on this fish." He puts me onto many. I catch a smattering of cutthroats, browns and rainbows, along with several whitefish (which the locals derisively call "Rocky Mountain bonefish"). But I'm slow on the trigger today and miss many more.

Blessed with x-ray vision, Pruett even has me cast to a pet brown he's been stalking that I can't see, a 24-inch monster laid up against the head of an island. I float a hopper over him, he explodes on it, then books down-current with line screaming off my reel behind him. Trying to slow him, I'm forced to follow on foot as he's too strong to reel. He finally snaps off after nearly finishing my twig-like 4-weight rod. My expletives would curl his gills if he were still around to hear them.

Pruett is generous about the few fish I catch that come off as he's about to net them. "It counts," he assures, "you had control." I tell him he would say that. It's probably in the Fishing Guide Rulebook to always give the fisherman the benefit of the doubt. "Of course," he admits. "Is that a 20-inch fish, or 26? That's 26. What's six inches between friends?"

But he tells it straight when I ask him how he thinks I'll do against Cheney. "First of all, he gets the front of the boat," says Pruett, meaning Cheney's fly gets first pass at all the fish. "Second, this is pretty much his backyard. I could candy-coat it, but I'd be lying. He's going to smoke your ass."

Back in Jackson the next morning, I drive to Cheney's house in the golf-course community of Teton Pines. It is not a "ranch," as is often misstated (his neighbors are close enough to hit him with a rock), but rather a tastefully unostentatious place in a zip code where captains of industry often pay for extras like heated driveways so that their car tires never suffer the inconvenience of snowfall.

Cheney is dressed in zip-off cargo pants and a fly-fishing shirt given to him by one of the lodges where he fishes. (It has "Vice President Dick Cheney" stitched above a breast pocket.) I take a backseat with him in a black Suburban. For the next hour plus, his motorcade will retrace the trek I made the day before.

Many had warned me of Cheney's lust for silence on the river. Ken Adelman once wrote, "Despite pleas over the years, [Cheney] adamantly refused to take me fly-fishing in Wyoming. When pressed, he finally explained, 'You talk too much to go fly-fishing.' "

With an unavoidable stretch of conversation before us (though Cheney did bring two books, which worries me until he tells me they are for the ride home), I probably should have gone the responsible-journalist route and grilled Cheney on matters of electoral politics and world affairs. But all either of us really wanted to talk about was fishing. So we did.

[skysoldier75]

*** Cheney deserves exactly the same kind of "going away party" when he leaves office that Benito Mussolini got when he left office.

Cheney represents all that''s wrong and corrupt and bad about America.

[im4honesty]

So Satan likes to fish! He must like torturing the worm, then torturing the fish. Much more fun than simply shooting them in the face, double your pleasure.

[messiahx4eve]

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAWWWWWWWWWWWWW, we can call him PRICK cheney and not get censored!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hmmm how bout dicktheprick cheney? That kind of fits him all around as a human ******.

[messiahx4eve]

Can we say prick cheney and not get censored?

[wakeup60]

Does anyone remember the character "Reagan" in the movie "The Exorcist"? There is one scene when the Eldery Priest was preceding with the Exorcisim-alone and Reagan got free of her bounds and made the Priest have a fatal heart attack...then the younger Priest burst into the bedroom and found the priest on the floor with Reagan smurking and gutterly laughing/Reminds me of "President" Cheney and his non-feeling persona-No wonder he and Rove are best buds/where in the hell did they find the person that wrote THIS piece of trash? But, then again Garbage begets garbage begets garbage!! In just about 4 more months and we won''t have to look at these faces any longer or be subjected to the disgusting ways they have treated Americans! Get our kids home from this senseless WAR! And let all the "BUSH BUDDIES" get on with spending all the $$$$$ they have made by killing and maiming our soldiers/enjoy every penny of that blood/oil money guys...KARMA is GREAT! Obama ''08 !!!

[ubrew12]

Cheney: "I''m so passionate about bailing out my banker buddies from their latest bubble. Thats free market capitalism at its finest!"

[sleepyric]

Cheney,,passion??? I wish only the worst for this miserable piece of human waste, and his mousy little slimy wife also..I hope he either drowns while fishing, or a bear eats him and $hits him out...piece of ***. Criminal. Now the republicans want to vote into office an equally stupid, crooked team of pukes..

[rinnie5]

liberalme,
The democrat war is afganistan.
What''''s the difference?
Is that NOT within striking distance of Iran.
Iran is the ral target baby!
We should smoke them

So....get YOUR submachine guns out of your precious gun collection and go smoke em!! Oh............I see......you would rather send some teenagers to go and fight for you. You are disgusting in your rhetoric!!!

[rinnie5]

Notice how Obama "slapped" his wife back in "her" place.
He''''s is the Boss.
She has been out of media.
Vote Obama if you want a Racist, Socialist, Communist

Your stupidity is astounding!! Michelle stays home with her children. So when she does go out and trys to help occasionally, Obama gets blamed for that?? Gaaaaag@repub slimers. How much is Palin the good mother of 5 staying with her kids? Super mom my arse. Not many moms can afford nannys, cooks etc. And don''t say the Dad is tending them...he is in every event with her........gaping and grinning like the true stoodge he is.

[rushlimpdrug]

"Fishing The Snake River With The Vice President"


Should read:

"Fishing The Snake River With A Snake"

[godseyesore-2009]

Cheney=Passion? HaHaHa. Maybe true if you define passion as also equal to criminal dementia.

[joker1944-2009]

Joseph Stalin, to this day, has a very high approval rating in Russia.

''One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.''
~ William Shakespeare

[skyk239]

Some said Hitler was a Nice Guy when you got to know him too. Most of them died soon afterward but some said it.

[bluestardad]

A COWARD THAT SENDS OTHERS TO WAR BUT REFUSES TO SERVE HIMSELF!

NO FISHING IN JAIL AFTER THE WAR CRIMES TRIALS!

[messiahx4eve]

Can we call him C*O*C*K cheney? How about P*E*N*I*S cheney? How about STUBB cheney? How''s about MR. HAPPY cheney, Meat puppet, or LIL'' D*I*C*K?

[messiahx4eve]

Can we call him *** cheney?

[sparks224]

How evil is D.ick Cheney?

Look at the damage he%u2019s done to the world.

[sparks224]

Our Father who art in heavin....
....and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from D.ick Cheney, amen.

[notfooled]

The title of this story should read "The Poison of *** Cheney."

I haven''t read this story but I don''t have to in order to know that Cheney is a bloodthirtsty, murdering war profitereer with the blood of almost a million humans on his hands.

I''m counting the days till he''s out of office and thus fair game for war crime trials for genocide around the world. He won''t be able to find a hole deep enough to hide in.

Posted by notfooled at 03:27 PM : Sep 18, 2008

[irreverent1-2009]

I think *** Cheney and Bobby Knight were born of the same mother. The world will be better off when they are both gone.