Fact1: Maclean brothers grow up in Missoula Montana with father, Fact2: bar is front for gambling and prostitution, Fact3: Paul is arrested after fighting man, Fact4: Norman is awakened in middle of night by phone call from police to come and bail Paul out of jail, Fact5: Neal and woman passed out naked in sun
Output: The Maclean brothers, Norman and Paul, grow up in Missoula, Montana with their father, Presbyterian minister John, from whom they learn a love of fly fishing for trout in the Blackfoot River. They learn to cast using a ticking metronome. The boys become accomplished fishermen as a result. Norman and Paul are home taught and must adhere to the strict moral and educational code of their father. As they grow older, it becomes clear that Norman is more disciplined and studious, while Paul is funloving, wild, and the more talented fisherman. Norman attends a July 4th dance with his friends after returning home from six years away at Dartmouth, where he meets Jessie Burns. Paul has become a reporter at a newspaper in Helena. He has angered many of the locals by falling behind in a big poker game at a bar that is a front for gambling and prostitution. He is also dating an Indian woman, Mabel, who is deemed inferior by the community. Paul is arrested after fighting a man who has insulted her, and Norman is awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call from the police to come and bail Paul out of jail. After Norman and Jessie go on several dates, she asks that Norman make an effort to get along with her brother Neal, who is visiting from California. Norman and Paul dont like Neal, but at Jessies insistence they invite him to go fishing. Neal shows up drunk with a woman he met at a bar the night before. Norman and Paul decide to fish anyway and return to their car hours later to find that Neal and the woman have drunk all the beer and passed out naked in the sun. Norman returns a painfully sunburned Neal home, where Jessie is waiting for them. She is angry that the brothers did not fish with Neal. Norman asks Jessie to drive him home, as he had brought Neal back in Neals car, and he tells her that he is falling for her. She drives away angry but a week later asks Norman to come to the train station to see Neal off. After the train departs, Norman shows Jessie a letter from the University of Chicago: a job offer for an English Literature teaching position. Norman asks Jessie to marry him. When Norman tells Paul about the job offer and marriage proposal, he urges Paul to come with him and Jessie to Chicago. Paul says that he will never leave Montana. Just before leaving for Chicago, Norman, Paul, and their father go fly fishing one last time. Paul catches a huge fish that drags him down the river through a set of rapids before he finally lands it. John proudly tells him what a wonderful fisherman he has become, and how he is an artist in the craft, much to Pauls delight. They pose for pictures with the huge fish. Soon after the fishing excursion, Norman is called by the police, who tell him that Paul has been found beaten to death in an alley. Norman goes home and tells his parents the news. Years later, Mrs. Maclean, Norman, Jessie, and their two children listen to a sermon being given by John, who dies soon after. Norman is now an old man, back in the Montana river where he used to fish with his family many years before. He says that nearly everyone from his youth is dead, including Jessie, and that he is haunted by waters.