King of the stream

Fish of the year (well, it's in the running at least) - and he won.  It's not that it was the biggest fish I've caught this year. Far from it. But this fish was uncannily large for the little stream it lives in. I fooled it twice, but was never in control, even for a second. I was out maneuvered from the start.

I can still see the flare of those orange slashes and the soft yellow glow of mature fish. It was the biggest cutthroat I've tangled with to date. It wasn't even a serious fishing trip - just a couple hours stolen during a family camping weekend.  After a day of hiking, the family was back at our campsite along a bold stream swollen with snow melt. It was clear, but powerful and full. Everyone seemed content to laze around, so I strung up a fly rod and started up the creek right out of the campground.

From the beginning our trip wasn't what we had intended, and as a result we were exploring somewhere new. The area we had planned to camp in was overrun. People everywhere. We ran our finger across the map, found the closest Forest Service, and decided to drive blindly up a new road. The adventure took us through old mining town long passed it's heyday. Once grand brick buildings lined nearly unused streets.  It took us up into a valley rimmed by ten thousand foot snowy peaks. People were still around, but finding a place to stuff our camper along the creek wasn't impossible. We'd settled in, made a grand supper, built a solid fire, and spent an evening under the stars listening the roar of the creek and the crack of the fire.
Not a bad salvage job.

The next day we crawled up an ever-narrowing road till we came to a spot high in the back of a valley where we could pull off and hit an old road grade for a hike. It was that hike we'd returned from with a couple hours to spare before supper time.

I started up the creek fishing a small dropper under a parachute. Fishing was tough with very little water to cast to since most of it shot by as if in a flume. I managed a few small cutthroat from a pocket here and there. One bank had an elongated run that was holding fairly still, and on the first float through an enormous cutthroat nosed the dry and moseyed back down. I brought the rod tip up anticipating heavy fight and was given an instantaneous break. A section of leader had come undone at the knot. Such an oddball thing, and so awfully untimely. I'd just hung a dry fly trailing a dropper in the jaw of a cutthroat pushing twenty inches in a small mountain stream.

I backed off the hole rather than walking through it and continued up the creek. I took the occasional small trout here and there, but overall was having a tough time drawing strikes in the swollen water.


 On the return hike to camp I stopped back by the skinny little run holding the big trout. I eased in and floated some flies through it a few times. On probably the sixth drift through, my dry abruptly sunk, and even before I raised in a hookset, I could see the same swirl of large trout moving back to where he'd come from to intercept my nymph.

This time he was on. He battled all over that little hole and then did the inevitable and shot into the raging current. He briefly held in it and then rocketed downstream. This fish was raw power, and in that current he was unstoppable. I was taken back instantly to my steelhead days where running downstream after a hooked fish was common. But here I had no room to run. Standing waves were slamming into tree trunks and the fish was deep under overhanging limbs and roots wads along an undercut bank. I knew the fight was done. I couldn't chase, and so rarely does a fish ever run back upstream in water like

this. But that's what I had to hope for. I wasn't swimming in that torrent.  I hung on longer than I expected too. I saw the fish a few more times. He ran upstream again once, but the surge forward was short lived. He surfaced and thrashed a couple times, and on his last airborne episode I could see daylight down his mouth and out through his flaring gills like a tail-walking largemouth bass.
Such a massive fish. Especially relative to the stream. No surprise when the line popped and he was gone. The hook of my tiny number 18 dropper had straightened.  I didn't think to hang on to the fly, but it occurred to me later that perhaps it should have been given an honorable discharge of some sort, like a permanent place in the visor of my truck where other worthy flies have gone to retire.

"I did well"  I consoled myself. I'd lost him once to the fluke unraveling of a leader. Then managed to hook him again later. Once he got below me, losing him to that current was to be expected. At least I got to watch him eat twice, and he showed me that big hooked jaw and orange slashes before bidding farewell and disappearing into the raging stream. I hope he finds his way back up to his quiet little feeding lane again....

I actually walked back by again the following day and wondered if he was in there. But I wasn't fishing this time, and he'd won anyway. I showed the spot to my wife as we walked along with the kids, and she just rolled her eyes. Another fish story to her, a brush with the king of stream to me.

Outdoors in Montana: 2014

2014 began with lots of changes.  The final weeks of 2013 found us moving to Helena from Billings. I'd been given the opportunity to transfer there, and things fell into place rather rapidly on all fronts to make that happen.  We celebrated New Years in a new home. And the outdoors were now at our fingertips.

I started making trips onto the Missouri right away, and by March I'd quadrupled my previous knowledge of fishing on that river. This blog was born as a result. There is so much more to learn.

2014's best rainbow

Throughout the year I regularly hit the Missouri.  I fished below Three Forks, frequently walked into the Land of the Giants, and fished all over the place below Holter. Sometimes I floated, sometimes I was on foot.  I'd slip down there to start the day,  I'd stop as I drove along to somewhere else, or I'd hike in or float and spend dawn to dusk.

2014 saw other changes too.  Turned 35.  Gray showed up more

Missouri rainbow

prominently in the sideburns. The hair on top continued its decline toward whispy like a thick foggy reluctant to burn off. There's a possibility I may have hit my belly a time or two when closing my tailgate. Sometimes when I bend over to tie my shoes or pick something up I catch myself wondering what else I might be able to accomplish while I'm down there.  And I finished out the year with a bunion surgery...

Spring brought camping trips to places like the Musselshell and Marias Rivers for browns and pike, day trips onto local waters like Park Lake in the Elkhorns for cutthroat and grayling.

Madison brown, Kit's Tackle glass minnow

Work and family trips took me to the Madison multiple times.  I fished in the Beartrap twice, above Ennis, and the stretch beneath Hebgen Lake. Each trip there saw browns over 20 inches. At least one rainbow exceeded that length along with several others that were close to breaking the mark. I also learned that often nobody is there at the first of April - or anywhere else for that matter.  Prime waters, all to yourself.

Pair of bull moose in the Elkhorn Mountains near home

We traveled through Yellowstone and the Tetons, and later Glacier. I saw more moose this year than any year previously that I've been in the West. Only one was in a national park. The rest were elsewhere, spotted while driving or hiking.  Including a pair of bulls in late summer four miles from our house. Other trips included driving roads of the Missouri Breaks, rubbernecking through Virginia City, and touring Lewis and Clark Caverns.

Typical upper Missouri walleye

2014 saw more walleye on the end of my line than probably any year prior.  And I encountered them in several places.  Its the first time in more than a dozen years that I've lived anywhere near them.
I also made a good run at northern pike this year, taking them in multiple places as well. Hooked them on surface baits, plugs, and soft plastics. The best of the year was a fat 36-incher taken on a sight-cast when my partner pointed it out as we floated by.

2014's best pike

Summer brought more floats, and some great hikes. My wife got to make some of her own solo camping and hiking trips.  She spent time in Glacier with a friend from out of state.  I joined a friend of mine on an awesome 14-mile day trip into the Beartooth wilderness to fish a couple lakes for cutthroat and saw another moose.  Summer brought camping trips to places like the Little Blackfoot River and the Boulder River and saw lots of dry fly action.  Friends and family from different parts of the country came to visit.  Some joined camping trips. Some joined trips to the national parks. Some just floated down a river with me.

2014 Tetons snapshot

In addition to those rivers already mentioned, day trips were made on others like the Stillwater, Yellowstone, Boulder, Swan, North Fork Flathead. More day trips were made to some of the same rivers from before, like the Little Blackfoot, Madison, and Missouri from its headwaters to around

Swan River rainbow on Zig Jig

Great Falls and below Fort Peck. Often those day trips would coincide with other travel in the form of an opportunity taken when passing a river, fishing a stream after a day of field work, or hitting the water at daylight before the rest of the family was ready to roll out of bed.   Some of those opportunistic trips resulted in me hooking my first several bulls, taking some nice westslope cutthroats, some crazy fighting pike, a few smallmouth bass, hawgish browns, and some fat small water rainbows.  I walked the massive Fort Peck dam and dabbled in tiny pike streams in northeast Montana along the Canadian border.  All were fish I wouldn't have caught and places I wouldn't have explored without always travelling with fishing gear.

double (headed for the grill)

An afternoon trip early in the year resulted in a phenomenal double with my six year old son.  On a summer trip my five year old daughter caught her first trout on a fly unassisted.

first unassisted catch on a fly

My kids and I also took  a number of short summer trips into the mountains around our house. These trips were for adventure and exploration for those members of the family under four feet tall.  We fashioned bows and arrows, swords, and spears.  Over the summer the arsenal in the garage grew.  We took hikes, climbed trees, and saw what we could see.  We blew up an ant hill with my .44.  On one outing we stalked a herd of cattle in the woods, and it gave the kids a glimpse of what that kind of hunt can be like.  It ended well, with a cow finally discovering our presence but unsure of what we were.  So we stood and showed ourselves and backed away before she took guarding the herd a little too seriously.

Later on we made a final adventure of 2014 to search out and track down a Christmas tree while snow shoeing in some national forest.

successful tree hunters

2013 Washington steelhead

I didn't get a trip in to Washington for steelhead like in 2013.  I sure hope 2015 brings one.

But I did travel to Michigan and brought back a Stealthcraft.  I'd spent much of the spring and summer getting the details of the order worked out, and by the end of August it was finally floating in Montana waters. While in Michigan I got to take a short trip down a small piece of the Pere Marquette.

Stealthcraft MiniFly leaving the shop

Back in Montana the boat spent the rest of 2014 taking friends and family for floats down the Missouri. Once it took a mother and son duo from Chicago on a couple November days of drifting.  There were also trips where the boat took only me down the river, and I'd ride my bike back up.

Jaime and Aiden from Chicago in the MiniFly

I started laying the groundwork for serious night fishing for big browns in 2015.  I began locating areas browns key in on and spent time getting to know reaches of river for dark floats and stretches of river bank for night hikes.  I'm going to mark off every full moon of the warm  months on the calendar and start amassing a big collection of mouse patterns and other furry fly beasts. And I also intend to see what nocturnal browns think of some bass techniques. Looking forward to some big topwater action.

Beartooths

A friend of mine in Columbus, Montana has been after me to join him on a trip into the Beartooths to check out some lakes that are on his personal list of "yet-to-be-fished" water. Previously I've only ever dabbled in relatively easy-to-reach Beartooth lakes, never having made a purposeful trip solely to fish in the backcountry. But my friend Travis makes a point of fishing new lakes up there each summer. And each summer he has to recruit new suckers join him on one of his grueling hikes. All of them are cross-country. Trails are almost never established. And if they are, he's less interested in going there. In summers past he's waited on hiking buddies to catch up, sometimes left them at one lake while hiking on to fish another, and even had folks stop and refuse to go on at the sight of a building thunderstorm. And of course, they never care to go again.

Travis and I have covered ground together before, both in hunting seasons and on fishing trips. I've packed some of his deer and he's seen me haul mine out of the mountains in single trips. He had a hunch I'd be the sucker he was looking for this summer - a guy who's nuts about fishing, perfectly able to keep up, and would turn a blind eye to any thunderstorm if fishing were involved.
The opportunity presented itself on an early August Saturday. It would only be a day trip. Over the phone in the week prior we looked at maps together. He had a lake in mind. One that had haunted him since the trip a few summers ago when his companion for the day came to a sudden halt at the edge of the plateau at the sight of a storm headed their way. There was the lake below them, the electric blue pool of water surrounded by plunging cliffs and boulder fields, only a mile and half away. One thousand vertical feet to decend. But behind them were six miles of trailess, boulder-strewn tundra and another thousand feet of vertical back down to tree line. I imagine not much was said on the hike back after Travis failed in his efforts to persuade his companion to continue.

But here we were again, at least for him, standing on the same spot. The phone call and map planning had resulted in a chosen route different from his earlier attempt. At least to this point. We had gotten up that morning in the 3 o'clock hour and four-wheeled our way ever upward till we neared the wilderness boundary. We'd strapped on our packs, loaded our .44s, and started picking our way up and out of the timber toward the 10,000-foot plateau. We'd bumped into a moose before leaving the timber. We'd slogged through spongy spots, scrambled over endless boulders, skirted remaining snow fields, and navigated around drainages that were cliffy canyons dropping 2,000 feet to streams below. Now, with six miles of hiking behind us, we looked down on our first of two lakes on the list for the day. The next mile was like walking down a giant stadium. Boulder after huge boulder stacked to the skyline above us and the valley below us at the angle of repose. It was a massive talus slope but with the contributing rock face since reduced to this mountainous pile of monumentally steep rubble. As we neared the toe, trees started to pick up. We traversed an avalanche chute and stopped to gawk at a couple alpine meadows and their hoard of wildflowers. There we were, two grown men, taking pictures of and googling at the wildflowers like a couple of high school girls picking out corsages for prom.

Another half hour across a forested valley floor and we popped out on our goal. Lake number one. Off came the packs and the four-piece rods were strung up. The first of between 90 and 100 cutthroats combined were being released just a few moments later. We forced ourselves to keep moving, skirting the lake and covering ground. Two hours later we were on the opposite side of the lake and not even beginning to tire of the magnificently colored trout being brought to hand and turned back.

At the inlet we started to climb again, hiking up to a second lake higher in the valley. Between the two lakes flowing water could be heard beneath the boulders but rarely seen. In the one little pocket we came to of exposed water, Travis caught a cutthroat as big as any we'd seen so far.

The second lake was stained glacial blue - fine sediments from the surrounding cirque hanging in suspension. Unlike the lower lake, fish were not immediately apparent, and it was a relatively long time till we landed the first one. But it was noticeably bigger than any we'd caught in the first lake. By the time we had circled the lake, we had several more, all heftier fish than those in the first lake. Some very close to the 18-inch mark.  After waiting out a passing rain shower and an August pelting of sleet while tucked under a rock overhang, we started to add fish to the stringer for the hike out.With a few of these larger fish set aside to become fillets, we dropped back down to the lower lake to complete the limit. The lower lake could obviously benefit from from the removal of a few.  Once the limit was full and the fish were cleaned and bagged, we disassembled our gear while ocassionaly cranking our necks skyward to glance at the looming mass of jumbled rock we were about to ascend. Much to our surprise when we began retracing our steps back to where we had hit the lake for the first time, we met two other men who were setting up camp. They were heartily impressed to hear we'd come in that same day and were only making a day trip of it. They only thinly veiled the fact that they thought we were crazy by calling us "ambitious." They had a night to sleep on it but were already dreading the return trip themselves.

The climb out wasn't that bad. It was long, but we made it back to the vehicle in daylight. Having done so meant that we'd accomplished every goal for the day, along with a few bonuses like seeing the moose.

Little cutts, little girl.

In Film Canisters and Cane Poles: a fly history I commented how I might like to break out the old Eagle Claw glass fly rod sometime this summer and introduce it to a few cutthroats.  I got the opportunity this past weekend when my family and I took a short hike up a stream. Mostly it was just a day getaway.  A picnic.  A walk in the woods.  I even took note of a few features for the upcoming elk season.  But, like any outing that happens to pass near fertile trout water, a rod must also be involved.  Two hikes ago we were also along a stream, and I employed the ole "film canister" technique.  That is, I cut a long whippy stick for my kids to trade off flipping a fly into the stream with.  The results were less than stellar, mostly due to the young-ness and lack of intuition my kids possess so far when it comes to approaching water with the intent to catch something.  So this time I packed actual fly rods, knowing there was potential to put in more time on the water.  Even my wife carried her rod.  In the end though, it was still mostly me who fished.  The kids climbed around log jams, scaled high cut banks calving away into the water, took unintentional swims, and fended off all sorts of imaginary dangers that threatened our very existence in the woods.  My wife, very unaware of the danger she was being spared from, read a book in a tranquil patch of sunlight along the spruce-lined stream.  Her rod never got assembled.

My daughter however, joined me on two prolonged stints of casting.  The first one with the old Eagle Claw.  Generally she takes instruction very well and usually puts it to use right away, no matter what the topic.  Today she would have none of it.  I still snuck a hand onto the rod occasionally and made the fly land a little better, and those were generally the drifts that hookups came from.  She did, however, on her second round of casting later in the afternoon, catch one entirely on her own.  She made somewhat of a circular cast, lifting the line as it passed by her and rolling it back up in front.  And on that roll she picked up her first-ever unassisted fly-caught trout when the fly came to rest upstream again.  The fly line was not in her hands and as she lifted the rod the reel spun freely - the drag singing out like she'd just hooked a steelie fresh from the ocean.  Made for some excitement.  A minute later she dragged the nine-inch cutthroat onto the wet gravel in front of her and scooped it up for me to take the hook out of.  She insisted on personally letting each and every fish go that she was around for.  At least after she had come to terms that we weren't keeping any on this trip.

The faithful yellow rod of my youth found new life in the hands of my daughter.