Blue Moon Brown Blues

I had big aspirations for July's second full moon.  I made an effort to set time aside and managed three outings.  Once on the waxing moon, once on the full moon itself, and once on the wane.  Each was a very different experience.  My intention was to target browns on mice, and I spent the bulk of my nighttime hours slinging them.  I've been tossing them on a stiffer 5-weight 9-foot rod that I loaded with a weight-forward 6-weight line.  I've kept my leaders heavy and around 9 feet.  I had some disheartening break-offs earlier in the summer and decided the leader just takes too much abuse in the dark not to go heavy.  But, looking back over my summer so far, my best action has been with a lighter leader.  Maybe under a bright moon the leader has more visual impact than I might think. But the jury is still out. Those earlier trips were also on darker nights.

I had my only blue moon action from browns on the first night.  The mouse was hit three times, and I hooked up with one.  It was a decent brown around 22 or 23 inches, my second biggest mouse fish of the summer.  Later

that night I actually saw a natural mouse get taken.  It skittered out from the bank onto a weed mat, then back in.  Out and back.  Out and back.  It was so fast that it took two or three times of going in and out before I realized what I was looking at.  Then, on its fateful trip to the outer edge of the weed mat, the water exploded, and there was no return pitter-patter to the shoreline.  I roll-casted my mouse onto the spot within the second and swam it along the weedline and over the same place the real one had met its demise moments earlier. But the fish had cruised on.
There's no way I could mimic what that mouse was doing.  But I logged it away that perhaps redundant casts onto weed mats would be worthwhile.  I love the bassy-ness of chasing big browns with topwater.....

The next time out a couple nights later on the full blue moon was a different approach to the water altogether.  I'd hooked up with a new friend who fishes with the same crazy intensity I do and we headed onto one of the lakes in the series of dams here on the Missouri.  His forte is jigging the lakes, and he makes his living doing it though specialized tackle production and guiding. The thought was to toss mice, among other things, to the canyon walls in the moonlight.  So far he has been unable to dial in the nighttime bite and wanted to see if maybe mice would be the ticket. We passed the night working the shorelines without a hit. Still no leads on solving the lake's nocturnal feeding habits for browns - unless they just don't. But how could that be...

It wouldn't be fair to say we caught nothing.  Before the sun went down and we reverted to the mousing-a-lake experiment, we took several fish on jigs - rainbows and few walleye.  One beast of a fish hit a beast of a plug right at dusk, but we didn't get to see what it was.  Likely it was our one encounter with the brown we were hoping to meet that evening.

My last night out was in awesome conditions. A perfectly beautiful, windless 72 degrees.  Moonlight like daytime. I hiked along the river where I'd caught my last two biggest mousing browns.  I fished 5 or 6 hours without a hit.  Yet fish were very active, more so than most nights.  Typically you'll hear the occasional fish hit the top.  But tonight there was lots of feeding all over the full width of the river.  I came to a spot where it was apparent that larger fish were present judging by the consistent heft in the sound of the takes.  They were holding in an obvious current seam, its boundaries illuminated by the silvery moonlight's crisp sparkle where the two flow speeds met.  After no action on the mouse, I set the fly rod aside and started launching plastic jigs into the seam.  I'd packed along a spinning rod, holstered in the waist pack behind me.  I was quickly into fish, and good ones.  I landed half a dozen rainbows that were all above the twenty inch mark.  Comically, I dropped the biggest one while trying to pose for a snapshot. I don't know what they were taking from the water surface, there was no overwhelming hatch.  But they were more than willing to inhale a passing minnow in the moonlight.  Big rainbows were definitely active.  A couple small walleye came to hand as well.  

Rejuvenated with some solid fish action I resumed slinging my mouse.  Its soft "splat" onto the water seemed too enticing to pass up.  But the night ended without one take.  I suppose it was only too enticing to me - one more cast, one more cast, one more cast.

I peeled myself off the water and made it home for a nap just before the sun came up.  Maybe if I'd stayed till daylight......

Still, I suppose the stats are looking pretty good.  It was the first night this summer I'd spent mousing on the river without any action at all.   Every other trip has resulted in multiple takes, and I go home satisfied if I only get one strike in a night.  A brush with a big brown is a thrill.  Fishing for them in this manner is like somehow combining the hunt for steelhead with bass tactics.  Or does that describe musky fishing?  What's not to like!

Big moon. Big mouse. Big fun.

A major goal of mine for this year is to do more night fishing than I usually do. Rather than let it be haphazard, make it a priority. All the full moons of the year are marked on my calendar.  I hope to make at least one trip per moon between now and winter.

The first  moon of summer just occurred - and I had been anticipating it's arrival. It roughly coincided with the July 4th holiday weekend, so I figured that surely I could squeeze a night or two out of it. As it happened, we attended a July 3rd fireworks show in Butte, MT. Butte traditionally fires them off on the 3rd. After arriving home and tucking the family into bed about 1am, I loaded up and headed to the river. More than half the night was already gone, but I still had two solid hours of moonlight before the sky would start to glow again.  The moon was only a day into waning and the mountains were glowing ashy white.

I eagerly made my way along the river, searching for some boulders I knew held browns.  They weren't hard to spot, glowing white against the black water, murmuring and roaring off the canyon walls. The air was still. The temps had barely dipped into the 70s after a high of around 100 for the day.  Perfectly pleasant and wonderfully ideal.  I came prepared to experiment with several techniques, but what I really wanted to do was mouse.  After a couple hundred yards of picking my way along the shoreline I zeroed in, stowed the second rod behind me, and focused on working a mouse.

The first hit was like electricity.  I'd long ago lost any sense of being tired.  As soon as I'd slipped into my waders and cinched my boots I found a second wind. But now my senses were abuzz.  When fishing at night you become so in tune with senses that you normally don't rely on.  Listening for the hit. Deciphering what little bits of movement and trails in the water you can see.  Letting your fingers glean more from what is telegraphed through the line where your eyes might have taken over before.  Trusting that your imagination teamed with your skill is really putting your fly where you think it is and making it do what you think it's doing - more than just a shot in the dark.

When the hit happens all of that slams together into a sensory overload that makes your heart want to explode.  I may have been on a second wind, but the first hit sent me to a heightened level of alertness and anticipation that you can't manufacture on your own. It takes the jump-starting jolt of water erupting in front of you on what you know is your fly.

I'd missed the fish.  Didn't even feel it.  Maybe it missed me.  But it was exactly what you are looking for at night - the kind of explosion in the water that only a big nocturnal brown makes when he thinks he just found a steak dinner.  Whatever little bugs were hatching were just tossed aside by the rolling wake as the mouse was sucked under and lost in a sea of white foam.

I moved on, no longer questioning whether the fish would be in these rocks.  Browns are browns.  When they like a spot, they like a spot.  If one was here, almost certainly there'd be more in similar positions.  I keyed in on slots similar to where that one had been.  As the next six hits proved, they were holding close to structure in relatively shallow water.

The banks were crawling with raccoons.  The noise of their busyness among the rocks and scrub was seemingly constant.  I nearly stepped on a young one once.  Had to shoo it off the boulder we were sharing so I could move on.  I flipped my red light on at one point and counted six at once in the reach of my glow.

Bats too, were everywhere.  I fully predicted that I'd hook one before the night was out but never did.  They constantly were running into my line and swooping at my mouse.  The distinct tap of them bumping the fly line was like a fish pecking a jig, and I had to train myself not to react.  Something about the click of the fly reel drove them crazy, and whenever I gathered line back on they'd concentrate like moths on a bug zapper, all over my rod and face, then dissipate when the reeling stopped.

I finally connected with a hit that stuck when I plopped the mouse alongside a boulder and let it dead drift to the downstream side and into the eddy behind it - or at least that's what I envisioned my fly doing. When I supposed it was in the eddy, I gave a couple twitches and it was promptly engulfed in what was one of the least explosive strikes of the night. The brown showed himself immediately by going into a series of jumps and kerplunking belly flops. He didn't bulldog his way back down into the boulders like they so often do. He mostly stuck near the surface and made a couple strong tail-walking runs. I set my tripod on a rock behind me and deployed my net. It was a smallish net.  Most any net I have of appropriate size isn't easily carried. I folded him in just fine though, head and tail sticking out of opposite sides. I gave him a quick lift to the camera, shouted a voice command three or four times to trigger shots, and then slipped him back in the water. It was only then I realized I'd forgotten to turn my headlamp off. The only pic not completely washed out in red light was one where I was looking slightly down toward the fish.

As I got my gear back together I noticed the first light of dawn. It came quickly, and the bite shut off as the stars faded away. Regular surface activity picked up as rainbows started sipping bugs. I envisioned the big browns slipping back to the depths for their daytime holding routine.

I might have only landed one, but I'd accomplished what I set out to do. Over the next few days I got out twice more on two different streams, but never hit as clear and still of a night. I landed a couple smaller ones and lost a couple other brutes to broken tippet. I hate breaks.... but I've got four more full moons before November to try and redeem myself.

A little guy who wanted a head start  before the sun went down

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.

Fish much?

To all my fishing buds throughout this great nation and to readers here at home, north of the border, and across the ocean - many of you will identify. And the rest of you, well, you know who you are...

I'm asked all the time - "How do you fish so much?" Usually the person asking has a sort of sulking demeanor with a hint of self pity about them as the words roll off their tongue. Maybe they don't even say it out loud, or in those exact words, but the message is conveyed loud and clear.

That's a puzzling question really. I didn't know that I did fish all that much. It doesn't feel like I do. I certainly don't go half as much as I want to. I can't imagine I've got rod in hand more than a typical fisherman who has their priorities in line.  I've got the usual constraints keeping me off the water - a family to raise, a day job, my wife's jam-packed calendar, hunting seasons, ice, etc.

I want to ask in return "why do you just WISH you fished this much?"

Do something about it.  Look for opportunity. Make it happen. Mark the full moons on the calendar. Make plans to leave early or to come home late. It doesn't have to be anything more than whatever is available. A bluegill caught by the fountain of a city park before starting the daily grind is time well spent.  Toss a trot line in the river and swing by to check it on the way home.

I truly don't fish much, at least not by my definition of "much." Perhaps more than the regular license holder, but certainly not nearly as much I'd like, or nearly as much as I could handle, or even as much as in my more care-free past. Some people think I live on the water. My wife is likely among them, although I suspect she's blotted the pre-kid days from her memory.  Fishing is like food - just grab a snack when you're hungry.  You gotta eat.  And eating always seems to happen.  Fishing can 'just happen' too.  People can't make it a week without a favorite TV show... yet complain from the couch that they don't get to fish often.

I've lived in lots of places across the country.  Fishing opportunities were different in every spot - but I capitalized on what there was to offer.  That much hasn't ever changed.  Those orchestrated opportunistic and somewhat random opportunities include trout and smallmouth in North Carolina, largemouth, white bass, and redfish in Texas, steelhead and salmon in Washington, trout and pike in Montana - plus a multitude of visited spots and vacations in between where fishing wasn't the purpose of the trip but got squeezed in - bass and snook in Florida, flounder in South Carolina, carp in flooded timber, trout at summer camp, bluegill anywhere, bowfin in coastal swamps, creek chubs in urban streams, brookies in Colorado, pickerel in a Piedmont creek, rainbows in South Dakota, white bass and buffalo in the Great Lakes, browns in Michigan, trout and bass in Georgia, browns in Wyoming, crappie in Pennsylvania... and so on.  I'm NOT talking about planned events penciled onto calendars that you look forward to for weeks on end.  Those trips exist too.  I'm talking solely  about the trips inserted into regular life.  Spontaneousness.  Or at least semi-spontaneousness. 

I do catch some pretty awesome fish.  The screensaver on my computer gets longer all the time. But the thing about it is, half of those fish were caught on opportunistic trips.  Planning may be involved, but I'm catching fish on hour-long deviations here and there.  Of course I find them on actual day-long or multiday fishing adventures, but all those "extra" stolen opportunities add up.  Give me six or eight quick trips during a prime month on prime water to one day-long trip anytime. One of those quick trips will line up with ideal conditions, and casts made will always be to the best spots. Trips once a month or a handful of times a year don't amount to much. Rarely do they fully overlap ideal conditions - clarity, weather, moon, hatches, etc. Don't tell me you've never checked in at the local bait or fly shop to jump start your 'trip of the year' and heard "Should have been here last week."  And if you're not keeping your finger on the pulse of what's going on with the waters you fish, then likely you'll spend a chunk of your once-in-a-blue-moon fishing trip figuring things out.  Not to mention you'll just be plain rusty.  Any skill takes practice.  Any workout requires reps for results. They say even a blind hog finds an acorn on occasion - but if that hog checks the same tree on a frequent basis he's going to find more than one.  He might even discover that little divet at the bottom of the hill where acorns seem to collect.

What am I saying? I'm saying Always travel with fishing gear. If fishing isn't your thing (which I have no idea why you'd be reading this if that's the case), then pack along the equipment needed to do whatever IS your "thing."  Hiking boots. A camera. Your bike. Heaven forbid a game boy.  If I were a golfer, I'd be driving balls off scenic overlooks. Perhaps your 'equipment' is simply a book. Readers seem to have this licked - they always produce a book out of nowhere and read it in any spare moment - in the bank drive-through line, waiting for kids, during lunch, on the can - you name it. They don't whine about not having time, they just plow through book after book as life goes on.

If you want to fish, pack your stuff. Always. View daily life as an opportunity yet to be discovered like the readers do. Pull over at bridge crossings. Don't have your gear? Shame on you. At least spend five minutes putting your polarized glasses (or squinty eyes) to work. You might see something useful for next time - actual observed water levels to compare to USGS flow graphs, crawdads on the bottom, a bunch of insect shucks, a weedline, rising trout, a hatch, a deep hole, a spray of fleeing baitfish, structure, a bass suck in a frog. There's just no telling.

You do have your gear, but no time? Cast anyway! Even if its just twice. See if you get a follow or a looker. What was it? Did you just learn something?
So many times I've done this in a fishery where I wasn't sure what it supported, or in a place where I wondered if maybe I was too far below a dam in a tailwater for trout to be there. Five minutes of ripping a plug or swinging a fly and I see a rainbow swipe and miss. Maybe a brown followed or I hooked a 6-inch smallmouth.  Time to head back to the truck and get on down the road, but I'm armed with info for a later trip. They're there!....

If you've got time at all, jet down a side road and look for an access point for future. Mentally map out some floats or hikes.  Better yet, scribble on a map, take gps points. Build a catalog of spots you can hit. Some you can hit more often than others. Some you simply need to pull off at routinely, like you do at your favorite gas station or coffee shop. 10 minutes under a bridge isn't going to kill anybody's schedule. Neither will 45 minutes most of the time. 

Ignore the weather, and by that I mean go no matter what. You can take those 10 minutes under a bridge in the freezing cold, or getting poured on, or getting pelted by mosquitoes. 

Fair weather fishing equates to barely ever fishing.

Its absolutely fine if none of this appeals to you. No sense in doing something you don't enjoy. But at the same time, don't whine about how you never get to go. Just enjoy when you do, or when you choose to. I've been called crazy a thousand times for what I'll endure and what I'll finagle to carve out some fishing time. But if that's not your style, then you can hardly complain that I fish more than you. The truth is, I do the same thing you do. I look around and see folks who appear to live on the water and have all the luck - sponsors, world travel, writing gigs, guiding connections, TV shows, blogs with actual reader traffic. 

And then I whine. Just like you.

Impromptu Bear Hunt

What does a bear hunt have to do with fishing?  Not much.  But the adventure started with an attempted fishing trip.  It was just the kids and myself, and we set out to find a way into one of the more prominent drainages in the mountains near our home.  We'd looked down into it from another spot once before, but the kids being the ages they were, we didn't go further.  There's no trail I'm aware of, and any road that leads into the valley travels through private land for miles before entering forest service.  Perhaps the stream is a dud, or perhaps its a little gem tucked away under everyone's noses.

The kids and I set out to explore a possible access point, packs loaded with sandwiches, fly gear, and maybe a stuffed animal or two.  We followed the gps with ownership overlay to the point where a nearby road intersected a patch of BLM ground.  On a map it looks like a short hike over to the stream on that public ground.  In reality its a sheer rock face.  Two hundred yards away on private land it'd be a stroll through the pasture.  Such is life.  We continued on up the road till we could hike in above that cliff, but we were now way above the stream we wanted to hit.  The kids had already done a ton of vertical for their little legs and we paused to sit on the spine of the ridge to eat a sandwich and take in the view while listening to the rush of the unreachable stream pounding below us. 

It was then that I noticed a moving black dot on a slope nearly one mile distant across the valley.  A quick check with the binos confirmed what I anticipated - it was a bear.  Spring bear season was open, and I would love to have been hunting anyway.  I'd been out a few times previously but hadn't spotted one yet.  Today I figured a hunt was not realistic since it was just me and the kiddos and had settled on a different kind of adventure.  So of course I'd see one now.  And all I've got on me is the .44 mag sidearm for unpleasantly close encounters. Certainly not for lobbing slugs outside of bow range.

I watched the bear for over half an hour, and spent the entire time aiding my son and daughter in trying to find it.  I think my daughter saw it.  She's always the first to spot animals, and her body language said she was telling the truth.  My son spent too much time despairing over his inability to find it to have been able to spot it in the first place.  Trying to point it out to him was like trying to shove a melon through a keyhole.  However, he obviously believed me whole-heartedly despite not being able to find it himself (which all too often in his little mind it's "if I don't see it, it couldn't possibly exist") because when I suggested that we go on up the ridge and see if we could find a place that would allow an easier descent to the creek, he and his sister both protested that we weren't going to go after the bear.  I tried to explain it was too far and across too much terrain, plus I didn't have my rifle.  I said we'd have to go home to get it.  They jumped at that, and said "Let's do it then."

I mulled this over and decided to humor them.  In reality, it was very doable - without them.  But, this was now their hunt as much as it was mine.  I wasn't going to try and figure out a way to drop them off somewhere, even if it basically killed my chances of being able to make a move on it.  The bear was obviously content roaming over the piece of hillside he'd claimed as his own.  Chances were decent he'd be on it all afternoon.  To do this we needed to hike back to the truck and drive around to a different drainage anyway in order to be able to hike in from above the bear as well as to cross the expanse of private land between us, so why not detour another five miles and pick up the rifle at home.  We stopped at the house long enough for me to grab the rifle, some blaze orange, and stuff a few meat bags into my pack.  I dumped out the fly gear and other oddball things that were now no longer in the plans for use today and traded them for a few hunting gadgets like my rangefinder and smoke-in-a-bottle.

We drove back up into the mountains, this time on the opposite side of the drainage we'd been hoping to drop down into for the day.  Before we left the ridge we had watched the bear from, I projected where I thought the bear was and dropped a pin there on my gps - nine tenths of a mile from our vantage point on the opposite mountainside.  I knew the area a little bit from other hikes and hunts out that way and was able to tell from glassing the mountainside that we'd be able to park at a particular tailhead, hike a ways on established trail, and then drop down a spur ridge before

reaching the hollow the bear was in.  A few lone pines at the head of the slope made for good markers.  I tried to explain all of what I was doing to the kids.  The way I was mapping out the hillside for later that afternoon when we actually got there.  Why we'd need to remember those trees, that ridge, the old burned spot.  Maybe it will make sense to them later in life if not that very afternoon.

We'd spotted the bear about 3 or 3:30  and had watched it for more than half an hour.  The kids had tumbled down the mountainside and made it back to the truck in record time.  It was unbelievable seeing their motivation.  By 5:30 or so we had been home and were leaving the next trailhead.  By 6:30 we'd reached the ridge we needed to go down.  I couldn't believe their determination.  I'd never seen them hike like this.  As we were driving I'd tried to explain how there could be no whining.  There had to be silence and they had to go as fast as they could.  If they got hurt, they needed to stay as quiet as possible.  They needed to be tough if they wanted to see this bear again,  and they assured me they were up for it.  So far they were proving themselves.

We left the trail when we got to the ridge I speculated was the one above where the bear had been foraging earlier in the day.  I explained how there was only a small chance he'd still be in the same area.  I tried to temper expectations. But really, he could be anywhere around us now, given that we were just a short distance from where he'd been "as the bear walks."  I tried to impart lessons of how not to take in too much field of view before you could see it all -  how we needed to pause and look every few steps because new clearing was exposed every time we stepped;  that it was imperative we see the bear before it sees us or there'd be no chance.  We checked the wind with my little bottle of powder.  My daughter instantly grasped the concept of being smelled and asked me several times as we descended to see which way the wind was blowing.

We'd now bitten off a lot of distance and elevation.  I'd had my doubts we'd make it this far, but they were really pushing.  Their silence was stunning.  Not only did they not talk or complain, but they walked with extreme care. They stifled cries when they slipped and fell or raked thorns across their shins.  It was amazing.  I'd never seen them behave like this.  Still, we had to cover everything we'd covered so far again in a return trip.  We finally got to a vantange point that would let us confirm whether or not I'd chosen the right ridge.  Sure enough, there were the landmarks I'd noted and pointed out from the other side.  My projected gps point fell within only a few hundred yard of where I'd last seen the bear from nearly a mile away.  Had we been sitting on this spot at 3:00 in the afternoon, it would have been a very easy shot.  I showed the kids where we'd been earlier.  I tried to impress upon them the magnitude of what we'd done so far and how we'd been able to navigate right to the spot we'd been watching earlier in the day.  And then, there it was.

The bear was much further down slope from where it'd been hanging earlier.  Way down there.  It was working the margin between the edge of an aspen stand and a clearing.  It was actually on the private land, but only barely across the line.  As much wandering as it'd been doing, chances were good it'd be back on the forest service soon.  The most important thing was that now, all at the same time, all three of us could see it plain as day.  High fives and smiles were had all round at our success.  Take this bear or not, we'd pulled off a feat, and I was so thankful to have Cooper and Cadi rewarded for their efforts.  It was fun watching their excitement. I pointed out the things they'd accomplished to get us to where we were and told them how proud I was of all they'd done.

We watched the bear for a bit, and there was no indication that it was headed anywhere.  Just wandering and foraging like it had been doing all day.  I was hesitant to make the drop.  It was a lot of elevation to lose, and even as good as the kids had been doing, I was uncertain of the humongous climb that was inevitable to return to the truck.  I told it to the kids plainly, glossing nothing over - the return trip, the climb, darkness, and the fact that the bear wasn't even on land we could take it from.  They were both wholeheartedly committed to making a move.

I laid out my plan to the kids.  I pointed to the terrain we'd cover, the ridgelines we'd cross and the timber we'd hide ourselves with.  They soaked it up.  We dropped down down down.  The next time we got to a vantage point, we got to watch the bear stand on its hind legs and peer over a fence - it had crossed back onto public ground.  It scratched its back on a corner post.  We were around 600 yards out.  Well beyond what I was willing to shoot, but now within range for many folks.

One last drop got us within the range we needed to be.  Time passed and it didn't show in the beautiful strip of meadow I'd picked out that it should have appeared in based on the last course it was walking.  There were two main funnels it could be taking - the draw to the left and the draw to the right.  We zigzagged between them, peering over the edge of each trying to catch sight again.  There it was, right back at that fence post again.  The marker between public and private lands.  I held each kid up in turn so they could see it again over the tops of the trees.  Alone, I would have been on that bear a long time ago.  But this was fantastic.  I was stalking a bear with my two little buddies, and they were eating it up.  I saw the bear commit to a direction - the draw to the right - and I reacted accordingly, dashing to a slight knob below us that was going to give us a two-to-three hundred yard shot as it meandered by.  I say "dashing" but the pace was brutally slow.  Still, I felt really good about our chances as we dug in on that knob.  I deployed the bipod and started glassing in earnest.  We had made it to the moment we'd been working toward all afternoon and evening.  I had just stalked to within range of a bear with my two kids.  Only a couple days ago they had finished up kindergarten and first grade.

There were more trees than I'd hoped, and the view was solidly obstructed in a couple spots.  There were plenty of open patches for it to pass through, but just as many thickets to obscure it.  My daughter noted that the wind was good.  I shook my head that she was even thinking of that.  The minutes ticked by.  It didn't show.  Maybe it'd moved on through unaware of our presence and never crossed into our field of view.  Maybe it figured us out.  Maybe we didn't get to the little knob in time.  But it didn't show.

Obviously, if we shot this bear we'd be hiking out in the dark.  But with the bear not showing and presumably gone, I began to lean towards beginning the monumental climb while there was still daylight.  We wouldn't retrace our steps.  We would now head back up in a more direct route because of where we had ended up.  Lots of clear mountainside we couldn't have approached through before, but also some timber and old burn patches.  I was winging it a bit though, having not walked that route before, and was feeling the urge of cautiousness when it came to bushwacking our way back to the truck across a couple miles and a few hundred feet of vertical. Especially in the dark.

We eased down through the aspen stands and scattered spruce groves.  The kids maintained their vigilance as we peeked into each new opening.  If the bear was still here, it was right here.  We were walking on ground we'd watched it cover from above.  We walked up to the fence posts it had stood next to and pulled some of its hair off the barbed wire.  The kids examined the rocks it had overturned as it foraged in the field.  With teamwork, they managed to roll one of them back into the hole it'd left behind when the bear flipped it over.  We were so close!  They were so disappointed to not take it home.  And boy had they worked for it.

They watched closely as I mapped out the route ahead of us with my finger.  They weren't pleased with the climb that was coming, but they did it.  There was some moaning now and again.  Some downright whining on occasion.  But the progress was steady.  I often had each of them by the hand, one on each side.  They were scared of the idea of hiking in the dark, and still despairing over leaving the bear behind.  But the time was passed as we noted the landmarks of all the places we'd been today, now seen from yet another angle.  They'd stop and stare at the view.  Cadi would pick flowers.  Cooper found a spider eating a stink bug.  We crossed over some old mining remnants and glassed some deer.  The monotony and strenuousness of the climb was broken up with plenty of delightful deviations.  Cadi remained in high spirits, and her silliness and laughter kept Cooper happy.

The adventure was grand.  The hike was beyond incredible for what I expected out of them.  Their drive toward and attentiveness to the hunt was inspiring.  And I was in awe that they could have been that quiet.  Shocked really.  We'd accomplished far more than I expected we would, let alone actually find the bear again and then move in on it.  It is a day we'll all remember.  We didn't pull the trigger, but we had been utterly successful.  We even made it back to the truck with enough daylight to see.