Time well wasted: a daddy-daughter day

One trip, two perspectives

My soon to be eight-year old daughter and I took a day trip over the continental divide and into new trout country to us.  We'd planned to do so when school ended for the summer. The premise was fishing. The idea was to explore new creeks and look for some dry fly action. It didn't really go all that well from my perspective, at least as viewed through the lens of my expectations. I'd planned to write about the trip and took mental notes in preparation. I had essentially scrapped the idea late in the day, thinking there really wasn't much to tell -  and then found that my daughter had already written about the trip. She'd captured the day's events in a little notebook in the back seat of the truck. Eight short pages of dedicated second-grade scrawl made over bumpy roads. Fresh insight into her day, and how she'd seen it through something other than my expectations.


We left the gas station with freshly washed windows, streaked in the places she couldn't reach very well.  She loves to wash the windows of my truck anytime I'm pumping gas.  Doesn't matter the weather.  She tore into the little treat we'd bought from the candy racks and shared a bite with me.

Beside me in the front seat our fly rods rattled and buzzed.  She had a new one that was all her own.  Ratty Montana road maps used to the point of falling apart lay under them. Leaving the house had been delayed when at first I couldn't find these maps. Our waist packs were on the floor boards with the fly gear for the day stuffed into them.  Her little purple bag contained a box full of "the pretty ones" she'd selected from my fly boxes earlier that morning.

30 inches of mouse-eater: a morning of predators

When was the last time you saw a 30-inch brown and a mountain lion in the same day? 

For me it was as June's full moon faded into morning.

I chuckled to myself as I slid my net into my waist pack and looked up at the moonlit slopes.  Here I was in a fairly popular spot for recreational users without another person around.  I picked up my eight weight, slid my fingers down the heavy furled leader, along the 16lb tippet, tested the knot, and then stowed the mouse on the keeper.  This evening I had decided to try somewhere new.  I had scouted the place earlier in spring, so I had hiked it in the daylight, but this would be the first overnighter. The spot required more time investment than my usual places.  I planned to finish up about two miles from where I'd parked.  I had driven about an hour from home.  Given the added remoteness, I added my .44 to my belt.  Aside from the occasional coon who doesn't want to give way,  I haven't had any midnight encounters - but there wasn't any need to tempt one tonight by being unprepared.  Once last summer I had a bear mosey along the slopes well above me.  It moved along noisily and bellowed once as it faded away. I figured it was saying good bye.

I shut my tailgate and hit the trail.  The time was now 11:00pm.  Five solid hours of mousing lay ahead of me.  Memories of key pieces of rock structure mentally noted six weeks ago were on my brain. I'm learning to treat mousing for browns like tournament bass fishing - skip the 'so-so' water and hit the primary structure.  Then move on. No need to waste limited darkness picking the entire shoreline apart.

My run-in with 'beaver' trout

Sunset over the house - time to get ready to fish!

There's an image burned into my brain. A week ago on a partially moonlit night I was swimming a mouse along a vertical rock wall on a river clear enough to fish but swollen with snow melt. It's a wall that's been productive over the last few summers, accounting for more than one of my larger browns. So far this summer I haven't been touched along it. I mostly chalked this up to high water, figuring it may be a holding point during lower summer flows that are yet to come. Still, I stood for several minutes and many casts making sure to work the wall thoroughly. You can't reach it all from the bank. And you can't wade. It bulges out and then tucks back in out of view. So toward the end of the time I spend on it I start getting creative with long sweeping casts that I try to make wrap around the rock face beyond the line of sight. Basically just feeding line and hoping the fly rides up against the rock. I do this from a slightly elevated position, which aids in being able to cast, but also provides a fateful view of what's below.

Mousing: June signals the opening of nocturnal big game season

May has given way to June.  With that shift begins a new summer of night fishing.
Mousing has picked up.  There was surface action the entire month of May, but it is

Best mousing brown of May 2017

just getting better the deeper we get into June. The waxing moon in the first part of the month is making casting easier and the takes visual. The number of strikes received in a night is climbing as the water warms and shallow water forage becomes more prevalent. I'm seeing more  scampering mice both by headlamp along the river  and in my headlights while driving. Frogs will be out soon. I'm beginning to see crayfish venturing along the margin of water and dry land.  All in all, the reasons for a big trout to hunt the shallows in the dead of night are mounting up.  To me, this is some of the best opportunity of the year to tangle with a trophy trout.  And what better way to do it than on topwater baits during the adventure of nighttime on a river void of other anglers.

On the night of June 2nd and into the 3rd, I was accompanied by my friend Josh who has worked in the fly fishing industry but had never moused. The night was calm and partially moonlit. Once the sun was fully gone around 10:30 p.m. and darkness had set in, we dropped into the section of river I intended to fish and began some practice and instruction. Nothing major, just getting the general feel for what we'd be doing.

Night tools

Mousing to me is kind of like swinging streamers at short range. It's everything you're not supposed to do when dry fly fishing. Downstream casts. Drag. Tight line. Wake. Splashes.
During our practice run Josh had two hits. He asked "Is this one of your special spots?"
"Nope, this is a 'nothing' spot. Just meant to practice." That boded well for the night. 

A short distance downstream we came to the first piece of serious structure I wanted to target.  We scrambled over some boulders and got into a decent casting position. Within a cast or two Josh fed his mouse to where the current wrapped around the point of a boulder just as I described. An audible slurp signaled a take and Josh set into solid fish. It didn't break top again in any of the usual ways. No rolling, splashing, or jumping. It just turned downstream and set Josh's reel to singing - and against a tight drag. He was through the fly line and into backing almost instantly. The fish blew through the next few points of structure I'd intended to focus on and went around a big jam - passing around the outside edge and then tucking in behind it downstream, still peeling line as it plowed into the next big pool.

Out of the ordinary

The prairie is an intriguing landscape - it can be exceedingly more rugged than you might expect, or be soft and endlessly rolling like swells on the ocean.  Sometimes forested island mountain ranges pop up out of the sea of grass.  Other times deep coulees or canyons filled with stands of piney timber - and big enough to swallow entire cities - are abruptly carved from what first appeared to be flat land.  In the far east and north of Montana the prairie flattens and becomes wetter as the higher plains give way to the prairie pothole region.  Throughout each of these terrains flow streams.  Streams that wind through miles of empty space, draining vast pieces of America and southern Canada that most of the population never sees.

Across northern Montana, each of these make their way to the Missouri River on their eventual path to the Gulf of Mexico.  The waterways are not as plentiful as they are in the mountains.  The relaxed landscape contains watersheds spread over many more square miles than those squeezed into the small spaces between ridges and ranges.  Many of the tributaries only flow intermittently. Some perennial creeks flow muddy and are steep-banked.  Many flow surprisingly clear. Often I can find pike or walleye in them.  I've caught northerns in the tiniest trickles, in larger rivers, and in isolated ponds. None of these waters are places that many people purposely seek out.  The locals fish them of course, but no one travels to Montana with these streams in mind.  I enjoy the small opportunities I'm handed when travel takes me across them.  I make sure to be ready.  This time I was hoping for pike.

UPS truck on a rural prairie road

My vehicle was packed. Everything I needed for a few days of work was in there. And then there was everything else - a tote with various boxes of plugs and bags of plastics, several spinning reels, just as many fly reels, three different lumbar packs prepped for spinning or fly, waders and boots, a net, and multiple rod tubes. Surprisingly all this recreational equipment fits into nooks and crannies and was out of sight. Hopefully there'd be time when each day's work was done. I knew there would be. I have a way of always finding that time. Even if it is dark before I start.