One Last Montana Fishing Day

[Al Agnew]

I called my friend Tom, the former guide whose business is now restoring and enhancing trout streams, to see if we could get in one more day of fishing before we left for Missouri. The weather out here has been phenomenal--I asked him when they moved Montana to Arizona. The temps have been in the 70s all this past week. Today was supposed to be the last warm day, however; by mid-week the highs are expected to be in the 30s.

Tom immediately said that he had permission to fish Nelson's Spring Creek, which is something you just don't pass up.

Nelson's Spring Creek is the smaller of the two Paradise Valley spring creeks. These two creeks emerge in the floor of the valley and parallel the Yellowstone, one on either side, for a couple of miles before entering the river. Nelson's flows about 40 cfs, while Armstrong's flows about 90 cfs.

Tom filled me in on some of the facts about these spring creeks. In the thread about trying to make Missouri's stream access laws like Montana's, I mentioned that the spring creeks apparently aren't subject to the law that says that anybody has the right to fish any stream they can legally access, no matter whether it's on private land or not. As it turns out, Nelson's is owned by two different families. The pay to fish portion of the creek is owned by the Nelson family, but another landowner owns both the upper end (about a quarter mile including the spring itself) and the lower end (about a half mile down to the river). He does not run it as a pay to fish creek, and actually anglers DO have the right to come up from the Yellowstone to fish the lower end, but the Fish and Game people have put up signs telling people not to wade in the creek from spring to September, due to it being critical spawning habitat for native cutthroats. And the upper end is not accessible from any public access (although the spring actually emerges just a few yards from the Yellowstone, but up a high bank).

As for the other, larger spring creek, it is also owned by two families, both of which run pay to fish operations. The prices are now up to over $100 per rod per day during the summer and early fall, but drops to $60 a day in the off season. The reason it is exempt from the access law has to do with its history. The spring used to emerge and enter the river almost immediately, but there is a good sized creek coming out of the mountains that once flowed very near the spring before going on down the valley parallel to the river for a couple of miles before entering it. At some point, the Armstrong family decided to divert the spring into the creek, which created a "man-made" spring creek and incidentally enriched both the Armstrongs and the DePuys.

The original intent was to have free-running water for livestock in the middle of hard Montana winters when most of the creeks freeze. But as it happened, Joe Brooks, the famous angler and fishing writer, was invited to Nelson's back in the early 1950s, and ended up staying with his wife in an old cabin with an outhouse and no hot water every summer for a number of years. Joe convinced the Nelsons to open a pay to fish operation on the creek because it was such phenomenal fishing, and he wanted it to stay that way. He figured that if the Nelsons were making money from anglers, they wouldn't do anything to mess up the creek.

The operation was a success, and that encouraged the Armstrongs and DePuys to open up their own pay to fish business. Only problem was, Trail Creek, the creek through which the spring was diverted, often runs high and muddy during the spring and early summer. That's the peak period for fishing the spring creeks, because the Yellowstone is always too high to fish then. But Trail Creek was messing up the whole operation. So they did another diversion, this time diverting Trail Creek OVER as well as around the spring, running it through what was once the short channel from the spring to the river. During normal flow, Trail Creek goes over the upper end of the spring creek in a steel viaduct. So now the spring creek runs clear all year.

A few other interesting things about these creeks...all three families still own their ranches and the ranches are still working ranches, which is getting to be a rarity in Paradise Valley because most of the old landowners saw dollar signs when the real estate boom happened, and sold off their lands to developers.

The river is continually trying to break into the spring creeks in high water, since they parallel it, in places only a few yards from the river. During the record floods of 1996 and 1997, the river did flow through Armstrong's, and really changed it in many areas.

These creeks are very important spawning habitat for rainbow, brown, and native Yellowstone cutthroat. They have very robust year-round trout populations, but also get a lot of trout coming up out of the river in spawning season. They are strict catch and release both by Game and Fish regulations and by owners' rules.

Which brings me to today. It is spawning season for brown trout, and Tom said there should be some big browns in Nelson's getting ready to spawn. Tom had permission to fish the creek, other than the pay-to-fish section, because he'd done quite a bit of work improving the creek habitat for the other landowner. The problem with these creeks is that, since they don't flow really fast and don't flood, they tend to silt in, and Tom's company had worked with a quarter mile section of the lower end to dredge out silt and put in obstructions that would help scour the silt.

So our first stop was at the section where he'd worked to improve habitat. We walked along the bank and looked into the crystal water, and could see plenty of fish. This section has riffles and pools, with the pools being 2-4 feet deep. Aquatic vegetation covers much of the bottom, and the clean gravel redds of the spawning browns were obvious against the green plant mats. We didn't plan on harassing the bedding browns, but we could also see plenty of fish, both browns and rainbows, that weren't in the throes of spawning.

Tom went a bit upstream to a couple of narrow, deep runs to nymph them, while I set up at a nice riffle leading into a running pool about 3-4 feet deep, where I could see a bunch of fish. Tom immediately started catching small (10-12 inch) browns. I was fishing a bushy dry fly more as an indicator rather than in hopes of catching a fish on it, with a small nymph on a dropper about three feet below the dry. After a couple dozen drifts through the trough with no takers, I switched nymphs to a size 18 olive emerger. Bingo. First drift I hooked a beautiful 17 inch rainbow that jumped all over the creek. Tom watched me land it and said that I'd caught more poundage than him in just one fish.

A few more drifts produced nothing else, but just upstream, below the riffle, I spotted a much bigger rainbow holding in the current, and a pod of nice browns just below. The light was perfect to see these fish, but a log jutting out into the current above them made getting a good drift a real problem. I probably made three dozen casts before I finally hit just the right spot, barely skimming the log at the top of the drift, and right into the lane where that big rainbow was. I watched the trout more than my dry fly indicator, and sure enough saw it move very subtly just as the dry was in what I thought was the right place. I lifted up on the rod and felt the fish, seeing it shake its head as it first realized it was hooked. But then the hook pulled loose.

I caught a few smaller fish up in the riffle before losing the emerger on a much bigger fish. That was my only fly like that, and several fly changes later I hadn't gotten a thing, so I waded up to where Tom was fishing. He had started catching some nice fish, browns and rainbows, and also some whitefish. I came up on his shoulder and watched the water, and both of us saw the three huge browns at about the same time, lying in a trough in the weeds just above a riffle. All three were 26 inch class fish, bigger than anything you usually see in these spring creeks. But they were spooky, and a couple of casts from Tom ran them up into the deeper pool above.

Tom decided to go down near the river and try a long run of deep water there, and I decided to fish my way down to him tossing a streamer. Not long after I started downstream I briefly hooked a big brown; it looked to be about 20 inches. Then I caught a small brown, and then a beautiful 16 inch cutthroat. I got one more fish to take the streamer, but lost it as well. As I waded down the creek, I came upon more and more redds with browns on them, and had to be careful not to wade through some of them. I reached Tom an hour or so later, and he hadn't caught much in the run he'd been fishing.

By this time it was getting fairly late into the afternoon, so we decided to go back up to where those big browns had been. Tom wanted me to fish while he took pictures with a new camera he'd just gotten for a birthday present. I started fishing in the run below the riffle where we'd seen those browns, and immediately caught a couple whitefish. Then toward the bottom of the riffle I hooked a gorgeous 19 inch rainbow. Tom got some good pictures of me playing it and then holding it. The next drift I hooked an even bigger rainbow but didn't have it on long.

Having warmed up and established that those fish were taking the nymph I had on, I very carefully eased up to where I could drift the trough where we'd seen the big browns. Several drifts missed the narrow trough, but then I got one just right. The tiny indicator I was using stopped, I lifted up on the rod, and I had one! Tom had moved up to a rotten old bridge farther up the pool above, and he got a good look at the fish as it took off on a sizzling run up into that deeper water. Then it turned, shot back down, leaped completely clear of the water right in front of me, making me gasp at the size of it. It shot down through the riffle, then came back up the riffle just as I thought I'd have to follow it downstream. I had on 4X fluorocarbon tippet, so I knew I'd have to play it carefully. It was a wild fish, continually making runs, once trying to get to a big log and fortunately turning away at the last moment, because I couldn't stop it. Finally it started to tire. Tom had come down to me to get photos, and I thought I had it licked. And then it made one more downstream run, and the hook pulled out!

Oh well, it was a real treat just to see a fish that big on the end of my line. It was easily 26 inches and very broad, with a tail that looked 8 inches wide. The picture of it making that first wild leap is etched upon my mind and will be for a long time.

We fished a bit longer, and Tom caught a couple of 17 inch rainbows, but I was happy to call it quits after that fish. It was a great way to end a season in Montana!

[Mitch f]

I called my friend Tom, the former guide whose business is now restoring and enhancing trout streams, to see if we could get in one more day of fishing before we left for Missouri. The weather out here has been phenomenal--I asked him when they moved Montana to Arizona. The temps have been in the 70s all this past week. Today was supposed to be the last warm day, however; by mid-week the highs are expected to be in the 30s.

Tom immediately said that he had permission to fish Nelson's Spring Creek, which is something you just don't pass up.

Nelson's Spring Creek is the smaller of the two Paradise Valley spring creeks. These two creeks emerge in the floor of the valley and parallel the Yellowstone, one on either side, for a couple of miles before entering the river. Nelson's flows about 40 cfs, while Armstrong's flows about 90 cfs.

Tom filled me in on some of the facts about these spring creeks. In the thread about trying to make Missouri's stream access laws like Montana's, I mentioned that the spring creeks apparently aren't subject to the law that says that anybody has the right to fish any stream they can legally access, no matter whether it's on private land or not. As it turns out, Nelson's is owned by two different families. The pay to fish portion of the creek is owned by the Nelson family, but another landowner owns both the upper end (about a quarter mile including the spring itself) and the lower end (about a half mile down to the river). He does not run it as a pay to fish creek, and actually anglers DO have the right to come up from the Yellowstone to fish the lower end, but the Fish and Game people have put up signs telling people not to wade in the creek from spring to September, due to it being critical spawning habitat for native cutthroats. And the upper end is not accessible from any public access (although the spring actually emerges just a few yards from the Yellowstone, but up a high bank).

As for the other, larger spring creek, it is also owned by two families, both of which run pay to fish operations. The prices are now up to over $100 per rod per day during the summer and early fall, but drops to $60 a day in the off season. The reason it is exempt from the access law has to do with its history. The spring used to emerge and enter the river almost immediately, but there is a good sized creek coming out of the mountains that once flowed very near the spring before going on down the valley parallel to the river for a couple of miles before entering it. At some point, the Armstrong family decided to divert the spring into the creek, which created a "man-made" spring creek and incidentally enriched both the Armstrongs and the DePuys.

The original intent was to have free-running water for livestock in the middle of hard Montana winters when most of the creeks freeze. But as it happened, Joe Brooks, the famous angler and fishing writer, was invited to Nelson's back in the early 1950s, and ended up staying with his wife in an old cabin with an outhouse and no hot water every summer for a number of years. Joe convinced the Nelsons to open a pay to fish operation on the creek because it was such phenomenal fishing, and he wanted it to stay that way. He figured that if the Nelsons were making money from anglers, they wouldn't do anything to mess up the creek.

The operation was a success, and that encouraged the Armstrongs and DePuys to open up their own pay to fish business. Only problem was, Trail Creek, the creek through which the spring was diverted, often runs high and muddy during the spring and early summer. That's the peak period for fishing the spring creeks, because the Yellowstone is always too high to fish then. But Trail Creek was messing up the whole operation. So they did another diversion, this time diverting Trail Creek OVER as well as around the spring, running it through what was once the short channel from the spring to the river. During normal flow, Trail Creek goes over the upper end of the spring creek in a steel viaduct. So now the spring creek runs clear all year.

A few other interesting things about these creeks...all three families still own their ranches and the ranches are still working ranches, which is getting to be a rarity in Paradise Valley because most of the old landowners saw dollar signs when the real estate boom happened, and sold off their lands to developers.

The river is continually trying to break into the spring creeks in high water, since they parallel it, in places only a few yards from the river. During the record floods of 1996 and 1997, the river did flow through Armstrong's, and really changed it in many areas.

These creeks are very important spawning habitat for rainbow, brown, and native Yellowstone cutthroat. They have very robust year-round trout populations, but also get a lot of trout coming up out of the river in spawning season. They are strict catch and release both by Game and Fish regulations and by owners' rules.

Which brings me to today. It is spawning season for brown trout, and Tom said there should be some big browns in Nelson's getting ready to spawn. Tom had permission to fish the creek, other than the pay-to-fish section, because he'd done quite a bit of work improving the creek habitat for the other landowner. The problem with these creeks is that, since they don't flow really fast and don't flood, they tend to silt in, and Tom's company had worked with a quarter mile section of the lower end to dredge out silt and put in obstructions that would help scour the silt.

So our first stop was at the section where he'd worked to improve habitat. We walked along the bank and looked into the crystal water, and could see plenty of fish. This section has riffles and pools, with the pools being 2-4 feet deep. Aquatic vegetation covers much of the bottom, and the clean gravel redds of the spawning browns were obvious against the green plant mats. We didn't plan on harassing the bedding browns, but we could also see plenty of fish, both browns and rainbows, that weren't in the throes of spawning.

Tom went a bit upstream to a couple of narrow, deep runs to nymph them, while I set up at a nice riffle leading into a running pool about 3-4 feet deep, where I could see a bunch of fish. Tom immediately started catching small (10-12 inch) browns. I was fishing a bushy dry fly more as an indicator rather than in hopes of catching a fish on it, with a small nymph on a dropper about three feet below the dry. After a couple dozen drifts through the trough with no takers, I switched nymphs to a size 18 olive emerger. Bingo. First drift I hooked a beautiful 17 inch rainbow that jumped all over the creek. Tom watched me land it and said that I'd caught more poundage than him in just one fish.

A few more drifts produced nothing else, but just upstream, below the riffle, I spotted a much bigger rainbow holding in the current, and a pod of nice browns just below. The light was perfect to see these fish, but a log jutting out into the current above them made getting a good drift a real problem. I probably made three dozen casts before I finally hit just the right spot, barely skimming the log at the top of the drift, and right into the lane where that big rainbow was. I watched the trout more than my dry fly indicator, and sure enough saw it move very subtly just as the dry was in what I thought was the right place. I lifted up on the rod and felt the fish, seeing it shake its head as it first realized it was hooked. But then the hook pulled loose.

I caught a few smaller fish up in the riffle before losing the emerger on a much bigger fish. That was my only fly like that, and several fly changes later I hadn't gotten a thing, so I waded up to where Tom was fishing. He had started catching some nice fish, browns and rainbows, and also some whitefish. I came up on his shoulder and watched the water, and both of us saw the three huge browns at about the same time, lying in a trough in the weeds just above a riffle. All three were 26 inch class fish, bigger than anything you usually see in these spring creeks. But they were spooky, and a couple of casts from Tom ran them up into the deeper pool above.

Tom decided to go down near the river and try a long run of deep water there, and I decided to fish my way down to him tossing a streamer. Not long after I started downstream I briefly hooked a big brown; it looked to be about 20 inches. Then I caught a small brown, and then a beautiful 16 inch cutthroat. I got one more fish to take the streamer, but lost it as well. As I waded down the creek, I came upon more and more redds with browns on them, and had to be careful not to wade through some of them. I reached Tom an hour or so later, and he hadn't caught much in the run he'd been fishing.

By this time it was getting fairly late into the afternoon, so we decided to go back up to where those big browns had been. Tom wanted me to fish while he took pictures with a new camera he'd just gotten for a birthday present. I started fishing in the run below the riffle where we'd seen those browns, and immediately caught a couple whitefish. Then toward the bottom of the riffle I hooked a gorgeous 19 inch rainbow. Tom got some good pictures of me playing it and then holding it. The next drift I hooked an even bigger rainbow but didn't have it on long.

Having warmed up and established that those fish were taking the nymph I had on, I very carefully eased up to where I could drift the trough where we'd seen the big browns. Several drifts missed the narrow trough, but then I got one just right. The tiny indicator I was using stopped, I lifted up on the rod, and I had one! Tom had moved up to a rotten old bridge farther up the pool above, and he got a good look at the fish as it took off on a sizzling run up into that deeper water. Then it turned, shot back down, leaped completely clear of the water right in front of me, making me gasp at the size of it. It shot down through the riffle, then came back up the riffle just as I thought I'd have to follow it downstream. I had on 4X fluorocarbon tippet, so I knew I'd have to play it carefully. It was a wild fish, continually making runs, once trying to get to a big log and fortunately turning away at the last moment, because I couldn't stop it. Finally it started to tire. Tom had come down to me to get photos, and I thought I had it licked. And then it made one more downstream run, and the hook pulled out!

Oh well, it was a real treat just to see a fish that big on the end of my line. It was easily 26 inches and very broad, with a tail that looked 8 inches wide. The picture of it making that first wild leap is etched upon my mind and will be for a long time.

We fished a bit longer, and Tom caught a couple of 17 inch rainbows, but I was happy to call it quits after that fish. It was a great way to end a season in Montana!

It makes you come back for more! How much do feel that fish weighed?

[Al Agnew]

Tom guessed it at around 8 pounds. I don't have any idea how close that is, since I've never weighed a trout in my life! Maybe somebody else on here can give you a better idea...figure 26 inches and fat.

[eric1978]

Tom guessed it at around 8 pounds. I don't have any idea how close that is, since I've never weighed a trout in my life! Maybe somebody else on here can give you a better idea...figure 26 inches and fat.

That would fall in the "who cares" category in my book. Giant wild brown on a small spring creek in Montana on a 70 degree day in November? Don't get no better.

[ozark trout fisher]

Great report. Thanks

p.s

I had always wondered why the spring creeks weren't covered in the stream access law there-now I know. Interesting stuff. I have yet to fish any of the Paradise Valley creeks, but that may be one situation where I would break an aesthetic rule of mine and pay for a day out there sometime. It sounds pretty neat.