First Report From Montana

[Al Agnew]

Report from today (Saturday): It was a beautiful day, sunny, temps in the 50s, and LIGHT wind. I had planned to spend the day painting, but after painting for a couple hours the weather outside the window just looked too good.

The river, however, has gotten pretty murky the last couple of days. The Gardiner River up in Yellowstone Park flows past the big bare rock and dirt mountain on your left as you enter the park and wind your way up to Mammoth Hot Springs, and the snow has been melting off that mountain and turning the Gardiner to pure mud, which is being dumped into the Yellowstone. So although the Yellowstone has only risen a couple inches, it now has visibility of about 18 inches.

I started fishing big nymphs up at the riffle where I caught the fish the other day. Nothing. Down the run below, caught one whitefish. Spent a lot of time in that run, fishing it as thoroughly as possible, but no trout. I love fishing big streamers in murky water, so I put on a yellow and brown woolybugger to finish out the run, which goes for several hundred yards to the lower end of the island, where the channel splits, with the smaller portion but better looking water swinging into the bank upon which the house sits. The little channel between the house and our island has been nearly dry except for pools, but the pools are holding a few small trout. As that channel nears the lower end of the island there is a bigger pool, and then a fairly deep backwater where it joins the channel that splits off at the end of the island. After fishing down the rest of the run with the streamer with no luck, I decided to go see if I could get anything out of that bigger pool and the backwater.

Well, I did. First a nice 17 inch rainbow that came from the deepest part of the pool, and then a 17 inch brown that came out from under a beaver lodge at the edge of the backwater. That was all, but it was fun.