Another Montana Report

[Al Agnew]

It's been either cold or windy or both out here, and I've been busy anyway. Went out once for an hour or so just before dark, and hooked and lost a nice brown and caught two 13-14 inch cutthroats on streamers.

Today it was pretty nice, temp around 50 degrees, light wind from the east (upstream where I am), kinda hazy cloudy. I had other things to do til around 4 PM, but the rest of the afternoon free, so I headed down to the river.

I started out at the riffle on the downstream end of the island. There's a sweet little spot on one side of the riffle that just looks completely fishy, with nice current dropping suddenly from a foot deep to about 4 feet deep. The first time I ever fished it I caught a nice rainbow there, but ever since then I've caught nothing but whitefish, though I've caught trout all around that one spot. It's like a whitefish condo. And today I caught two whitefish from it.

Nothing else anywhere around the riffle on nymphs, so I headed up the island along the main channel. The bank along there starting at the head of that lower riffle is cobble, slanting at about a 30 degree angle off into several feet of water, with smooth, swirling current along it. For some reason, there are always fish rising along that bank even when they are not rising anywhere else...and for the life of me I can't figure out exactly what they are eating. It happened all last summer and fall, and today it was happening again. Rise after rise, some of them appearing to be good fish. I peered into the water, looking for anything drifting, and once in a while I could see a very small midge or two, or at least what looked like midge shucks. But really nothing much on the surface.

In the summer, these fish are exceedingly tough to catch. If you start out below them, as I was, you're apt to "line" them, landing the fly above them but the line right on top of them, and they don't like that one bit. But I hoped that they'd be a little less sophisticated after a long winter, so I decided to try the pod closest to me from below.

So what fly to try? Well, my buddy the former guide had told that this time of year, if the conditions are right, there will be a hatch of big midges that the fish really key on. Didn't look like the midge thing was happening, but I thought maybe the fish would be looking for it to get going, so I tied on a size 16 Griffith's Gnat. Fuzzy little dark gray and light gray mottled hackle, black body fly that's all body and hackle, no wings or tail. It beautifully imitates mating midges, when two or three of them clump together.

The first fish I tried was rising within three feet of the bank in water no more than a foot deep, and I figured it would be a little one, hopefully a stupid one, to get me warmed up for the first dry fly fishing of the year. I marked the rise by picking out a distinctive rock at water's edge before casting. I have a tendency to let my eyes follow the rings of the rise as they drift downstream instead of marking where it actually happened, and then casting too far downstream. This time the cast was perfect, the fly landing about two feet above where the fish was rising, with the 9 ft. leader stretched out below so the fly line shouldn't have scared the fish. It drifted a foot and disappeared in the rise. I lifted the rod and felt the fish...and it was surprisingly heavy. It shot out into the current and then leaped three feet out of the water, a 16 inch rainbow.

I got it in, snapped a photo with it lying on its side in a few inches of water (photo to come later), and released it. Picked out the next fish, and caught it on the third drift. It was a smaller rainbow, about 13 inches, but it leaped all over the river.

The next few fish were tough. They'd come up and look at the fly and refuse it, with just a little swirl under the fly. I switched to a smaller Griffith's and caught one of them, a 10 inch rainbow that shouldn't have been that wary. And then as I worked my way up the river, the rest of the risers got really tough. I got one more 10 inch rainbow, but I know I lined several nice fish.

Okay...there was one more pod of risers, well upstream, so I decided to circle around on the bank and approach them from upstream. The first one refused, but the second one took solidly. It turned out to be a very pretty 14 inch Yellowstone cutthroat.

I moved up to the riffle at the head of the island, which is, as I said in the other thread, a terrific riffle to fish in the summer. With the water still as low as it is, there is a very quiet eddy on the near side of the riffle, and I'd noticed the last time I was there that it had a lot of foam in it. Those foam-covered eddies are trout magnets in warmer weather, and you'll almost always see fish sipping on bugs right in the foam. The foam was where I had hooked the nice brown on a streamer the last time I'd been on the river, but no fish had been rising there then. I was hoping for risers this time.

No rises in the foam, but in the still quiet water below there were a few fish rising. I fished them and caught another small rainbow, and then another nice 14 inch cutthroat.

There were rises in the flat above that riffle, so I waded up there and fished for them as it got closer and closer to dark, but they were being picky. I had two takes and caught one more small rainbow, and then it was time to head for the house. Nice afternoon.

[Zach Bearden]

Al, I love the way you describe this river! Sounds great. Keep it up, I'm dying for some wild trout and this is helpin out haha. Can't wait to see some pictures of this place.

Those whitefish are awesome, seems like they're always willing to eat.

[mic]

Another great report...Please keep them coming. They help get me through the day. Would love to see some pics of the river and spots you are talking about?

[Al Agnew]

Here are some quick photos I took this morning:

This is the view from our yard; side channel, island, river, Livingston Peak and the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains.

This is a view of the upper side channel, with house up in the corner. Right now there isn't much water in this channel, but in the summer there will be anywhere from 20 to 75 cfs flowing through it. There are some smallish trout in this part of the channel right now, but bigger ones move in during the spring high water period and stay there as long as the water is flowing well. I don't know where they go when it gets this low during the winter.

This is the lower side channel. This part of it was the main river channel a few years ago. There are good trout in those pools against the rock outcrops. You can barely see the lower riffle coming into it downstream, between the second and third point on the left bank.

Here's the upper riffle. You can see the big foamy eddy on the near side of the riffle, with a fast, deep chute just past it, a gravel island, and the other channel of the riffle on the other side. That eddy becomes an area of slower but still significant current in the summer, as the water is deeper where it is now just trickling over the gravel on the near side.

Here's the view from the riffle, looking downstream along the length of the island. The good run where I was catching the fish on dry flies yesterday starts at the lower end of the gravel bar. The Crazy Mountains are in the far background. The Crazies were originally called the Crazy Woman Mountains. They were named for a pioneer woman who came west with her husband and settled at the base of the mountains. He died, but instead of leaving, she stayed, living by herself, and becoming more and more eccentric. Both Indians and settlers said she was crazy, hence the name of the mountains she lived in.

Finally, a pretty little cutthroat I caught the other day on a streamer.

[stlfisher]

Nice report and great pics!

[mic]

Will you adopt me?

Thanks for the pic

[Trout Commander]

Definitely envious, and grateful that you take the time to share. Thank you.