Back In Montana

[Al Agnew]

We've finally accumulated enough duplicate stuff that we can fly out to Montana instead of driving. At our Montana house I've got a 4 wt. and 6 wt. fly rod, got a whole selection of flies and other stuff, got waders and wading boots, warm clothes. The only things I take back and forth now are camera gear and a few pieces of reference material that I know I'll need to use while painting out here.

We've also discovered that if you bite the bullet and book the early bird flight to Denver on Frontier, you avoid St. Louis rush hour traffic, the airport is almost deserted, and you get into Montana at 10 AM. Yeah, you have to be at the airport by 4:30 AM, but a two hour flight to Denver, an hour layover, and a two hour flight from there to Bozeman is a whole lot better than two hard days of driving. Mary has a good friend in Livingston that will go to the house, get the car, and come pick us up at the airport, a 30 minute drive. Sweet!

So we stop and pick up a few things at the grocery store we know we'll need, stop at the Post Office to tell them not to send our mail back to Missouri for a while, stop at Dan Bailey's fly shop to buy our licenses for this year, call the internet provider and the satellite TV provider, and we're set. By that time it's lunch time, and we drive five minutes to the Rib and Chop, which has the best steaks in Montana and also has some darned good lunches for under ten dollars. A few things to do around the house, turning the water heater on, etc. Now it's 2 PM Montana time, and Mary says she's taking a nap. Hmm. Nap sounds good since we had to get up at 2 AM. But...the river is right there and it's looking good. Guess what I did.

It's coolish, windy out of the east, which means a strong upstream wind. Mostly sunny. River is fairly low and clear. But I didn't feel like tying on a nymph rig...too many knots. What the heck, I'll throw streamers.

I start down the little side channel in front of the house. Nothing in the deep run at the bottom of the riffle, but in the flat below it I catch my first Montana trout of the spring, a 16 inch rainbow. Nothing else there. I didn't expect the fishing to be real fast. I'm happy I caught something on the streamer, a rabbit fur creation of my own with dumbbell "eyes" for weight, black and olive.

The wind is brutal. I'm wading down the right bank, casting to the left, with the wind hitting me from the right. If you're a right handed fly caster, that's a recipe for disaster. But fortunately I can cast with either hand, so I switch to casting left handed so that the line stays downwind of my tender body. Problem is, although I can cast just fine, for some reason the stripping of the streamer feels awkward. I switch back to right handed, and smack myself in the center of the back with the rather heavy streamer. Back to left handed, cast, switch rod to right hand to strip the streamer. That seems awkward, too. Heck with it, just suck it up and cast left handed until the stripping part feels right.

By this time I'm near the end of the side channel, and hook another rainbow, an inch or so longer than the first one. I cast a while in the riffle at the bottom of the island with no luck, and start working my way up the main channel. I get one brief hookup, don't see the fish. Then I get to the riffle at the top of that run, which is my final good fishing spot, and a tough one to fish. After last year's floods, this spot changed from a wide, deep run that you could fish well from the island, to a huge, almost dead eddy at the base of a fast, powerful riffle where all the current is over against the far bank. Only place to really fish it is the little riffle corner where the big eddy meets the riffle and the gravel bar, and that's a small, rather shallow eddy. Staying well back from it, I cast the streamer to the edge of the current and let it swing into the little eddy, and it stops. I set the hook and see the flash of a pretty good fish. It's a brown, about 18 inches, good enough for a picture. (I don't have all my stuff set up yet so I can't download the photo at this point.)

I make a few more casts but that's all there is. Sandhill cranes fly over. I wander up onto the brushy part of the island, where the beavers have been VERY busy all winter, and then climb the bank to the house. Mary is just waking up from her nap.

It's a tough job but somebody's gotta do it.

[Bill Jr.]

Kudos to you to be able! Living the dream of a lot of us!

[Phil Lilley]

Al, did your area get the heavy snow accumulations other parts of the Rocky's got? When do you start seeing big run off water in your area?

[Greasy B]

Thanks for the Montana update Al, I was also wondering about the snow pack? Have you spent much time fishing the lower river between Livingston and Big Timber? That area strikes me as way to avoid the parade of boats in Paradise Valley, I'm not sure if battling the wind down there is worth it.

[Gavin]

Livingston down to Big Timber is some great water. The fish count is lower but the size potential is much better. I'd rather float there than up in the Valley.

[Al Agnew]

There is zero low snow, but the high country snowpack is pretty good...estimates are that total snowpack for the Yellowstone watershed is about 90% of normal. The runoff typically starts sometime around the first week in May and goes until the first of July, but it depends on how hot it gets and how much rain comes along to melt the snow.

The guides usually fish below Livingston on their days off...as long as the wind is out of the south. Any other direction and it will be bad. But not every day is windy. I also like the stretches below Livingston better for fishing than up in the Valley. But you can also avoid the Valley crowds somewhat by floating a "normal" stretch that all the guides float but putting in at daybreak. The guides don't get on the river until 8 or 9 AM at the earliest.