A Matching Set Of Trout

[Al Agnew]

I've fished around the house here in Montana a couple evenings so far, and Mary and I did a quick float in the big raft on the Yellowstone above town, floating seven miles in four hours, so obviously I didn't do much fishing then. So yesterday I decided it was time for a bit more serious fishing.

Actually, it didn't turn out quite as serious as I thought. Stuff kept coming up in the morning that I had to do, so I ended up not getting on the water until noon.

What my plan was, I would put in at the house in my little Watermaster raft, and float down to what's called the Pig Farm. It's a bit of private land that the local Trout Unlimited chapter and a couple other organizations has some sort of deal with the landowner to allow public access. I've used it a few times in the past, because it's the perfect distance from the Hwy. 89 bridge, but always with friends out here who knew where it was, and more importantly, what it looks like from the river. The other day, Mary and I went exploring to find it and make sure we both knew exactly where it was and hopefully get an idea of what it looks like from river level. It's at the end of a rough dirt road that swings off the frontage road along the interstate, goes under the interstate, and ends on a bench above the river, with a track leading off a gap in the bench and down to the river, where there's a very narrow, tree-lined dirt "ramp" to the water.

Our house is about three miles above Hwy. 89, which means that instead of a seven mile float from 89, I'd have a ten mile or better float from the house. Which is why I was a little bummed out to be getting on the water at noon. But it sure made the shuttle easy...Mary followed me as I drove the truck to leave it at the Pig Farm, drove me back to the house, and then I put in at my leisure

The weather has been spectacular out here. every day it's been sunny, with temperatures in the 60s and 70s. Yesterday was supposed to be the last of such weather, as it gets cooler and cloudy with chances or rain, and snow in the higher elevations. In fact, yesterday, though warm, was partly to mostly cloudy, but with thankfully light wind. Wind is a real pain on the river below town, where it runs mostly to the east through a wide open valley with blocking mountains a long way off. There was a light breeze from the east, blowing upstream but not really impeding downstream progress much.

The warm weather hasn't extended much up into the higher elevations, though streams up in the park are starting to rise. The cooler weather will put a stop to that. But the river at Livingston has risen from 1300 cfs when we got here a little more than a week ago, to 1600 cfs yesterday, which translates into about 2 inches of rise. It has gotten slightly murky, with visibility about three feet. There have been some midges on the water, but not much surface feeding activity, though I caught a couple rainbows on a Griffith Gnat on the float Mary and I took when I found them feeding in some surface foam in an eddy.

I can carry three fly rods on the little raft, all rigged up, so I had a Griffith Gnat on my 4 wt., a two nymph set-up on the 5 wt., and a streamer on the 6 wt. I was ready for anything.

I wanted to speed through the water between the house and 89, since I was very familiar with it, in order to explore the less familiar water below. But there is on spot in that stretch that seems to always have catchable rising fish. It's a soft current seam in the middle of a deep pool below a low bluff. I've seen fish rising there many times when there is nothing obviously on the water for them to be eating. It's really weird that there are certain places like that which ALWAYS have rising fish, even when nothing else is happening elsewhere. Sure enough, they were doing it again. Actually, I first saw rising fish right at the head of the pool in a tiny foam covered eddy against the base of the bluff just off very strong current. That little patch of foam was about the size of a bathtub, and must have had a dozen or more fish constantly rising it it, sipping midges that had gotten trapped in the foam. But there was simply no way to fish it, because there was no place to get out of the current of what was almost a rapid anywhere that you could reach it with a cast. So I passed it by, looking downstream and seeing the fish rising on the usual current seam.

That spot IS easy to fish. You can swing into the eddy, which is a good 30 feet wide and 100 feet long, have room for your backcast, and just ease down the eddy fishing the risers in the seam, picking them off one after another. I ended up getting ten fish to take, hooking seven of them, and boating five. All were rainbows, from 11 to 14 inches long. Nice way to get into the swing of dry fly fishing again.

I stopped to eat my lunch a little late after passing the 89 bridge. They were working on the concrete ramp there, because the current had undercut it at some point over the winter...or maybe ice chunks had blown it out, and the ramp presently is suspended about a foot over the water with a drop-off into a couple of feet of water...definitely not easy to take out a drift boat or raft there at present.

I was going along, fishing the streamer as I drifted, getting a few half-hearted swipes at it but no hook-ups. I'd seen no more surface activity until I reached another big, deep pool, where there was the same kind of set-up, with a soft current seam and fish rising along it. However, just as I got out the dry fly rod, the sun suddenly came out from behind a big cloud bank, and the fish instantly stopped rising. That's something else that's typical out here. As long as the sun isn't on the water the fish will keep rising, but as soon as it hits the water they stop, and as soon as it goes behind clouds again they magically start rising again. It looked like it was going to shine for a while, and I was feeling the pressure of time, so I continued downstream.

I hadn't really tried the nymphs yet, but it was looking like that was what I was going to have to do to catch some more fish. So I stopped at a nice riffle corner and started nymphing, immediately catching a 15 inch rainbow and a couple of whitefish. I continued downstream, letting my nymphs drift as the raft drifted. I was watching the indicator drift alongside a limb that was suspended a foot or so over the water, parallel to the current, when it dipped. I was afraid I'd snagged another limb off the driftwood, but I lifted the rod tip, felt live weight, and suddenly a big rainbow came straight up out of the water a good three feet on the near side of the limb, and landed on the other side of it! The current was pushing me downstream, but I was able to get the od tip high enough to let the line slide down the limb and off the end of it. The trout jumped twice more, then settled into a battle of zinging runs. It took a while to finally boat it, since I didn't have a net, and by the time I got it corralled the raft was out in the middle of the river. There was no way to take a photo of it on the raft, so I eyeball measured it against my rod and released it. It was a good 20 incher.

A few riffles downstream, in a very similar spot, I had another take on the soft hackle I was using in the set-up. The fish again leaped immediately, and I saw it was a big brown. It didn't put up quite as strong a battle as the rainbow, but it also made three good leaps before I got it in, again out in the middle of the river where taking a photo would be almost impossible. It appeared to be almost exactly the same length as the rainbow, though, 20 inches.

A little farther along, I was fishing an odd looking riffle corner. The main current poured over a gravel ledge, but the ledge extended downstream with very shallow water coming over it for a long way, and where the shallow water was coming over, it made a near eddy up against where the main current was sweeping downstream. I got a take on the seam, and felt a heavy fish. This one didn't jump. At all. Just bulldogged in the current, with a couple of hard downstream runs. It felt almost like a huge whitefish, but it was faster than a whitefish. What was it? It took me a long time to finally get it in, and when I did I was impressed. It was a cutthroat...and a 20 incher! You just don't see many 20 inch cutthroats this far down in the Yellowstone. I was able to take pictures of it lying in along the edge of the gravel bar, and I'll see if I can get them up later.

That was pretty much the end of the fishing. The front moved in, the wind was suddenly howling (luckily coming out of the west so it was blowing downstream), it was getting close to dark, and I wasn't sure how much farther I had to go to the Pig Farm. I had parked the truck where I thought it would be visible from the river, and although I think I would have seen the tiny dirt ramp anyway, I found out that I could barely see the very top of the white truck camper shell from the water. I loaded up the raft, drove off, and was almost out to the interstate when I realized I'd left my three rods leaning against a tree while I loaded up!

[Jeff Tief]

Al,enjoyed the trip with you as I read it.As usual you paint as good a picture with words as you do with a brush!Hope you got the rods back;I fell opening day at RRiver in one of the areas they had done some bank work on and stuck a Winston wt in the rocks.Hmmm waiting on the blank to return from Montana.

[Greasy B]

Great story Al, thanks for the Montana update.

[Al Agnew]

Here are a few photos from yesterday:

Here's the little Watermaster raft, loaded and ready.

A nice view of Livingston Peak and the Absarokas, south of the river.

This stretch has a few tricky rapids, especially at moderately high water levels. But with the water low as it is now, none of them are dangerous with the possible exception of this one. The upper ledge has about a three foot drop and a nasty hydraulic at the bottom. I think it might cause trouble with my little raft, but as you can see there is a sneak route around it.

Here's the big cutthroat.

[ColdWaterFshr]

Beautiful pictures, Al. Very nice Cutt. You're killing me and I wish I was there.

[Gavin]

Great report & pics Al...Great place to be....A Cutty is a rare catch down from town.

[Mitch f]

Beautiful pics! Makes me wonder what you could do with a pointer minnow on that stretch.

[Al Agnew]

Mitch, at some point I'm going to try casting tackle and a Pointer...been meaning to do that for years. I'm also going to go downstream closer to Billings and check out the smallmouth fishing on that part of the Yellowstone, hopefully sometime this summer.

[Rolan Duffield]

Al: I always enjoy reading your trip reports. You have a gift for writing and making it interesting for us. Also enjoyed the pictures.

You should write a book of these great true stories.

Rolan

[Greasy B]

Al,

The nice Cutthroat you caught below Livingston reminded me of a comment I had read in The Montana Angling Guide by Chuck Fothergill and Bob Sterling. In their 2002 description of the gradual transformation from a Cutthroat fishery in the upper river to a Brown and Rainbow fishery in the lower river they make this comment “At Springdale you’ll notice the reappearance of Cutthroat Trout”. I have often wondered if Cutthroat still makes up a significant portion of the trout population on this part of the river or if this was just the case when research was done for the book.