Seeking Montana Smallmouth

[Al Agnew]

Our house in Montana, on the Yellowstone River, is right in the middle of some of the best trout fishing in America, but ever since we've had a place there, I've been curious about the smallmouth fishing in Montana.  As much as I love stream trout fishing, I love stream smallmouth fishing a little bit more, and so I've spent hours on the internet and elsewhere exploring the possibilities of smallmouth in Montana.

It isn't easy to find good info.  Basically, I found out that some streams do have smallmouth, though none were very close to Livingston.  I found out that the nearest bass fishing is at some public ponds at Three Forks, an hour away, and those were largemouth.  I went there several years ago, and actually caught two largemouth, one a 16 incher, the other a 19 incher that would have probably weighed well over 4 pounds.  Not bad for someplace that far north...but they weren't smallmouth and it wasn't a stream.

From all the information I could glean, my smallmouth possibilities were mostly limited to the lower Flathead River, about 3 hours drive away to the northwest, the lower Bighorn, over two hours away, and the Yellowstone below Laurel, at least an hour and a half away.  Oh, there were other streams that supposedly had smallies, but the information on them was exceedingly scant.  And the problem with the streams that were warm enough for smallmouth was that they were mostly in eastern Montana, in dryland ranch country, with extremely limited public access.  The Yellowstone certainly sounded like my best bet, but again there was a problem; since the smallmouth part of the Yellowstone was downstream from the popular trout water, there simply weren't any businesses that would shuttle one for a float trip.  And the Yellowstone is a big, brawling river that would be difficult to wade and accomplish much, and probably fast enough that you couldn't paddle upstream very well.

But I couldn't stand it any longer, I had to do some exploring.  So last week, with Mary gone for the week, I decided to take a couple days and do a smallmouth road trip.

My plan started to come together when I was reading a book on Montana flyfishing adventures, and it mentioned Warm Spring Creek.  This creek is a small stream near Lewiston which is fed by a very large, warm spring, with 68 degree water year-round.  The author told of wading and fishing it in several places and catching smallmouth.  I looked on the map, and discovered that Lewiston is only about two hours away.  Okay, that had to be one stop on my road trip.  Then, I saw that there was a public access on the lower end of the Bighorn, only a mile or two before it runs into the lower Yellowstone.  A check on Google Earth showed that both the Bighorn and the Yellowstone didn't look like they were flowing too fast in that area, so maybe it would be possible to paddle upstream on both rivers.  So my plan was to fish Warm Spring Creek the first day, spend the night in Lewiston, and drive down to the Bighorn the next morning.

The weather was gorgeous that first morning, not a cloud in the sky, pleasant temperature.  I got to Lewiston about 9 AM, noted a few hotels I could stay for the night, and hurriedly drove on to the creek.  My first view of it wasn't encouraging--it was dry.  But as I drove down the valley, I saw a sign for the "gigantic warm spring".  Okay, that first view had been above the spring.  Since it looked like the spring itself was a tourist attraction type place, I drove on down the valley.  The road crossed the creek a few miles downstream, giving me my first view of it below the spring, and it looked good.  There was even a public access at the bridge.  I drove on, checking out the next bridge crossing, which had a ranch right next to the bridge and didn't look like a good access.  So I turned around and went back up to the first bridge.  The creek was clear, about 25 feet wide, and fast.  Really fast.  It looked far more like a trout stream than a smallmouth stream.

I had decided that, since I was fishing strictly for smallmouth, I'd use my typical smallmouth tackle--casting rod, 8 pound line, and my usual lures.  I'd brought out a box of those lures to Montana for that reason.  So I tied on one of my homemade twin spins and started up the creek.  I had dark-colored fish swipe at the lure just below the first riffle I came to, but it missed and I couldn't tell if it was a smallmouth or not.  Then in the next pool, I caught my first Montana smallmouth.

I continued up the creek, but I was getting very little action.  Surprisingly, I was seeing quite a few small rainbow trout, some of them chasing the twin spin.  So I put on a Lucky Craft Pointer just to see if I could catch a trout or two and hopefully a few smallies as well.  Sure enough...

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I started catching both trout and smallmouth.  The trout were more prevalent.  They were pretty fish in the water, with very bright green backs compared to the bronze smallmouth.  I even had a smallmouth follow a hooked trout as I reeled it in, which was a first for me.  It tried to take the lure away from the trout, and I came close to a double--trout and smallmouth, which would have really been cool.  

But the trout were small, and so were the smallies.  I was not seeing any smallmouth of any size; they were all about 10-12 inches.  And it was tough wading.  The creek was very fast, with few pools of any size, and there were a number of places where it was deep from bank to bank, and I had to get out and fight my way through the very thick and very prickly brush on the banks.  

So after a three or four hours, I turned back and headed for the truck, and lunch.  Then I drove to a couple other bridges, farther downstream, hoping to find slower water.  No dice.  At each bridge the creek looked the same, and both those bridges had houses right next to them, with no obvious public access possibilities.  I could have knocked on doors and asked permission, but I wasn't liking the looks of the creek.  I looked on my De Lorme atlas, and noted that the creek ran into the Judith River, and there was a wildlife management area just a few miles downstream on the Judith.  The Judith is seldom even mentioned in the fishing streams of Montana, but I thought that perhaps it might hold a few smallies below the confluence.  I suspected it was a river that gets mostly de-watered by irrigation, which would be the reason it was not known as a fishing stream.  Maybe it would be wadeable.  So I decided to check it out.

The road into the management area was about 20 miles of gravel, but I finally reached the river at the first of two access points...and it was bone dry!  This was on the outside of a big bend.  I almost didn't even bother driving the couple miles to the other access point, but I thought I'd just check it out while I was there.  Well, when I got to it, there was the river, flowing well and looking pretty darned good.  I guess that the river had taken a shortcut across that bend where the first access was, bypassing the channel where I first saw it.  The river was big enough that it didn't look easily wadeable, fast, and murky, with about 18 inches of visibility.  It didn't look promising, but I decided to try it while I was there.  Still using the Pointer, I waded along the gravel bar adjacent to a pool with strong current against a cut bank.  I soon got a hard strike, but it turned out to be what I think was a goldeye.  I still haven't looked it up to be sure, but it was a silvery fish with fairly large scales and a big, toothy mouth, about 14 inches long.  It was the only fish I caught in about 45 minutes, so I was ready to call it quits.

It looked like I'd exhausted the possibilities in the area, and it was still a few hours before dark, so I decided that, instead of staying the night in Lewiston, I'd go ahead and drive the two plus hours from there to the Bighorn.  The lower end of the Bighorn is close to I-94, with several small towns in the vicinity, so I figured there would surely be a motel along the interstate nearby where I could spend the night.

The drive took me down the valley of the Musselshell River, past the town of Roundup.  The Musselshell actually looked pretty interesting, a small, somewhat clear stream, not very fast; but there was no public access along it.  In the same book that had first told me about Warm Spring Creek, the author said that the Musselshell had decent trout fishing farther upstream, and WOULD have good smallmouth fishing above Roundup except that irrigation de-watered it badly.  Below Roundup, he said it was mainly catfish water.  So I drove past Roundup, and while whizzing down the highway at well over 70 mph (even the two lane roads in Montana often have a 70 mph speed limit), I happened to glimpse a small sign that looked like a public access sign.  I turned around to check it out, and found a small parking lot, and a river that looked pretty interesting.

I walked down to the water, which had about two feet of visibility, and immediately saw a couple of very small smallmouth in the shallows.  Okay.  It has smallies.  But by that time it was getting late and I still had more than an hour to go to get to the Bighorn.  No time to try fishing it.  No place nearby to spend the night.  I reluctantly left it for the Bighorn.

There weren't any motels along the interstate in that area.  The only possible place to stay was at a bar and grill that advertised "rooms", and it was a pretty scary bar and grill.  I ended up driving fifty miles back into Billings before I could find a motel for the night.  The next morning, I retraced my drive back to the Bighorn.  The view on Google Earth, and even the view I had of the Bighorn when I'd crossed it at dusk the evening before, didn't prepare me for what I found.  It wasn't very fast, but it was big water with a LOT of volume.  No way I was going to be able to paddle up it very easily, and fishing down it to the Yellowstone was a bit intimidating when I thought about whether I could paddle back up.  There was a concrete boat ramp, and two jetboats were putting in as I arrived.  Well, I was here, might as well try it.

The river was murky, perhaps 18 inches of visibility at most.  I put on a jig on one rod and my homemade crankbait on the other and started up the river.  I walked the kayak up a riffle and into a big bluff pool with nice rocks along the bank.  If there were smallies anywhere, they should be around those rocks.

I fished up the pool, catching nothing.  The eddies were covered in scum, and there was a major mayfly hatch going on, and huge carp were gloomping in the scum, sucking in scum and mayflies.  I could have had some fun with a fly rod catching those carp, but the smallmouth were nowhere to be found.  I parked the kayak on the downstream point of an island above the bluff pool, noticing a horrible stench of dead fish.  Looking around, I discovered that a flock of pelicans had been sitting on the gravel bar, and doing a LOT of pooping.  Pelican poop is RANK!

I fished around the island, with nothing to show for it.  The Musselshell kept intruding upon my thoughts, and I was getting pretty discouraged.  I didn't want to fight my way any farther up the Bighorn.  So I started drifting back downstream, fishing the crankbait as I went.  Suddenly I got a strike on it, which by that time was pretty surprising.  A bass...but not a smallmouth.  

I NEVER read anywhere that there were largemouth in the Bighorn.

That was the only fish I caught, but at least I wasn't skunked on the Bighorn.  So far I'd caught some kind of fish everywhere I'd tried.  I loaded up the kayak and headed back to the Musselshell at that access I'd found the day before.

I waded up from the access, fishing several nice pools along cut banks like the one at the access.  I had a few follows from what looked like bluegill on the crankbait, and briefly hooked one fish that may have been a small smallmouth.  I had noted that the river took a bend downstream from the access against a bluff, so I decided to see if there was a rocky run against the bluff that might be better smallmouth water.  It was.

The first one came on the Pointer, but I caught a dozen more on the crankbait.  Unfortunately, they were all the same size, about 8-9 inches long.  Where were the bigger fish?  I fished down to a bigger, deeper, barely wadeable pool, hoping it would hold better fish, but I only caught more little ones.  By that time the shadows were lengthening, and I had a drive of nearly three hours to get back home, so I surrendered.  My smallmouth quest was over for the time being.

There are still other possibilities.  One of these days I'll get somebody to shuttle me for a float on the lower Yellowstone, where I'm pretty sure I will be able to find some smallies.  And maybe I'll try the Flathead.  There are smallmouth in the Missouri River in places, and I've got an idea that, since Canyon Ferry Reservoir on the Missouri not too far from our house holds smallmouth, it's possible the river above Canyon Ferry could have some in the summer, even though nothing I've ever read has mentioned that section of the Missouri.  So I haven't given up.  But my first Montana smallmouth expedition wasn't a raging success.    

 

[MOsmallies]

Very cool! And although you didn't find a bunch or any big ones, I'd still say it was a success! Thanks for sharing...

How many states have you now caught a river/stream smallmouth in?

[Al Agnew]

Let's see...Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona (except those turned out to be redeye bass, not smallmouth), Idaho, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Hawaii...I think that's it for smallmouth.  Have also fished rivers for other species in Florida, South Carolina, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Michigan, Illinois, and Alaska.  I might be missing a couple of states.

[MOsmallies]

Impressive... I still remember reading the Hawaii story!!

[Mitch f]

The color of those smallmouth in the pictures seem different from Missouri. Maybe a little more pale?

[Al Agnew]

The fish on Warm Spring Creek were in bright sunlight against a light-colored bottom, which was why the one in the picture is fairly light.  The ones on the Musselshell were light because the water was murky and the sun bright.  I'm sure they could be darker under different conditions.

[joeD]

Al, take me to Montana. I'll shuttle you anywhere you want to go. I cook, clean, and cut grass too, if that helps. 

[Gavin]

Gret report! Love the pics!