Montana Creek

[Phil Lilley]

Montana Creek is only a few miles outsiide Talkeenta and real close to Peter's house.  This part of the creek is easily accessed so it's fished pretty hard by locals and tourist.  But we found fish.

We walked up this evening, started about 8:30 pm.  We found a few chum and king salmon starting to spawn but not many rainbows or grayling.  The creek is closed to salmon fishing.

We tried a few deeper pools and runs.  I caught a 12 inch grayling on a purple wooly bugger in one of them.  After 90 minutes of fishing, we decided to head back down towards the bridge.  We came across a run that we hadn't fished and found a bunch of chum salmon actively spawning.  And we found rainbows too.

We ended up with 8 rainbows, the biggest measuring close to 19 inches caught by Peter.  We caught them on mainly beads, fishing behind the salmon beds.