Urban trout

When I moved to Missoula in June, the Clark Fork (and most any other low lying depression) was full of chocolate milk. Frothy, fast, and inhospitable to most any aquatic creature, including me. I debated sneaking into the soft chocolate of lawns and parking lots a few times, but decided the marginal chance of good fishing wasn't worth the time away from work. So I hunkered. Every trip across a bridge inspired glances at seams and surveys of the scrambleability of banks. June passed. July passed. The water was still angry from the melting of record snowfall. Just my luck. Travel, work, travel, visitors. I got out. I had success. But the few hours I had were best spent, I thought, on the legendary blackfoot, the renowned rock creek, and the bitterroot. And these rivers are amazing. Very. And so August passed, too, without me fishing in town. The weather has changed from summer to fall. Yesterday the clouds rolled in, dark, and rain poured down in the morning. I'd decided the week before I was finally going to bite the bullet and fish in town and was just waiting for a day like this. Now, you see people fishing in town and they all look like asswipes. Indicators flying everywhere, never left alone long enough to even approach a reasonable drift. Flies in bushes. And never any bent rods. Guys at the flyshops speak disparagingly of "messing around in town." And so I'd avoided it, confident that if the fishing was worth it, more people would be there who knew what they were doing. But the weather was right and I'd stared at the river in town long enough.

I started under a bridge, walking by a recently abandoned motorcycle lying in the stream leaking god knows what. Second cast, fish. Hm. Ok. Not a lunker, but a solid little rainbow. Fought like hell. Looked beautiful. Maybe this will work?! I worked a seam upstream, produced a handful more little rainbows. A small hole in a side channel gave up a meatier specimen. I bombed up the bank and sped along the trail past mailboxes and sandbags and driveways. After a couple hundred yards of slack water, there was a hole that looked tasty and was, of course, occupied by some dude with a tacklebox and bobbers. Ha. He probably caught a shit ton! He wasn't very interested in talking, so I moved upstream further. Hopped some silt fence and scrambled down some rip rap. The bank, as it hit the water, got even steeper, it was about 6" deep a foot out and about 10' deep a foot and a half out. I thought this looked promising, but who knows right? I flopped and sank some flies. Nothing. I slowly worked my way along the tangled bank. Flop, sink, swing, nothin. I got myself fully tangled in some trees, almost swimming a couple times. Flop, sink, swing, BAM! Oh yeah, baby! Big flash from a pissed off fish. Reel whined. I contemplated trying to follow it downstream, but I was really fully tangled and couldn't move. Luckily the big guy gave up the fight after a while and the current allowed me to haul him back to my perch. Beautiful rainbow, thick, strong. Missed another one on the next cast - big flash. Damn... And then I proceeded to lose about 10 flies. Fuck my ass. Some in the stream, some in a tree, some, who the hell knows where they went... I literally stomped the ground and swore. Some douche decided that the 4 foot bank was a good place to walk his aggressive dogs. Ok, time to take a break. I seated my fly and walked upstream some more.

This is where I wanted to fish anyway. Everytime I ride my bike downtown I look at this part of the stream. Main channel running big on one side of the channel. The side channel dumped into the main through three consecutive runs. Lotta seams, lotta water, lotta places for fish. And I caught a pile. Nymphing was slow at first - caught a couple. Water was big on the inner seam of the first run so I switched to streamers. After only a couple casts I got hammered. Huge rainbow! Took me almost to my backing. People pointing from the bridge. HA! I was laughing out loud it was so fun. Damn thing fought like hell. And the current was on his side. But after a while I won, dragging that beast into the net. He was whooped. But I held him up to the people looking from the bridge. Nothing like a little exhibitionist fishing. The streamer produced only one other fish at that spot, but it didn't matter. The nymphs pulled a dozen more, and a pile of solid whitefish, too, to keep my interest peaked.

As dark approached I decided I wanted to hit one other very public spot so I hiked back to the car and drove upstream. I was the only person there for about 10 min. Had a huge fish on that popped off. It hit softly at the end of my swing and was probably only hooked by one scale. Saw him flash, held him through one run downstream, but lost him on a crazy barrel roll. Big fish. Oh well, back at it. Others showed up. Three guys upstream, two down stream, just as I'd tied on streamers to work the edge... I stuck with the streamers and worked slowly down as far as I could. Two cutts cooperated. One of the guys upstream stuck in behind me and fucking hammered a huge brown on a cream streamer. Damn. Nice fish. I pulled a few others out after swithing back to nymphs. At one point, I shit you not, I was focusing intently on my sighter and suddenly realized a goddamn syringe was floating next to my line. Well shit. If the fishing wasn't so good, I might have cared. I wonder what the dirty-needle durability of my G3s are? I ignored the urge to think about the source of this and what else was in the water, besides trout. The west mountain stone caught the biggest, a fiesty cutt hanging out in the cold water coming out of a trib. Dark was falling. I was content. And I figured Libby was about done with spin class. Just before dark I packed it in. What a great day! Its not the prettiest scenery and obvious influences of 100,000 people in the immediate watershed. But there was cold air, the clouds of October, and cooperative, big fish. I guess I've no excuse not to be fishing when I've only got an hour or so on my hands. Darn...