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...

South Platte escape from reality

I love waking up for fishing and hunting trips. No matter the alcohol consumed nor the few hours of sleep had, I always wake up before the alarm clock, well rested, eager to start the day. Today, being in Colorado, preparing to catch monster trout, it was especially true. Got up at 6:20 and started the bacon – a good breakfast was in order for our long day of fishing in the rain/snow and wind. With breakfast eaten we got the gear packed and headed out to meet our guide and the Conoco on Rt. 235 outside Swanee.

Walking down to the stream, we passed a clear, freshwater pond and watched the trout scurry away from us as we passed the inlet stream. We tied on our rigs at the stream's edge and let Ben take the first dozen casts - couldn't take much more so I jumped in and started working a small side channel. Felt bad, but had a fish on in the first few casts...sweet fish about 17 inches. I still have no idea how to gauge weight so I'll leave those guesses out. It was still pretty darn cold so there wasn't much of a fight from any of the days first fish - luckily this changed later in the day.

I caught four nice sized fish in that first section, Chrstine two...Ben none - luckily he moved up stream, tied on his own BHPT and caught a couple soon enough. As the photo documents, he also caught the biggest fish of the day.

The first part of the day was surreal; the weather was erratic with sun, rain, snow, and wind. Cold. Huge fish. Not a lot of fighting. And trying to listen to the guide who was determined to change our fishing styles. As the rain fell, Ben headed back to the car to get his raincoat and the guide took that as an oppotunity to move us downstream (via car) to a different section. A few more holes here. The stream channel in both sections seemed will manicured with huge boulders lined at regular intervals to set up riffles, pools, riffles, pools...beautiful, if manmade. Certainly made for great holding water.

Unfortunately, we didn't have any dry fly action, just nymphing. Caught most of the fish on baetis, black beauty, egg patterns, caddis larva, and bead head pheasant tails...all with indicators and weight to get them at the bottom.

I definetly learned a lot from the guide. First was his set up - a split tippet approach with two flies and lots of weight instead of a tandum set up with all the weight in the lead fly. Worked very well and has inspired me to find some more appropriate sinkers. Second, it was clear I need to think a bit more about drag than I have been. I've always been conscience about not letting my line drag my fly around, but I doubt I've been as meticulous about it as may be needed. Wonder how many fish I've missed simply because of drag? Going to try keeping less line out and be more deliberate about my drag in the future. Similarly, the guide was very good at reading and targeting different "lines" of water. It was eye opening to see such a (again) deliberate approach to hitting each line of water with a few casts - definitely thougth about this, but may have got lost in my eagerness and missed certain areas. Won't let this happen again. Lastly, it was good to have some reassurace about landing large fish. I've lost a few large fish in the past and now have a more defined strategy for landing these big boys: put them on the reel, reel them in as you move closer to them when they're not running...lift their head with your pole as you scoop with the net. Some of this is intuitive and I've done in the past, but never quite put it in order in my head for easy reference :)

All told, it turned out to be a great day. Great to catch so many large fish, great to be surrounded by the foggy, rainy mountains, great to see Ben with those shit-eating grins on his face.

Why do western fish have to be so much bigger?!?