Labor Day, Sept 4th-7th, Montana

I've been home from this trip now a couple weeks and I've been kicking myself for not blogging this earlier so time to catch up.

Spent the Labor Day weekend fishing in Montana. The original plan was Slough Creek in Yellowstone but some road closures in the park mixed with not great reports made it a tough sell. So the decision was made to drive 4 hrs rather than 7 hrs and stay on the Madison River at the Slide Inn. Four rivers in four days and 3 were rivers I had never fished before. On the trip, besides myself, was Bill and Tom. I had never fished with Tom before so it was great to spend some time on the river with him.

The Slide Inn is run by Kelly Gallop who probably spends as many days on the Madison as just about anyone. He runs a great fly shop and has cabins to rent or even some RV spaces. I've been in the shop many times before but this was our first time staying in the cabins. The only real downside to staying at the Slide Inn is that you are out on your own. It is also a nice upside though, but if you want to go out to dinner you are quite a ways away from Ennis or West Yellowstone. Luckily we had planned on grilling a couple times and we found a grill to use. The cabins are adequate but the lack of a TV was sort of a downer considering how much we paid.

I was supposed to drive my Suburban on this adventure, however the day before our trip I was getting the oil changed when the technician told me I had a crack in my tire rim. My Suburban has custom alloy rims with slim tires from the previous owner and sure enough I had a crack all the way across one of the spokes. Not knowing how bad it was I took it to my "tire guy" and had them pull the wheel and sure enough it was broken all the way through. With no way to drive it and a spare that is an inch different in size we had to do some scrambling. Luckily Bill could take his van and saved the trip; Thanks Bill for driving and Liz for letting us steal her ride. Update: it took 13 days to find and get my hands on a matching rim but finally we can drive the 'Burb again.

So upon arriving at Reynolds Pass bridge we parked and hit the wade only section of the Madison. To call it slow is doing it a favor. We later heard from trusty sources that while the Madison had fished great all year it had slowed considerably as the fish were prepping for the fall runs. We caught a few fish - mostly small - and I managed to not fall in which was nice too. My best pattern was a fly I bought at the flyshop in Walmart in Idaho Falls. Yes I typed that right. It was orange bodied, prince nymph looking fly with a soft hackle collar. All I know is that it worked for some dang reason when nothing else would.















One Brown I caught. The rest were even smaller rainbows. It was kiddie day on the Maddy.
Let's throw in some random photos here. (No pics of the steaks Tom cooked)

















Ok - Day 2 - We journeyed over to Ennis, MT with intentions of fishing the Ruby River. Reports we read and people we talked to said the Ruby was off color and not fishing well. That may be true if you are a die-hard dry fly fisherman. When you a nymph-er and you hear off color river your mind gets excited at all the options. We drove over to the river and finally decided on the Coy Brown river access, which isn't well marked because the current landowners are a titch onry. Luckily Bill knew the way and we quickly rigged and decided to wet wade the day away. Bill and Tom headed upriver to some water Bill had fished earlier in the year. I decided to go down and explore. The first good hole I came to did not disappoint. I quickly had 3 to the net in about 20 minutes.














Man I suck at self portraits!!! After going down river a ways I had 9 to the net and a few other hits and misses. Most took a bright red Larva Lace Worm pattern with 2 taking a prince dropper. After a while I started wondering where the guys were at so I started back up river. Apparently Bill and Tom had a small run in with a land owner and they yielded and moved. We stopped for some lunch and went and checked a different access but the water was so skinny we decided to go back to Coy Brown. Bill and Tom walked down river a ways and I fished my way down to them. When I caught up I had 7 more and would end the day with 18 or so. The Ruby is a great little river. I caught all browns and one whitefish; but the browns were healthy and fat and beautiful. One notable fish that I thought might go 20" but when measured I roughly got 19 but still.... healthy and fat. Best flies were the Larva Lace Worm and Red dirty worm with 3 or 4 on a Prince.




























That night as a matter of coincidence they were having a Fly Fishing Festival in Ennis, MT. We made it back to town for the drawing on a drift boat and caught the end of the festivities. We had dinner at the sports bar in Ennis.

I'll post Days 3 & 4 on a separate post.......

July 8th 2009 - Weber River

I guess some days you just need to have your butt kicked to remember that fly fishing can be hard and the fish finicky. Today Jack and I pulled off the "Drive then Fly" day. Jack picked me up at 7am to hit the links and chase some golf balls around. Funny side note: while hitting a few on the range we got circled around by a bird. On the 3rd pass I realized this was an exotic bird. On the 4th pass it landed on my shoulder!! So I got a birdie before we hit the first hole!! Anyway, I went right up on my hand and I noticed it was banded. I'm guessing it was a cockatiel that flew out a window. Jack and I devised a cage from 2 range ball buckets and took it to the club house and called animal control. Here is a link to a picture of the bird. http://twitpic.com/9p02o Hope the bird found its way back home.

So after 9 holes we headed to Kamas for lunch at the Spring Chicken and then some fishing. So the fishing wasn't awesome this afternoon and we left the river around 6pm so we probably missed the evening hatch, but we put some in the net. Jack naturally had a mess of whitefish and he wouldn't say how many were foul hooked...... Anyway we both got a couple nice Browns so here are the pics. Can't say any one pattern really worked today but as a surprise Jack said he caught at least 3 on a rainbow glo-bug. No "hook in mouth" witnesses so we are taking his word for it. Still that is really late for eggs to work. My only thought was perhaps the Utah suckers are spawning? Don't really know.

July 4th on the Weber

Celebrating July 4th has meant fishing for the last few years. Why break a tradition that is working for you??

I met Bill at Creamery Lane. The water is still a little high considering it is July but we have had such a wet spring that there is still a bunch of snow in the mountains and lots of spring rain have filled the reservoirs to capacity. So we got to it and hit the first hole that will normally give a good kick to the day with a herd of Whitefish. After a few Whitefish I hooked into a good fish that was doing so much head-shaking I wasn't sure it was a Whitefish. As I got it into shallow water my first thought was rainbow, but after getting it to the net we realized that we had a Cutthroat. I have caught only a few Cutty's on the Weber over the years but I think this is the nicest one. It was a very healthy 18" Cutty - could have stopped right there for the day and been happy. Fish took a wine colored San Juan worm.
Naturally, he went right on back. Not sure if this is a spawner that ran up from Echo Res. or if this is fish is always in the river but either way it was a nice catch.

It never takes Bill long to get some fish of his own and the wine color San Juan worm kept working, along with a beaded sow bug pattern. Here are couple of trout that Bill and I brought to the net.

Bill and I fished until 11:30 or so and then we made our way back to the cars and off to the Spring Chicken Inn for lunch.

I ended up with 10 in the net and Bill was somewhere near 20 (if we count the foul hooked Whitefish....).

Best patterns today were no big surprises; Beaded Sow Bugs, San Juan worms, and grey scuds.

Wader Recycling

A couple of years ago I found a pair of pretty cheap breathable waders in a garbage can. Being the curious person I am, I 'fished' them out and threw them in the car. When I got them home and saw how badly they were torn and that repairing them would be really hard I started thinking about what I could do with them. No brilliant ideas came to mind and I'm pretty sure they ended up in the garbage again.

So the other day I was surfing some fishing sites and came across a link for Recycled Waders. This site is actually really interesting and worth a look for those who might have a damaged pair of waders. http://www.recycledwaders.com


I'm think I'm going to order myself a wallet. Now if I could just find something to do with the OLD pair of neoprenes I have out in the shed.
-SP

Goofing Around with Pictures

A couple of years ago we were fishing Pork Fork [name changed to protect the innocent fish]. My wife Christie was with us and she was having a good time hooking up with some great slab rainbows. (see photo)


After the trip we got home and I was uploading the pictures from the camera. At first glance everything seemed okay, maybe a little cropping was in order and then I saw a little something out of place.


Some random expletive rolled out as I smiled and had a nice chuckle about it. I clearly hadn't seen Bill when I took the picture. So I had some cropping fun and "Little Billy" was born.


Now fast forward to today (5/29/09) and Bill and I went back up to the scene of the crime hoping to find those big piggy rainbows again with the built-in photo opportunities.
Imagine my glee when I see Bill trying to take a self portrait of a fish he just caught and he has his back to me. Could I pass this up??? Heck no...... so later that evening I get an email with evidence of a successful photo hijacking.


That is FANTASTIC!!!!!

So how was the fishing? The river was blowing hard in the morning and the off-color river makes me think the reservoir is turning over. We caught a few but no big daddy's today. Around noon the river dropped a good 6 inches and that pretty much killed it. I did have one really great strike on a grey Zonker that was a classic territorial strike. No way that fish was coming off the hook - it was set clear through the side of the mouth. I think the overall most consistent pattern today were bright red worm patterns or even "dirty worms" as I call them.

I'm really hoping the run-off water holds for another couple weeks so I can make at least one more journey up there in hopes of clear water and bigger fish.

Weber River - March 27th 2009

We had a nice break between storms today. Had some snow yesterday that quickly melted and another storm headed our way for the weekend so today was a great chance to get out and do some fishing.

Whitefish Jack and I had been trying to line up schedules for a few weeks and finally made it work. Jack has been logging WAY too many days on the river without me. I met Jack, his father Daryl, nephew Dominic and Bill on the Weber just after noon. We met at what we call "Creamery" since it is just off Creamery Lane in Hoytsville.

Jack and company had been fishing for around 90 minutes and already had some in the net. So Bill and I were anxious to get caught up and find a few trout of our own. We hit a really big hole that normally has good fish in it and for 30 minutes we came up empty. We changed patterns, added weight and basically beat the water pretty good with no results. It was starting to look bad when ol’ Whitefish Jack wandered down to us. He brought with him the magic Whitefish power that causes all Whitefish within a 500 yard radius to instantly start feeding.

Thank goodness he showed up and after the deserved mocking of our fishing skills, Jack proceeded to show us up. BIG TIME. While frustrating it never ceases to amaze me how Jack can just make fish strike. Within minutes we all had caught fish and jokes and smiles were back out. The ever popular phrase “Get out of my hole” was echoing across the river every time someone hooked up.

At one point I was waiting for Bill to pick up his line so I could “crowd” him a little and he had a great strike that sent a really nice trout back flipping out of the water. Too bad it came free. A while later in almost the same spot I nailed a really nice brown trout that made 3 spectacular leaps from the water to the joy of Jack and myself. It was about 10 minutes after Bill had walked back up river so I think this trout was waiting for him to leave.

All said and done it was a great day to be on the water. Temps were in the high 40s to low 50s depending on clouds and wind. We had some midges hatching but only saw a couple small fish slurping dries.

Jack ended up with something like 34 fish. I never got the tally but I’ll assume that 32 of them were Whitefish. Bill was near 10 and about half trout. I caught 7 and hooked up another 5-6 times. I caught 4 browns and 3 whites but that big brown that gave us a great tail-dance show and then fought hard was a great fish for the day. Flies for the day were Beaded Sows, Larva Lace Worm, Wine San Juan Worm, and Jack's Newly Created Unnamed Fly

Water was slightly off color, probably from snow melt, but the river was higher than expected. I noticed that the water managers have Echo Reservoir pretty darn full for late March. I haven’t seen Rockport Dam but hope to get back up here next week to see how full they are before the run-off gets raging. Probably another week before they flood the river out to fill up all the irrigation systems that pull water from the Weber. Can’t believe that irrigation season is just over 2 weeks away. Time to start watching the river flow reports and get excited for the rainbow spawn and spring fishing.

Jack - You are the ONLY person I know who could catch a Carp that big out of the Weber and be proud of it. What a freakin' pig fish.

-Scott