Don't inhale that... cloud of smoke ?

While we were thinking of getting on the river this morning (9:oo -ish) we saw a group of fishermen walk in. And we'd seen a couple boats put in and a few more fishermen walk in earlier so we figured there were a few people elbowing for a prime spot. We thought about skipping the morning session, but I wanted to see what the river looked like. The flow has been steadily dropping and is now lower than when we arrived in June (78 days ago, but who's counting?). It was cold and a little windy, but I put on my fishing uniform of shorts and sandals and a couple layers of long sleeves. Rick had on pants, long sleeves, and a fleece vest. I didn't take my rod, but did bring the camera.

Actually, there was a group of 5 from North Carolina and a couple other couples. One of the boats hung around the ramp and fished which made for a lot of people in the short stretch of the river. Even with all the people, there were more bugs than people. I asked a few if they were catching anything, and they all said no. I listened to the conversations and they were all marvelling at the clouds of tiny tricos in the air. But no one was catching any fish! A couple other people said they had hooked one. They all expected the fish to be gorging on the miniscule trico mayflies, oblivious to which flies were fake and which were real, but the fish were underwater, watching all the visitors and watching the fake flies.

The clouds of bugs were so thick that it looked like smoke. I thought to myself, "don't inhale too deeply, don't sniff one up your nose, and don't open your mouth."




We saw a friend who encouraged us to get our gear and fish, but we thought we'd wait. We wandered the riverbank and a short time later saw fish rising and that was all it took. We gathered our rods from camp and headed back to the river, making our way upstream of everyone else. It wasn't long before Rick spotted a couple fish and left me to try for them. He went on upriver in search and found these ducks.

Rick made his way back to me and by that time (noon?) most other fishermen were vacating the river. It was either lunch or time to give up. There were just a couple others within sight when I hooked and landed an 18" rainbow on a size 20 spinner. I had missed a couple on a larger spinner and Rick said go smaller. He hooked a half dozen fish and a couple broke off his 6x tippet. I got a little bored with the small stuff and put on a BIG crane fly that brought up 3 nice trout, but I reacted too quick and kept them from getting hooked. What a thrill to see these fish jump on that BIG fly. Around 4 PM we were the only ones on the river and with the wind blowing hard enough to make casting difficult, we decided we'd had enough. As we walked out we met another man and woman fishing, or thinking of fishing. We talked and found out they were from Arizona also. After about 10 minutes the game warden drove up and asked to see their fishing licenses. We'd met the warden a week ago or so and he remembered us. If you fish Montana (or any state) be sure you have a licence and follow the regs! Montana makes it easy by offering the licensing process on-line now.