A much needed change of scenery

Instead of fishing, I headed to town with Stefanie and their 2 kids. We went to a few places in town for some shopping and then picked up some groceries. We were back to camp around 1:00 where we'd left Rick and Eric tying flies. When we got back they were on the river, catching lots of fish. Rick tied up a special Compara Dun pattern that I wanted and they had lots of success.

I walked down to the river and the two irritating guys were there, but they were leaving. Yippeee! My "favorite" had gotten a hole in his waders and Rick said he'd gotten up on the far bank and practically took it all off in an effort to dry off. Thank goodness I'd missed that show. Rick also said earlier he asked one where they were going to fish so he didn't intrude too close. Rick said "Do you mind if I fish here?" and the guy said, "I'm fishing here next to my brother." Rick said he didn't want to fish way out there, he wanted to stay on the close bank. So Rick fished from the bank. He didn't get into the river and as the guys watched, Rick hooked a big fish and it ran out to where they were fishing, jumped high in the air a couple times and threw the hook. Now that's a show I would have liked to have seen. Rick didn't need to land the fish. The guys were surprised and from that point on walked around the area where Rick was fishing. (Unlike me, when they walked right through.) Perhaps they did learn something during their stay in Montana.

The visitors both eventually left the river and left Rick and I to ourselves. There were only a couple of boats who floated by and no one else within sight. Although it was well into the afternoon, the fish were rising and Rick had tied what they wanted. We fished with dries, spotting each other's fish and coaching each other on our casts. We took turns and had such a great time laughing and just having a good time together. And we caught lots of fish. Around 4:00 we headed the short distance back to camp where Eric had the cata-raft hooked up and ready to launch. We were going to float and fish from the campground to the next takeout point and we purposely had waited until the end of the day. We wanted the majority of the guides to be out of the way. We cruised on by a couple drift boats and found the spot we knew from the past; a wide open, slow moving, glassy section of the river, the surface disturbed only by the big heads of gulping trout. I had on a dry fly, one of the Compara Duns that Rick had tied, so they put me at the front of the raft. As we sat there anchored, Eric pointed out a fish rising waaaayyyyy downstream from us and said he'd pull up the anchor to get closer. I said "no", let me have a try at it first. He said "It'll be a tough set!", as I cast to the fish. And after letting it drift a good long distance I saw the water move and the splash and I set the hook! And I set the mood for the rest of the float trip. It was a blast, with lots of fish, most not so easy, but soooo much fun! It immediately brought back memories of the 3 of us floating the rivers of Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Montana as we'd done for years. Eric is great on the oars and I've trusted my life to him on some scary waters. I think I caught the first 3 fish and then I sat out the next inning while Rick and Eric each caught a few. A couple guide boats with clients drifted by and I asked if they were catching lots of fish. One guy said a couple, one guy said he was getting skunked. Yikes! I thought I'd better keep my squeals to myself. Actually, I'm not a squealer when I hook fish. I prefer to be quiet about it = most of the time.

When I wasn't fishing I was looking for rising trout for Rick and Eric. I can truly have as much fun spotting and coaching someone else. It was great to be able to tell them "Another foot towards the bank, right beyond that rock, down another 10 feet, should be right THERE!" and the fish would take, and they would set, and the fish would jump, jump, jump and we'd quickly net it and release it! Lots of jumping brown trout in the 18" to 20" size, with a couple nice rainbows.

We called Stefanie around 7:30 to bring the truck and trailer for the take out and she met us around 8:00. The mosquitoes were thick, but Stefanie had a tasty dinner waiting for us back a camp. I have some photos and video of the float trip that I will try to post next. What a great day it was. I'm in a much better mood.