Montana's Clark Fork River fishing report.
Last weekend the Washington State Council FFF had our annual Fly Fishing Fair in Ellensburg. It was good to see some FAOL'ers there. After the event I drove home, unloaded my truck of all the auction stuff and loaded up my fishing gear. The next morning I drove into Tacoma, picked up one of my fishing partners, Carroll Hall, and we headed for St. Regis, MT to fish the Clark Fork River.
Driving across eastern WA was a thrill with 60 MPH winds and major dust clouds being lifted up into the skies. We arrived in St. Regis and went to the Clark Fork Trout & Tackle shop and met up with our other fishing partner, Tyler Speir. He had driven over a couple days earlier to check the area out and to do a little fishing. This was our first fishing trip with Tyler, but he is not new to fishing. He is a master rod builder and used to be a guide.
Brooks Sanford was at the store, he is the owner of the Clark Fork Trout & Tackle shop and he is also my guide. Carroll bought his fishing license then we headed over to the Super 8 Motel and checked in. For dinner we drove 18 miles north to Quinn?s Resort and Restaurant. The air was filled with the dust of eastern WA, covering everything in a heavy layer. It was also spitting snow, yep, a snow storm in a dust storm, what a combination. Anyway, we had a great dinner then headed back to get ready for the next day.
Tyler asked me a question, how many fish do I usually catch on the Clark Fork. I told him that usually I don't count, I usually do good, some days really good and sometimes I have a spectacular day, then there are those rare times that I have a Hard Day of fishing and my only catch 6 or 8 fish, you just never know.. He said yes, but how many. So, I decided to keep track on my first day of fishing, to actually see how many fish I really caught.
We met Brooks and TJ who was Carroll's and Tyler's guide the next morning at the fly shop. They usually pick us up at the motel but with the cold temperatures and fairly high winds we decided to buy ourselves a little more clothing.
We launched at St. Regis and would take out at 14 Mile Bridge, it is a long drift but usually a fairly productive one. We all had hoped to fish dries, big Skwalla dries and maybe with a dropper. However after the first half hour into the float, Brooks wisely called a halt to the dries and we fished nymphs deep, under a strike indicator. We used the same type of flies all day, a big rubber legged stonefly nymph and a size 10 Prince Nymph. Right off the bat I caught my first Rainbow and the fun continued all day. There were sections where I caught nothing and once I tried a dry in a great looking stretch of water, but no takers at all.
So here is my count. I did not count strikes nor did I count hookups that were only on for a few seconds, I have to get them to the boat before I count them as a solid hookup.
As far as how I classified the day, I would say that the day was a good day, not a great nor spectacular day, but a good day of fishing.
The count:
I had 52 solid hookups and got 45 of them to the net. Seven came off right at the boat. They were mostly Rainbows, but I caught a few Browns, Cutthroats and CutBows. I also caught a fair number of very frisky Whitefish, which I don?t mind at all, they are good fighters.
I sit here typing this fishing report, waiting for Brooks to pick me up. It was really cold last night, for May, it was down to the very low 20's and all the cars have a layer of frost covering them out in the parking lot. Because we knew it would be colder today we decided to start our day at 10 rather than at 9. We will have some sunshine today, warming up to the mid-30's then this afternoon around 2 or so it is supposed to start raining. But we hope for some Skwalla action on the dries. Heck, I still have yet to catch a fish on my new Sage ZXL 6 weight dry fly rod. Maybe today. More later.
Larry ---sagefisher---