The Change-of-Plans Trip

[Poke 'Em]

I was planning on going to Alberta last week to fish for big bull trout and cutthroats. But high and lingering snowpack and some torrential rains had the rivers running high and dirty. So I decided that I would head to the Beartooth Mountains of south-central Montana and backpack in to fish for golden trout and cutthroats. Before I loaded up with my backpack though, I wanted to hike into a lake that's just a couple of miles off the highway and, according to Montana FWP anyway, should have held some pretty big cutthroats (20-24"). It's only two miles from the trailhead to the lake, but it's a several hundred foot drop, followed by a several hundred foot climb, then another big drop and another big climb to 10,000'. The lake is just over that hill:



I finally made it to the lake, and it was absolutely stunning:



There's plenty of backcast room, as you can see. This is the view behind me from where I was casting:



Anyway, the lake didn't turn out to be what I was hoping for. I didn't see any large fish, but the lake was instead loaded with tons of little (~6") cutts after the FWP stocked it a couple of years ago. Oh well, maybe in a few years it will be loaded with giants again. I'm all about little fish, but that wasn't why I was there. I fished around the lake, and without seeing anything of any size, I headed back to the truck. Unfortunately, I'm a little bit fatter and out of shape than I was last year. Last year I was able to backpack/hike 38 miles in 4 days. This year, I was going to go for 42 miles in 4 days, but after making just that 4-mile round trip at that elevation, I realized I was not going to be able to do what I had planned on. At least not comfortably enough to actually enjoy myself.

So, I decided to head back to some water that I had been to a couple of weeks before. When I was there two weeks ago, one of the streams I wanted to fish (that I'd never fished before) was still too high and off-color to fish, so we tried a different nearby stream and had good luck. The water was high then, but clear. The fishing was good, but the fish were really only holding in the deep, slow pools, out of the current. Or at least the only fish willing to hit a fly were holding in that water. Well, two weeks made a lot of difference. Now a lot of holding water was clearly defined, and low and slow enough that the fish were looking up. I made it to the stream about 4 in the afternoon, and proceeded to catch about 20 or 25 fish in the next three hours.




This guy was the best fish of the day, a surprisingly nice fish for the water he was in:



And, of course, he splashed the camera lens... jerk.

[Poke 'Em]

The next day, I fished a bigger stem of the same stream. I parked the truck, hiked a mile downstream or so, and fished my way back. I was a little early though, as I got to the stream about 9 in the morning, and the fish weren't active. I went through a couple of pools that I knew had fish (because I missed three out of this pool the night before before I realized that my fly was broken off at the bend), and wasn't getting any interest. Usually, the fish don't turn on until about 10:00 in this area, so I forced myself to sit on a rock for an hour. I couldn't do that, of course, but I'd sit for about 20 minutes, get up and try a few drifts, get nothing, and sit for another 20 minutes. Almost exactly at 10:00, I started seeing a few golden stones coming out. So I grabbed one, pinched his wings a bit, and threw him out into a nice looking seam. He made it about 10 feet downstream, when a cutt turned around, raced downstream, and grabbed him. Go time!

I tied on a little FEB Hopper (props to JohnScott), and made a drift right through where I'd tossed the natural.



From that moment on, the fishing was ridiculous. I was picking up fish on nearly every cast. Almost every single pocket that looked like it should hold a fish did. In a mile of stream, I landed over 30 fish, and probably missed another 10 or 15 more.





There weren't any massive hatches like there were a couple of week prior, but the fish were definitely looking up even more than they were then. Every single fish was caught on a big dry fly, except one that I had to put on a big stonefly nymph to pull out of a deep pool.

[Poke 'Em]

That evening, I drove around to the stream that I wanted to fish on my last trip, but didn't due to the water clarity. It was nice and clear this time. Still just a bit high, but certainly fishable. I got there mid-afternoon, so I didn't have time to fish the full stretch I wanted to. Instead, I just fished a bit right around the campground. I picked up three cutts, but nothing particularly large. So that evening, I decided to go try a little tributary that I'd driven by on the way in. When I drove by it, it didn't look like it held a lot of water, so I didn't have real high hopes. When I got back to the stream though, what I noticed was that there was an irrigation ditch that diverted off the stream about a half a mile up from the bridge where I crossed it. That ditch took about half of the stream's flow out of the equation. Once I got up above that ditch, the stream started to look a lot nicer.



This hole gave up four fish. Three the first time through, and on my way back to the truck I picked up one more.







This stream was loaded with 5-9" cutts, with enough fish in the 11-12" range to keep things really interesting. I caught 15+ in the last hour of daylight.

[Poke 'Em]

The next day, I was going to give the main river a good go at it. My plan was to hike up from the campground a couple of miles (to get away from the few other people who were fishing the stream), and then fish upstream for a couple more miles before hiking back.



Well, when I go to the spot where I wanted to try fishing, it was still a little early for the fish to be looking up, so I tied on a big black wooly bugger and figured I'd swing it through the pool. This guy slammed it on the very first cast:



Two casts later another fish slammed it. Three casts after that, I picked up my third fish from the same pool. My original plan was to throw dries, but fish were slamming streamers. I really like it when fish slam streamers. I like it enough that I decided I'd just swing streamers and fish my way downstream back to camp. That was a good decision.

This guy figured that if I was going to stick a hook in him, he'd do the same to me and see how I like it. I throw streamers with stinger hooks a lot when I'm swinging, and so far I'd managed to avoid getting one hook in the fish and another in me at the same time. But it was bound to happen eventually....





That's just one more reason why I pinch my barbs down. Both the fish and my finger came off the hook quite easily, before too much damage was done.

After I made it about a mile or so downstream, I finally saw a couple of people coming upstream. They were still a couple hundred yards away, so I figured I'd swing through one more hole and then walk around them and get back in downstream. This hole consisted of an overhanging bush, which was about 25 feet upstream from a large tree stretching nearly all the way across the river. Well, my very first cast through that hole I hooked up with a pretty stout cutthroat. I certainly wasn't going to be able to pull him upstream, so I was able to finagle my line around the first overhanging bush. But there was no way I was going to get around the big tree from the bank, and he was taking me downstream quickly. So it was either try to pull him back up against the current, and probably break him off, or cross the stream. The bank here was about 4' straight up, with no way to get down to the water. So, I did what every logical fisherman would do, and jumped in! Somehow, I stuck the landing, and was able to get across the stream and land him. I felt a little bad about jumping into that pool with a couple of fisherman heading upstream, but oh well. There were about 300 other pools I didn't jump into, so I didn't feel too bad about it.

He measured right at 17" against the rod. Not huge by any means, but a pretty nice fish, especially in fast current.




Once I got past those guys, the river started moving quite a bit faster.

[Poke 'Em]

The river picked up, and the fishing didn't slow down any.



Just downstream from there, I had a fish come up, swing at my streamer, and I hooked up with him. Unfortunately, I foul hooked him in the back. With a foul hooked fish, in fast current, I definitely wasn't going to be able to pull him upstream. In fact, in about 10 seconds I was into my backing and chasing the fish downstream. About 200 yards downstream in fact! In a spot where I couldn't get out of the river and go down the bank. Hey, at least I only fell over once.



I finally made it back to camp after catching somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40 cutts. When I got back to camp, I decided to go hit up the little stream that I'd fished just before dark the night before. After fishing it twice, that is now one of my favorite streams. Every single place that looks like it should hold a fish does, and there are plenty of fish in the 10-12" range, which makes for a lot of fun on a 3 weight.

[JohnScott]

Outstanding, Patrick, simply outstanding.

Thanks.

John

[turvy]

I really enjoyed your post and pics. thanks, turvy

[Tenkara-Fishing]

Wow amazing fish. Thanks for sharing the trip.