… and trout.
Thought I was going to get skunked on what was probably my last day fishing this year. But FINALLY one little rainbow decided to send me off in style.
John
Wow John. I had to put a jacket on to read your thread. Beautiful pics and congrats on your last trout.
Beaver
Ice and some really cold weather had pretty well locked up my winter fishing crick the past couple months, but the weather reports and streamflow charts suggested it might have opened up within the past few days.
Bingo. The water was a bit low, but in great shape. Not much in the way of ice except for remnant shelf ice, and a bit of ice in the guides on and off.
Fished a number of places over about four hours, and caught fishies in all of them. Part 1 will show most of the spots fished, and Part 2 will show some the spots caught.
In one place, only one fishy came to play. But in most, up to four or five decided it was time for some entertainment. More about that in Part 2.
John
JARS … hit for the cycle today.
Brown
Rainbow
Westslope Cutthroat
Brookie
Cuttbow
Mountain Whitefish
And for a bonus pic, another cutthroat.
Hooked about twenty fishies and landed around fifteen. Other than the two singles - the brookie and the mountain whitefish - the mix was predominantly cutthroat with about an even number of browns and bows and a couple cuttbows.
Last year I was able to fish this stretch from around Christmas ( 2011 ) through the entire winter, except for a few really cold spells. Very different this year, which is probably more typical for this crick.
But from here on out …
John
Awesome day!
Thanks for the inspiration.
… put a bit of slush ice in the crick early in the day, and the cold daytime temps put some ice in the guides on and off this afternoon.
Had a really good day with JARS for hooking, with about 19 fishies willing to tease a bit, but not so much for landing, with about a dozen in hand. Quite different than a couple days ago, with the large majority of the fishies smaller brown trouts with only a couple cutts and one cuttbow.
Did get on a couple pieces of water I didn’t hit the other day and got some action at both.
Believe I did hook one of the larger cutts that I caught the other day, but this time he figured out to get off before I landed him. Good for him.
John
Nice TR’s John… I’m just catching up with them now… enjoying coming along with you… please continue…
… and you caught up just in time.
The temps were way up today, around 50F, and the water level was way down, probably the lowest I have seen it over the past three plus years. The casting was just dandy but the hooking and catching not so much.
Best part of three hours in seven or eight different places which are generally productive resulted in three hook ups and two …
… fishies in hand.
The ice is not all gone …
… but it’s well on its way to disappearing, probably in a matter of weeks, if that.
This year has been much different than last year on the crick I fished today. Last year, with milder temps over the winter but a lot more snow I fished it many more times and was picking up 15 to 20 fish per outing with a good number of larger cutts, browns, and rainbows. This year, with really cold weather but much less snow I only fished it a handful of times with only two days really coming close to how it fished last year, but with very few large rainbows and fewer good size cutts and browns.
On the way home, I was noticing, again, how little snow there is in the Bitterroot. Kind of a sick feeling about what this year might hold for the fishies and those chasing them on the Bitterroot. Still time for conditions to improve and end up in a good water year - but with the basin at 82% of average this late in the winter there’s a lot of catching up to and not a lot of time to do it.
This will be my last report on this thread. I’m thinking I will run out the “Lochsa” thread to complete a full year of reporting on that system - like up through the end of this month - and then decide whether I will continue to do fishing reports on this Forum.
John
Qudos to you … You have more cajones than I do and my local river is ice free …
But John … I know it must be an optical illusion but that sure looks like a nice bobber on your line <LOL>
Sorry, man, no thumb photos today.
I kind of like this “thumb shot” from early last week.
John
Sorry, it was in the 50s and 60s in Montana last week, so no ice in the pic. But I had to take one thumb shot just because…
