7-28-24 Montana Day 1
It was finally time for our 7 day fishing trip to Montana. I’ve been out west mulitpile times for hunting and family ski trips, but only once to fish. My friend Jim put together a great fishing itinerary that included 7 days of fishing, 6 of which would be guided. We would spend the first 4 days on a tailwater, 3 of which would be guided and the fourth day we would rent drift boats and go on our own. After that we would head to another part of the state to fish another tailwater for 3 more days.
First day at the cabin
On day 1, we met the guides right at the dam, so we start fishing where the water temperatures were the coldest. I couldn’t believe the amount of boats launching from this spot, more than I’ve ever seen anywhere back home. That being said, everyone seemed to work together and had a system of rotating through runs. It worked out well and the river was so big that by the time we went around the first corner, everything seemed wide open and spread out again.
I had my T&T 10’9” 3 weight contact 2 with about 50’ of 4X sighter and 5x tippet. My plan was to tightline out of the boat, I do that quite a bit but the guides out west were a little reluctant. I talked him into letting me try and if it didn’t work, I would use his set up. I asked him about patterns and he did really well on a zebra midge. The water was pretty deep near the damn so I started with a heavier olive perdigon on point and had a zebra midge on a tag up above.
We started working the run below the dam and it didn’t take long before I noticed a twitch in my sighter, I set the hook and the reel started screaming. I always thought our wild Catskill rainbows put up a great fight, but out west, they seem to have another gear. After a solid battle we got the fish in the net and it was a good one. As the guide rowed the boat back under control, I held the fish in the net and noticed my rod fall off and hit the boat. I picked it up with one hand and noticed another fish was on! After removing the fly from the trout, I threw my line in the water so it wouldn’t get tangled up and somehow another fish decided to eat it. I handed that rod to Ryan in the back of the boat, and he landed another rainbow. What a great way to start the trip.
First two fo the trip
We did that run a few more times, each time producing more rainbow trout. The biggest one was a 22” rainbow that sitting right off the bottom in one of the deepest sections. The depth of the water varied a lot, mostly it got deeper the further down the run, so there was a definite advantage of being able to adjust the depth during the drift. I would adjust my sighter lower in the water to get my flies down in the deeper sections and then hold it higher above the water as we approached the tail out where it got shallow again.
Wild fighting rainbows!
The bottom of the water had a lot of grass, so it was important to keep the flies just above that to avoid getting snagged. It seemed that the fish were hitting the perdigon on point a lot more. During one battle, I had a pretty heavy rainbow almost to the boat and it dove into the grass. The zebra midge on the tag decided to snag onto the grass and broke the entire rig. I decided to fish just one fly after that, especially since they seemed to prefer the perdigon anyway.
We continued to float down the river and I was amazed by the quantity of fish. Not just the ones we were catching, but also the fish that were swimming around the boat during the float. The sheer number of fish was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. One interesting thing I learned was that the fish in this river don’t live all that long due to gill lice, I’ve never seen that before but the guide showed it to me on numerous fish.
Gill Lice in a trout
As we continued to float, I tried different flies and they all seemed to work pretty well. The perdigon, tasmanian devil, and higa’s sos all worked, as long as you had the right size bead on to get down deep but not too heavy where it gets hung up on the grass.
The entire day was action packed, it was interesting that every single fish we caught was a rainbow trout. Nymphing was the only thing we did on this day, even though we saw a lot of fish, none of them were looking up. In fact, we saw very few rising fish. If day 1 was a glimpse into what we had coming, it was going to be a really good trip.
After the trip, we headed back to the cabin where my father in law took over as the camp chef. On day 1 we had some fresh cut ribeyes from the butcher that came out great. After dinner, we went out behind the cabin and casted to some rising fish at sunset, great way to finish the day.