It's a Lock

Always is, this great river.  Come to think of it, if Montana didn't have this place and Livingston, I'm not sure I'd fish the state as often as I do, especially in the fall.  Idaho has three or four pretty good ones closer to home, not to mention Wyoming.  But they ain't this.

Upon late arrival around 11, there's a few caddis skittering about, the last of some tricos, tiny midges, and assorted mayflies about the size of the midges. A random fish rises, here and there, and once in a while one comes up in range to cover with a big generic soft hackle.  I take a couple fish, and wait for the 1:30 blue wings that never come.  Too early?  Too warm?  Just fishing?  After a late lunch, I swing the wet into the sunset and take a couple more fish to stretch the tippet.  Hmmm.  Is it tough here too?

The trailer rocks from the wind on Sunday morning.  Its day six, fifth on the water, and the show is still not really on the road.  I think I know how to fix that this morning, even in 20-30 mph winds, no exaggeration.  I go up to the big island channel with the high bank and some willows, and wade right down to the lower part of island where the pig flat always produces.  It does, on the wets. The wind is blowing down river off my right shoulder, so with the right timing I'm making hero casts.  I work down the flat and finally around the corner into the deep drop, where the wind is still favorable, if there's such a thing.  I cast between gusts, and they're chomping the swing.  Really chomping in the bucket.

By 12:30, the gusts now have some short breaks in between.  I see a rise, and then another in the same spot.  Revolutionary!  It does happen!  There's a little pod of fish on one little semi-protected flat less than a foot deep and no more than five feet off the shallow bank.  I add some 5x and start to play.  I can't see what they're eating, and don't see any bugs on the water.  Midges?  I don't know.  They don't refuse the mole though.  

Mid afternoon, and I'm hurting everywhere from casting in the wind and pulling on fish.  I . . . leave rising fish for a late lunch, a walk and dinner for Norman, and a nap for both of us before evening.  Back up at Lone Tree for a quick 90 minutes at sunset, there's a few fish working just down the hill.  Easy access for the weary.  A couple more line stretches, and that's a wrap.  Lock.

Next morning I'm back in the same run.  I mean, its a lock, right?  Yep.  Down the lower skinny-water bank, and out in the bucket, the fish are rising.  No wets today.  I get humbled a little in the calm sunny conditions, but still manage some good ones fairly steady.  There's enough bugs to keep it going through early afternoon, when some riff-raff decides to fish, float, and have lunch on the 100 feet of bank I'm working. The clown rowing (I won't call him a guide) offers me a bratwurst.

The last 90 minutes or so before sunset have some fish up back in the same area too, though I don't really get to where I want to be, and am not going to be "that guy" just because I want to fish there.  Fish still come up to the big dry soft hackle.  They actually like it!  Maybe some remembrances from summer, or just opportunistic eats.  Hey, I'm ok with size 14's in late September.  Low 80's in the forecast for two more days.  I'm all in.

Time for a change of scenery and fish this morning, so I'm walking down from the barb wire pullout.  I turn a fish early on a leech, and see a couple of one-timers, but its no lock here.  The wind is up and I search the protected high bank extensively, but there's no bugs and no fish up.  I need a town run for some tax-free trailer tires, and I win the lottery and get the call to go pee in a cup.  (Is the US Government's DOT the last people on earth that do this?) Seems like a good afternoon to do it.  I get back in time for another quick evening check on things, and there's nothing worth checking on.

One more pleasant morning finds me walking up from Lone Tree to the bottom of the little magic island.  All looks hopeless, but now there's two fish rising every few minutes on the bank below a big weed patch stuck to a rock.  Speaking of weeds, its seems more weedy than ever this morning, with floating salad everywhere.  The flow hasn't changed.

Its rough positioning due to depth, and I just can't get out very far from the shore they're rising on.  Down and just a hair across is the angle, and I finally get the lower one to eat twice.  No hookup either time, and that's that.  I go up above the island to the only place I can cross the side channel, and then back down to the bottom where I can walk down on the big shallow gravel bar and fish the bucket.  A fish rises once in a while there, and I manage to catch a couple of "regulars."  

Four full days plus a little extra, and the only place that's any good is the bottom of the big island.  At least I found that, but I'm not really wanting to fish it over and over again, nor compete for it with boats floating down from the dam and merry-go-rounding on river right.  No Missouri River magic this visit.

Bucket full of 'em

Sweet spot

That last spot of risers

Weedy

Here and There

It's already fall, and I'm about a week later than normal. A cold rain greets me at the Ranch.  Should be perfect, right?  Some light rain, no wind, low flow, and uncrowded on a mid-September Tuesday morning.  There's a couple fish up once or twice here and there, and a light sprinkling of mahoganies for a couple hours.  I get a few eats, and even a couple good grabs on the leech while waiting for a rise.  Just enough rain to need the rain jacket. The table is set, but hardly anyone comes to breakfast, or lunch.  Just a couple walk-ins looking for "table for one."  Dinner is closed.

Wednesday is raining harder, and socked-in foggy all morning with only a few hundred feet of visibility.  Not inviting.  I take a drive down to Ashton where the ceiling is higher, but there's no sign of life and the wind is howling with passing showers.  Just not meant to be.  I move back up to Last Chance for the evening, and there's some smaller fish rising occasionally down in the rock garden.  I have it to myself, and its a beautiful cloudy evening made for blue wings, but hardly an appearance.  

Thursday morning dawns partly cloudy and cool, and now the table is really set for a "normal" day.  I have the place to myself and wade the shallow flats in the regular spots.  Nope.  I get a few eats but never hook a fish.  No mahoganies all day.  I need somethin'.  My time will likely be shorter this season.  Heading west for the night.

I've had some decent fall fishing to the west, though never anything like the pmd season.  It seems like a good idea.  Friday morning the wind is howling, but I've been here in that before.  The willows are thick and casts inside the corridor aren't as long as the big waters, so its doable.  Fishing is dead until noon on just about everything I try, even the wets.  Then I start getting some grabs.  I start to see a random riser here and there, and the grass on the walk in is still full of hoppers, so I do a little prospecting with that.  I get an eat here and there, but few.  

I just can't get anything going.  I give up.  Four days in, and this is not how it's supposed to be going.  Maybe I left the Ranch too soon?  Maybe I should have went to Silver Creek?  Ya, ya, "it's fishing."  Perhaps, but I'm way over that lame excuse.  So I'm selling out, headed north where the roads lead, where any fool can catch a few big ole fish, and sometimes a shitload of 'em.  I need it.  Time to get this trip on the road.  To Wolf Creek!

In the House on Day One

Here and There

A little dusting on top

All to myself

Nobody home

Perfect

This did get an eat here and there.

Hope

Last Dance

 I'm pretty sure it's not going to be great, but this is the walk I want to take on the last morning of this trip.  Its either this, or Dillon, and the easy turn at Cardwell is left.  The evening is windy, but this morning is comfortably cool and dead calm to start.  Just me and a white Jeep in the lot at 7am.  The water at the top of the island has some weeds, but not like the weedy MO.  The Foundation calls the water "turbid," or increased turbidity, I call it Beaverhead clear.  It's not Fork clear like a month ago.  I get in, and slow dance my way down, scanning the water thinking of opening morning, windy afternoons, and brown drake evenings.  I think ahead to mahoganies peppered with baetis in September.  Maybe a grasshopper or two.  Its quiet.

Behind me, I hear a bloop.  I turn around and 30 feet back is a ring of the rise, right where I just danced through five minutes earlier.  A couple minutes later, there's another one above that.  Both one-timers.  A bloop is a light sound, the nose of the fish still coming out of the water, but sort of a spinner sip.  A blurp, on the other hand, often leaves a bubble, like eating a dun or escaping emerger.  A deeper tone, and more arousing.

The water is pretty bugless, just a rare PMD adult or spinner floating by.  Big ones though, big enough to get a big rainbow's attention if even only once.  A couple of tricos hang on my sleeve.  Some fluttering caddis glow in the sunlight above the water.  All together, they're still hardly worth a bloop.

An hour in though, half way down and dead-center on the long dance floor, I finally see two fish start to work.  As I step downstream to get in range of the steady risers, the dreaded north wind quickly pushes down river at my back.  The flags on the ranch lawn show themselves, and that stops the rising fish on the formerly mirror-smooth Millionaire's pool.  I finish the walk down, taking my time hoping its just a passing gust.  Nope.  I see some PMD's flying in a tiny lee south of lower island.  But there will be no morning rise.  On the trail out, there are grasshoppers in the grass and sage brush.  I wonder what might have been.  For now, the dance is over.

Oh, the morning dreams

A confirmation

See you in September

So Predictable

I'm sort of pointed to home.  Fishing's hanging on by a thread.  Flat.  But once I'm home, the summer mind-set is kaput.  I'm weak, or smart, probably the former. I just can't quite drive away when you-know-where is just a short air conditioned drive up the road a piece.  DW has new digs exactly one hour away from the best trout river in America.  Day trip tricos and caddis from dawn to noon, maybe some pmd's, head back home, repeat.  This is how to finish strong, yes sir.  Let's play four.  We do.  6-8 fish mornings, good fish.  A bonus afternoon when some clouds kept things comfortable.  There's no place like it.

Starts grew a little later each day, but early beats everybody and is so comfortable.

The iconic view down at the best trout river in America.

And fish like this daily are part of the reason why

One of the best side channels in America

And fat rainbows too

There's a new beaver in town, but the trout still love river-left

The clear winner for four days.  It imitates, or represents, everything.

This little strip had multiple heads coming up every morning.

Girthy

At 4,000 cfs, the river's version of bonefish flats.  

No brown trout crises here.

This was a nice looking spent partridge caddis before the teeth got a hold of it.

From out here, you have the flats on your left, and the point on your right.  Both accessible with rising fish.

One more

High Ground

It's still roasting, and gonna stay that way since it's mid-July after all.  Needing some "better" fish, the next coolest place I can think of off hand is back in the Yellowstone region.  Just a few degrees cooler than the surrounding lower valleys, with a couple options I know well for some good fish on the dry.  Neither fish well, but at least I check, and don't need to run the A/C for a couple days. 

From clear air on the Idaho side of the Bitterroots to the smokey skies of the Island Park caldera.  

Covered in caddis in the Fork, but only an occasional one-timer eating. Not happening.

A favorite side channel for the evening

On the parachute rusty

Three Dollar morning

The fly for the rare rising fish

I covered some ground up from Three Buck

This is the first bank I ever fished on the Madison in 1984.  Wow, 40 years and I remember it like yesterday. Big fires. I waded up the bank and just mowed 'em down every morning with an elk hair caddis.  Me and "Oregone Don" Freeman, who I would go fish the Deschutes with for steelhead that fall. 

Evening fish from that bank.

I still remember some old timer (I'm in my early 20's then) telling me about all the big fish that came into this side channel to feed around sunset.  I've since seen it many times thanks to him, but not on this visit.  

Not much here at sunset either, where I've seen it boil with fish on spent eporeus in mid-July 

No morning life up here across from that iconic boulder either.

Me and a fish went a few rounds just inches from the bank here.  He missed a couple of my flies.  I missed a couple more of his takes.  He won.