Spring Break in Montana

Tracy and I had a great time in Montana visiting our parents and relatives. We left home on a day where it was around 75 degrees. It was so nice that I just about walked out the door and left my coat behind. We stopped in Spokane and ate lunch with Dean and Laberta. After arriving in Helena we helped dad set up his new Mac. It is great! It has a 24" monitor and many other nice features.

Later in the week we left to visit everyone in Livingston. While in Livingston we helped Tracy's mom get set up with Skype. We seem to be a high tech family. Now, at the click of a few buttons and we can chat back and forth.

I was particularly excited about the spring fishing on the Yellowstone. Most days, we would wake up to bright sunshiny days with an occasional snow flurry. The warm weather seemed to bring the fish out looking for some food after a long winter's nap. The fish were biting better than I can remember. I tended to catch very few small fish. I caught many fish that were in the 14-19 inch range.

I have fished the Yellowstone River for almost 40 years. I knew the river had some big fish in it, occasionally someone would catch one and I would see a picture and story in the local paper. Well, this time it was my turn to land the big one. I left about mid-day and pulled up to a spot near the radio station just on the edge of town. It is a stretch of river that I enjoyed walking up the river keeping one eye on the "sleeping giant" in the background and the other eye on the river. As I walked along I could see large fish slurping up a hatch of small flies, maybe size 18-20, but I thought they might like my large wooley bugger with a gold head. I took aim and tossed the hook along the edge of the shoreline where the fish were feeding and sure enough one took my fly and flew into the air. A minute later I was releasing a beautiful 16" rainbow trout.

That was fun, I thought. Let's try that again. So, this time I launched several tries into the middle of the current where the fly carried down to the bottom of a long run. On one of the attempts the fly sunk deep into the current and stopped suddenly. I pulled back setting the hook and it didn't move, but it felt like I had something on. Sure enough, a big one was on. It moved into the swiftest current running back and forth. I pulled for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually, I decided he was coming in! He didn't jump, so I couldn't really tell how big he was until I got him along the shoreline. It turned out to be a brown trout that was just about 24" in length.

I decided to take off and show Tracy and her mom when I was stopped by a man who saw the whole event. He was from Sweden and was quite impressed with the size of the fish. First he wondered if the fish was a salmon that ran to the ocean each year, but finally I convinced him that was not possible given the flow of water from the Rocky mountains. He was staying on a ranch up the Paradise valley where his host provided him a fish dinner. He questioned me regarding the size of an average fish caught in the Yellowstone. He complained, the fish he ate were only 10-12 inches long. He said, you are surely the best fly fisherman in Montana. I laughed and tried to explain that it was the biggest one that I had caught in 39 years of fishing the Yellowstone.