My Trip to Montana

[Cody309]

Hey everyone! I haven't posted in ages due to school and work consuming my life. Luckily, that will soon change as I just finished my MBA at the end of April. To celebrate and relax before starting my new role, I booked a 6 day guided fishing trip in Montana - more specifically, around Missoula, and a few days in Craig.

Seattle:

Before flying in to Missoula, I decided to visit a very good friend from undergrad who was working for Microsoft in Seattle. I arrived Friday afternoon, and got a quick tour of Kirkland, WA, before sharing a few beers at my friend's place. We ended up having dinner at a pub in Kirkland, and toured around Lake Washington after dinner.

The following day, we hiked up Mount Si, which took about 4 hours total. Great exercise combined with great views - we definitely earned our beer!

That night we headed into the Cap Hill area of Seattle, and hit a few bars. Garage was a pretty cool place that had tons of pool tables and bowling lanes that you could rent out with friends, not to mention a pretty stellar beer selection!

 

[Cody309]

Travel to Missoula from Seattle:

Washington is a super beautiful state, and I'd love to return to try some fly-fishing there - perhaps the Olympic Peninsula for some steelhead! After the short visit, I was so stoked to finally head off to Missoula.

I booked this trip back in February, and was counting down the days until it actually happened. When I was stepping onto the plane pictured above to finally fly to Missoula, I couldn't believe it was actually about to happen. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning!

After checking into my hotel (view from which can be seen below), I decided to head out for my first Montana meal.

Everything is better with an old fashioned

Angling Day 1 - Rock Creek:

I met my guide (Joe Cummings, owner of Missoula River Lodge) out front of my hotel the next morning at 8:30am, and we started our ~1 hour drive to our first river - Rock Creek.

I loved the fly-fishing culture here - this was the first Montana fly shop I went in, and it was awesome to see 4 dogs inside, and two people drinking coffee, huddled around a table in the middle of the store tying some flies.

This was our rig for the day - with the flows and terrain of Rock Creek, it was better to use a smaller raft. Being a single angler allowed me to take advantage of their smaller boats, which allowed us to fish some super sneaky water during high run-off season that the other driftboats couldn't access.

The potential species to be caught here can be seen above. I was especially excited at the prospect of catching my very first Cutthroat and Bull trout. What excited me further was that this river holds roughly 2000 fish per mile of river!

This was the view from the put in - absolutely gorgeous!

We were running 6 wt setups with a dry-dropper setup. The dry we used was a "Big Chubby" - essentially a big Chernobyl ant.

 

[Cody309]

Sure enough, at the very first run, I hooked into 3 rainbows. Shortly thereafter came my very first cutthroat trout!

Some more views of Rock Creek before lunch:

Just before lunch, Joe rowed our raft up a small channel, and I got a crack at doing some wade fishing on a small run. The view where we pulled over looked like this:

I managed to find a fish willing to play as well FISH ON!

This was an astonishingly healthy river, and throughout the day I landed many more browns, bows, and cutties (no bull trout... today ). The end tally was somewhere in the 50-60 fish range!

We finally came to the take-out, and called it a day!

 

[Cody309]

Angling Day 2 - The Big Blackfoot (yes, the river from A RIver Runs Through It):

On our way home on Day 1, Joe made a quick stop at the Blackfoot to check out its conditions. Around this time, there are very small windows to chase big fish in high water, and Joe felt that the Blackfoot was at a perfect place. This is an excellent example as to why you should consider hiring a guide for a few days in a new location. With Joe's 20+ years experience angling these waters, he made the perfect call, and we were in for an absolutely epic day.

To start with, however, we made a quick pit-stop at one of the local Missoula fly shops.

Our vessel for day 2:

With these river conditions, we were using what the guides called a "Slop Rig" (just named for how sloppy it can be to cast). We were rocking a 7 wt today, and running a streamer as the anchor fly, followed by a squirmy worm. At the second hole we pulled up to, I managed to convince 3 nice rainbows to come out and play:

Leaving that run on a high, I wasn't sure how much better the day was going to get. After a few drifts in the following hole, we were about to pull up and head to the next run, when I set the hook on this beautiful 23" brownie:

I couldn't believe how well the day was going! After releasing this beauty, and getting over the post-release high, we moved to the next run. Two drifts in, my indicator drops, and I feel a HEAVY fish on the other end of the line. He hugged bottom for a long time, moving where ever he desired. Finally, he got pissed off enough to head into the heavy current, and the chase downstream was on. After a 5-10 minute battle, we pulled my very first bull trout into the net (~31").

I was on cloud 9 - I had been dreaming about this fish for years, and I was in awe as I watched him slowly swim back to the depths out of our net.

We anchored the boat after this fish and had some lunch. Unfortunately, after lunch, the river spiked from 5250 CFS to 5900 CFS, and the fishing shut off. Nevertheless, the float out had some beautiful scenery to enjoy:

 

[Paul1913]

AMAZING.

I have to say I'm a bit jealous. .looks like a trip of a life time well done

 

[Cody309]

Angling Day 3 - Spring Creek off of the Bitterroot:

This was my final day with Joe, as for days 4-6 I would be fishing with Missoula River Lodge's lead guide Evan. Today's trip was extremely unique - only possible with one angler, and a client who is willing to do a bit of leg work to get a shot at some extraordinary fish (which luckily for me, I was more than willing to do ). This Spring Creek is very unique in that a few years ago it was completely closed to the public, however after a litigation, anything in the water column became accessible for the public. However, you are not allowed to set a single foot on a bank, or you'll be at risk of being charged with trespassing. The only time you are allowed to use the bank is to portage around man-made structures that the boat cannot navigate under or around (i.e. fences and footbridges).

During this float, I have never seen more 20+ inch fish in my life. Both rainbows and browns were scattered in this super skinny, technical creek. After a bit of trial and error, I managed my first Spring Creek bow:

I few more runs down the river, I set the hook on what may be "a fish of a lifetime". He immediately exploded out of the water, and sprinted downstream, conveniently pulling my line underneath a footbridge. With Joe having to portage the boat, I launched myself out, kept my rod underwater, keeping side pressure, and a tight line to the fish, crawled underneath the bridge, and busted my ass downstream on the other side. Joe quickly followed with his net, and a few moments later, I was absolutely awestruck by this behemoth:

After the photo, I let this gentle giant slowly swim out of my hands and back into the river from where he came. I sat there, on my knees, for a good few minutes realizing what just happened. After a quick fist-bump, I hopped back onto the raft with Joe. The fight from that fish caused a big disturbance in the water and we decided to anchor for lunch while the silt settled.

This was an absolutely beautiful spring creek and I found myself just staring off into the distance during lunch.

After lunch, we came across another footbridge we needed to portage over, and before we created too much silt on the other side of the bridge, I carefully walked over to the hole on the other side, and tossed a cast on the outside seam of the riffle. The indicator dropped, I set the hook, and we ended up with this beauty bow:

The end of the day slowed a little, but I did manage this guy before we were done:

We then reentered the Bitterroot at the end of our drift, and admired the mountains in the distance as we drifted to our take out point.

 

[Cody309]

Quick laundry break and I'll finish up with the last 3 days!

 

[Cody309]

Ok - back to it!

Angling Day 4 - More Spring Creek Fishing

The next day, I met Evan outside of my hotel at 8:30am, and we had a quick chat about options for the day. Flows were much higher around Missoula today, so options weren't plentiful, but it was nice for Evan to present me with them nonetheless. One of which was the option to wade a different section of the Spring Creek I had fished on Day 3, which sounded super fun! At this point I had only been in a drift boat, and wading sounded like a nice change of pace.

The morning was rather uneventful - we saw a few browns around the 24" range, but they spooked super easily. We got to a point in the river where we were wading around some of the coolest properties I had ever seen (remember, this river is surrounded by all private property owned by the likes of Huey Lewis and Charles Schwab). One property actually had their living room built over the river with a glass floor so that they could watch the river below while they relaxed in their house - too cool!

As I said, fishing was quite slow, so we were about to turn around and start the 40-60 min wade back to the car to try a different section. Luckily, we ended up running into some ranch hands doing work around the river who offered to give us a lift to a different section of the river to save us the wade. So Evan and I hopped in the back of their pickup truck in our waders and holding fly reels, and they drove us down the highway to our next spot. I can only imagine what drivers were thinking when they passed a pickup truck with two fly-fisherman sitting in the back.

The new spot definitely fished much better, as I pulled out a beauty brown in the very first hole. This water was some of the most technical I had ever fished, which made it that much more rewarding. For example, one of my most memorable trout (pictured below) was landed after I approached a run that was underneath a very low hanging bunch of willows on my knees, prepped a bow and arrow cast, launched my nymph rig into the inside seam, saw the indicator drop, and set the hook. This will most likely be one of the better fish I ever land on a bow and arrow cast lol

Near the end of the day, we were on our last run, and had already drifted through it about ten times. About to call it a day, we said the famous last words of "just one more cast", and BANG - fish on!

At this point it was 6pm, and we needed to start wading back to the car. I have to say that the wade out will be one of my fondest memories - enjoying the evening Montana sun dip below the Bitterroot mountain range, while Evan and I just chatted - new friends enjoying the wild beauty of Montana while a hatch started around us, and although no fish were rising yet, we were able to watch the local birds gorge themselves. It was a very peaceful end to a very technical, but rewarding day.

 

[Cody309]

Angling Day 5 - Leave Missoula, drive to Craig (2.5 hours), and fish the Missouri River:

I met Evan a bit earlier on this day (7:30am) as we had the long drive over the Continental Divide to Craig. What a beautiful drive through the mountains - when they finally start to give way to the plains, it is truly a beautiful thing. We checked into my new hotel for the night - The Wolf Creek Angler.

Our first stop was to head into Craig, pickup our lunch, and setup our shuttle for the day at The Trout Shop.

Craig was perhaps the coolest, fishiest town I have ever seen. The entire small town revolves around the sport, and it was very cool to see how the business operates. From guides preordering their clients' lunches, to booking vehicle shuttles, it was interesting to see how it all operated as a well-oiled machine.

If I thought Rock Creek had a huge fish population, the Missouri (or "Mo" as it is affectionately referred to) blew me away. Certain sections of this river have 6000 fish per mile of water! Needless to say, Evan and I had a great day. Pictured below are some of our fish from day 1, Evan's GORGEOUS wooden driftboat, and some of the scenery from the drift.

Always nice to enjoy a little Scotch Ale while on the water

 

[Cody309]

Spot the mule deer

We ended the day at Izaak's - the local restaurant and pub that serves GREAT food! It was nice to share a few pints with Evan and the other guides in the pub after a beautiful day on the water!

 

[Cody309]

Angling Day 6 - Final Fishing Day - Different Drift down the Missouri:

Hard to believe this 6-day, beautiful adventure had come to an end. It couldn't have been more perfect, and had left a lasting impression on me. I have fallen in love with the state of Montana, and have already rebooked for next year. We spent our last day floating another section of the Missouri River, and landed some absolutely gorgeous brown and rainbow trout, with the largest pushing 20". We even managed to sneak up on some big horn sheep and mule deer grazing alongside the river. I'm sad to be leaving, but so happy I have these amazing memories to look back on, and am already looking forward to next year!

 

[Cody309]

AMAZING.

I have to say I'm a bit jealous. .looks like a trip of a life time well done

Thanks buddy!

 

[tossing iron]

Best read on here in quite a while. Quite the action packed week. I'd need another week just to recharge. Beautiful pics and great story. How can next year possibly top that!

 

[rich_ace_G]

Just looking at those scenery and the fish you were catching....

 

[staffman]

Fantastic report for a fantastic fishing adventure.

 

[salmotrutta]

How can next year possibly top that!

His guide greets him in the morning, "Sorry, I accidentally double booked today. My other client is Eric Clapton. Are you OK with that, or do you want to reschedule?"

 

[rich_ace_G]

His guide greets him in the morning, "Sorry, I accidentally double booked today. My other client is Eric Clapton. Are you OK with that, or do you want to reschedule?"

Or his guide called in sick and have to scramble for a replacement...

 

[salmotrutta]

Or his guide called in sick and have to scramble for a replacement...

The brain can only fully concentrate on one task at a time. He wouldn't get any fishing in!

 

[NADO]

Awesome Madoc, thanks for taking the time to put together such a detailed report.

 

[fishermandan420]

Sounds like a blast and I don't even like trout fishing