The second and third days we followed the same routine. Those days were quite a bit warmer which was appreciated. However, we didn’t have the cloud cover so that didn't help.
We
drifted a different stretch each day.
Wednesday was from Blodgett Park to Tucker West and Thursday Wally
Clawson to Traveler’s Roost.
Notes for Wednesday
Ron caught a 14 inch cut-bow hybrid. It took the dry (Skwala Imitation) but
rolled and threw the fly. The fish however, got hooked by the dropper and Ron ended up landing it afterall. More fish were caught from top water than the
day before. We still caught most on
nymphs but did catch a few on dries.
The
river wasn’t crowed again. There was a
march Brown hatch. The guide cooked Pork Chops and zucchini-quinoa rice for lunch. The
action started slow. It was exciting
seeing the rises whether the fish would actually take the dry fly or not, or just
miss it altogether. It was gorgeous weather but we could have used more clouds. We saw lots
of birds. Ron’s favorite was the hooded merganser and mine were the eagles.
The guide kept telling us to fish the foam line, to mend
right as soon as we cast and to fish the soft water. Hannon was the town where we put in and Wally Clawson was
the take-out, totaling 11 miles. The first of the
day the fish were not biting as much and the same for the end of the day. We ate at Rowdy’s cabin for dinner where I
had a Chile Verde Chimichanga.
Notes for Thursday
This day Ron’s favorite fish was a 16 inch cutthroat. He was somewhat frustrated because of the
wind but he was impressed by how hard the fish fought. We floated 11 miles again, from Wally Clawson
to Traveler’s Roost. It was sunny all
day and we could have used more clouds.
This day we had the most dry fly action.
On several occasions the fish got off the dry but got hooked by the
dropper for each of us. We called this
the insurance fly. At put-in there were six
cars in the parking lot but on the river, there was no problem with
crowding.
There was a big diversion dam
that was a big drop where the guide had to float to shore and drop us off to take
pictures.
It was because of this white-water that the float was with a rubber raft rather
than a drift boat.
We had hamburgers for
lunch and ate at Famous Dave’s for dinner for all you can eat ribs.
Rock Creek
Friday we were on our own and drove to Rock Creek.
This is a beautiful smaller river where we
saw elk, moose, white tail deer, mule deer, bald eagles and wood duck.
It was the perfect size for wading and was
uncrowded.
There were pretty mountains
and it was near the historic old mining town of Philipsburg.
We each caught 9 or 10 medium size browns and cuttthroats on
nymphs.
This is one river I would love to spend a few more days fishing.
Before heading back, we stopped in Philipsburg
for some BBQ for dinner.
One thing astonishing is that neither of us was sunburned
after fishing an entire week.
We got
plenty of advice from fly shops and our favorite fly for the week ended up
being the red bead-head San Juan worms.
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