I headed out to Missoula last week to fish with my brother Eddie. He moved out there last year and I figured it was time I fished western Montana in early fall. Though I've been going out there every year for about a decade now, I'd never fished there after Labor Day.
He got the green light from his wife to disappear for a couple of days, so we stocked the truck with Trout Slayer Ale and Salmon Fly Honey Rye and took the raft over to Craig for a couple days to float the Missouri, just below the dam. Neither of us had floated the river before.
The first day was tough going -- we had a hard time moving them on streamers, and though some BWO's were coming off the rises were few and far between. We managed just one fish -- a nice 'bow of about 18 inches -- and we were a little discouraged and wondering if we should try the Bitterroot instead. Other boats seemed to struggle too, and we later heard there'd been a dam release early that morning and that maybe the fish were a little off because of it.
Whatever it was, we were glad we stuck around the next day. After putting in just below the dam -- it was a federal boat ramp and technically closed due to the shutdown, but everyone ignored that -- we were hooking up pretty quickly on nymphs.
The Missouri's a tough river to read without a lot of obvious structure, but after lunchtime we found a shallow riffle where fish were rising regularly. We pulled off and proceeded to have two of the best hours of dry-fly fishing I've had anywhere. Very large rainbows -- all between 16 and 20 inches -- sipping size 20 BWO's on 5x tippet. It was about impossible to see our flies, so we would cast and then try to set the hook when we saw a rise near where we imagined our fly was.
The fish were incredibly strong, with lots of leaps and tailwalking, and I was glad I'd upgraded to a decent trout reel. We had plenty of breakoffs but got a lot of bruisers to hand. I started to understand what all the Missouri hype was about. For sheer size and numbers -- and willingness to take tiny-ass dry flies -- it's gotta be tough to beat.
We headed back to Missoula that night, and the following day we floated the Bitterroot near town. As on the Missouri, things were slow in the first half of the day but caught fire after lunchtime. We got into a good mahogany hatch and were sight-fishing to rising fish from the raft. Again, it was mostly rainbows with a couple of browns mixed into the bunch.
The following day we waded the Clark Fork for a bit right in Missoula, got into a few fish and then called it an early day to hit up one of the breweries in town. After a few cold ones I was doing my annual back-of-the-beer-coaster calculations on how I could pull off moving to Montana while still maintaining my job and my girlfriend. Fall is pretty spectacular out there.
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