"Making Montana Memories"
2008 Tour
Our planning for the 2008 return to Montana trip planning was initiated in February 2008. We began with emails and culminated in discussions at the 2008 Fly Fishing Show in Bellevue, Washington. We planned to go the two weeks after Labor Day to fish key sections of the Madison, Jefferson, Big Hole, Beaverhead, Rock Creek and related drainages!!
At the Feb Show, we visited with our old friends Joanne and Tim Linehan - see our trip from 2005 in which we had absolutely fantastic fishing and experiences with them in Libby, Montana onthe Kootenai River - great folks!! Contact them at www.fishmontana.com
Who knew we also find executive coaches who use flyfishing - not sure I could sell this to my Organizational Development folks with some sort of conflict of interest issue!!
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2008 Trip Now Completed!!
We completed our "Making Montana Memories" tour for 2008 when we were on the road for 15 days this time. Starting Saturday 30 August, we traveled around Western Montana until our return on 13 September. We covered 2766 miles and caught just a slightly smaller number of fish (but still a big number!!)
Rivers fished include:
- Bitteroot River (West Fork, East Fork, and Main Stem)
- West Fork Rock Creek (Skalkaho Pass route)
- Silver Bow Cr
- Warm Springs Cr.
- Big Hole River (Melrose)
- Madison River
- Taylor Creek
- Upper Ruby River
- Ruby River
- Indian Creek
- Jefferson River
- Bloody Dick Creek
- Upper Big Hole (Headwaters)
- Big Hole (Wisdom)
- Wise River
- Big Hole (Jerry Creek)
- Rock Creek
On this trip, we also remembered the passing of fly fishing legend, Jim Danskin, who left us in June, 2008. His obituary is reproduced herein as part of our 3 September visit to West Yellowstone.
Also on this trip, we got to experience spring water flows on the Madison due to breakage of one of the water flow gates on the dam controlling Hegben Lake! Pretty interesting water levels to fish although we did catch fish in those flows!! Likely if we had spent more time exploring, we might have caught a lot of fish since the holding waters would have been much smaller at the higher flows.
Lastly, we want to extend a grateful thank you to the wonderful people of Montana who made this trip so much fun and memorable. You truly do live in the "last best place"!!
As a special note, Andy Batcho of our little team, has finally been recognized for all of outstanding stream restoration work he has been doing for a quarter of a century! First he was recognized as a "Hero of Conservation" by Field and Stream magazine – you can videos about Andy at http://www.fieldandstreamextras.com/heroes/videos.php - Andy is in episodes 5 & 6. You can also see a short write-up on Andy at http://www.fieldandstreamextras.com/heroes/heroes.php?y=08&m=batcho
Andy has also received attention here in the Greater Seattle area as they had a special article on his work in the community - http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/outdoors/2008253615_nwbatcho13.html
We are honored to have Andy as part of our Yellowstone Gang! However, he still has to pay his share of the gas and lodging bills for these trips!!
Questions and critiques on our 2008 trip are always gratefully solicited!!