31 August 2008
We woke in our room to religious choir music on the radio alarm – it is Sunday
after all! Also woke to find it cold and raining!! Checking on the doppler radar
on Yahoo! on the hotel lobby computer, we find rain up and down the Bitterroot
valley and really hard rain in the upper reaches near the forks where we had
planned to fish. The hotel coffee is free but not very palatable. AM wasn’t able
to convince the hotel clerk to let us make our own coffee in their maker so
JR/AM go exploring Hamilton to find better coffee.
We find “River Rising” bakery, espresso and deli purveyor (River Rising 337 W. Main Street, Hamilton, MT 59840, Kim Miller: 406-363-4552, email: riverrisinghamilton@yahoo.com ) The shop has both great coffee and a contemporary coffee shop ambience as a place to hang out and chat. Looks like it used largely by locals and not tourists – a good sign! We filled up a thermos of good coffee and headed out for the day’s adventures and fishing.
We stopped at Bell Crossing access on the Bitterroot where AB hooks a little one
on a fly (a fish not a little kid!!) but it is cold, windy, and the fish seem to
know it. Several drift boats launch while we are there so we suspect this spot
gets fished a lot.
Off to Stevensville River View Park – a huge city park with significant river
access on the east side (which is the right side looking downstream). We find
only one fellow fishing who is doing well on rising fish – he invites us to join
him since the water is big but we elect to let him fish away and try our hand at
new waters. We explored the waters for several hours – saw 2 more wading fly
fishers way downstream but no one else. We worked the water back upstream to
where the old fellow had been fishing and he was gone by the time we reached his
area. Fish were still rising so we went after them only to find them to be
pretty much all the smaller 10-11 inch sizes with the larger fish rising just
out of casting range….hmmmmm….hate it when they do that! We also saw enormous
mayfly hatches (big and small ones) with duns all over the water as we were
fishing. The fish seemed to be hitting subsurface emergers but not the duns.
Which is all the more strange as they did repeatedly hit our parachute adams dry
flies while apparently ignoring the real flies next to our artificial
offerings!! Strange.
We elected to look at the far bank for access although it was quite steep –
leaving the parking lot, we stop and chat with a sheriff who said we could park
on the road opposite and access the bank to get to the river. He really only
wanted to know if we were hunting, ie carrying guns and drinking beer –
fortunately we were doing neither. On the far bank, AB rolled a huge fish and AM
was able to hook up and land a couple of decent sized fish on the #14 parachute
adams. Nice to catch a little larger fish as they can make the reel sing sweetly
when the line runs out!!
Now for most of the day a huge Bald Eagle has been perched in a tree overlooking our fishing efforts, he must be thinking to himself these yahoos are interrupting my fishing spot how uncouth!! Apparently unable to contain himself any longer during AM’s last fight with his big fish our friend leaves his perch and makes a beeline straight across the River for AM’s big fish as he struggles to get it to the net. Finally realizing that AM may in fact defend his fish, our friend the Eagle breaks off his attack at the last possible moment and settles into a high perch in a Lodgepole Pine just above our heads, Now what do he do?
Interestingly the eagle returned across the river to his perch. Shortly
thereafter we saw him dive into the river off the other shore – however, rather
than rise up from the water, he stayed in the water and swam to shore using his
wings! AB said they see this more frequently in Alaska where the eagles get fish
they can’t raise out of the water! So we watched him swim to shore – he then
proceeded to munch down on some local sushi! Blocked by some high grass we
couldn’t see the fish but the eagle’s head was bobbing up and down while dining
to be sure no other competition was going to mess up his dinner!! Most of us had
not seen an eagle swim using his wings.
Finally, we closed down and headed to Victor’s Steakhouse for dinner. The steaks
were all great – we recommend this place to visitors for sure! They had an
interesting feral pig (stuffed) in the bar – there just has to be some sort of
cool story behind it but we weren’t able to find out on this trip. Guess we will
just to go back for another steak!!
Back to the hotel, have a short scotch/Seagrams, then to bed.