28 August 2009 - Friday
AM slept in until about 0730 – didn’t try to ride the bike as we are heading to the Upper Ruby River this morning to be sure everyone catches fish!! Breakfast bagels with peanut butter courtesy of AB – Yum!!!
On the road by 0845 – swung by Subway in town but they don’t open until 1000; so we were off to Madison Foods for sandwiches etc for lunch – good selection of items! We chatted with a local lady in the parking lot – she and her husband had owned ranch land on the Madison River but sold it and moved to another place away from folks and the river traffic. They were into bird hunting which is quite big in the Madison River Valley.
We headed out for the upper Ruby passing by the Ruby Dam and then past Snowcrest which is the ranch lodge for Ted Turner. Arrived at the campground overflow parking lot by about 1040. We each rigged up in our own way with most of the YG in full battle gear regalia to do war with the mighty (small) trout. AM elected to go with the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield approach of a light fast attack capability, carrying only one fly boxes in the shorts, wet wading boots, minimal gear, 6x tippet, and a 5 foot custom-made two weight rod from AB.
AB & JR are using their 7’-6", 4wt. LL Bean rods today, a favorite for small streams. GK is using his custom-made 4wt. rod. All are dressed in full battle gear for fly fishing.
The Upper Ruby calls to us......
AM immediately finds his casting groove with the light weight rod but continues to put flies into the bushes on the far side of the stream – this little rod throws better than you might think! Dialing in the distance of the cast, AM starts to hook up with fish on the 2 weight rod very consistently. Hooked into grayling, white fish and cutts in roughly that order. All dries! Used regular parachute Adams and parachute purple haze Adams. – these little guys don’t care – water is easy to read for me today.
GK has moved on downstream in front of AM and has hooked up repeatedly with something like 11 fish right away. We went over the double surgeon knot as well so tippet can be easily added to the leader given the volume of strikes he was managing.
For no obvious reason, both JR and AB are finding fish easily and bringing fish
up to their flies but…….somehow the fish are consistently avoiding the hookup!!
JR finds the water to be lower than last year up here on the stream and not as
productive as last year. He has used Lightning bugs, paraduns, adams emergers,
and bead heads. AB is similarly finding a rough patch using BWO’s, emergers,
paraduns, LaFontaine emerger, trude with pheasant tail dropper, etc. The
parachute adams seemed to be as good as any fly. He even went down to 2 lb test
with fluorocarbon line to no avail.
AB called GK on the radio to determine his location and get a fishing report. He was downstream about a ¼ mile and doing well. AB hiked downstream and found several large deep pools full of logs….and fish! Several fish were caught on parachute Adams as AB moved from pool to pool. A huge dark blue pool had several fish rising and the first cast with the Adams produced a fish…but subsequent casts were rejected. AB switched to a small white bead-head streamer…and the first cast produced a fish….subsequent casts were rejected. AB switched to a small chartreuse bead-head streamer…the first cast produced a fish…subsequent casts were rejected!! AB tried two more fly patterns with exactly the same result…one fish and rejection. Boy these fish learn fast??
Meanwhile GK, moving pool to pool, continues to catch fish on the same fly pattern….go figure.
Finally came back to the cars for lunch at a picnic table about 2:40 pm at Cottonwood Campground.
We elect to move back downstream at a likely spot for more fishing – lots of cows but good access and good looking waters. JR immediately starts catching fish – yahoo!! GK found the previous spot by Cottonwood a little more to his liking – seemed like this section had more walking and less fish.
AB found few features between pools and found you could put the fish down
very easily! Finally switched to a woolly bugger to try to catch something.
AM again found fast fishing and rose 5 fish in three casts – landed 7 fish in a
row – turned out to be effortless fishing (which might have upset the others but
we didn’t share at the time!).Water was cold but not chilly per se – key dry
flies were purple haze and BWO with an orange post.
We finally pulled up with the storm clouds coming with lightning threatening as the rain clouds moved over the neighboring mountains. AB declared he was done with serious hiking today!! Heading back down river, we stop adjacent to the Forest Service Boundary where there is another public fishing access. We found the mother lode and nest of the Montana virulent strain of mosquitoes. It was like a feeding frenzy until you got enough DEET on you and your clothes – seriously blood withdrawals…..we waded into the stream and spread out – the water was bigger and you could not arbitrarily wade across the stream. On the whole the trout were smaller than in the morning (kind of a surprise) and we finally founds some rainbows – much stronger fighters. Also we caught no whitefish tonight – which was also atypical of last year. PMD and various flavors of Adams patterns worked well to catch fish (again non-discriminating fish – the kind we like!!).…but the native mosquito hatch was severe and uncomfortable. The mozzies were adequately distracting that AB lost his official ketch’n’release tool, his fly floatant, and his hemostats! Each device was attached to a separate zinger and must have hooked up in the heavy brush. Upon returning to the truck AB found all the equipment missing and three broken zingers on his vest! And expensive foray! Further, since he had the misfortune to fish with AM, he caught the fly fishing equivalence to a golfer’s case of the yips – in golfing, you pull putts mysteriously off the right line – in fly fishing , you can bring them up to look at and strike your fly but with no hookups!! We aren’t sure what the vaccine is to prevent this condition but a preventative vaccine would draw a high price streamside!
We pulled out and put away the gear on a fine Montana dusk but did so quickly as the mozzies were invading the cars and promising a distracting drive back to Ennis. Heading back in the dark, AM was leading the way when just eastward of Virginia City; a large buck deer appeared in the middle of the highway! AM applied the brakes strongly but under control as we didn’t know which way the deer would (or would not) move! JR’s eyes got very large as we called back "SLOWING!! DEER!!" to AB in his truck behind us. In seeming slow motion, AM was deciding where to hit the deer in the event the braking and the deer collaborated to create a point of no return., when the deer walked slowly to the left on the highway, and we cruised right by him. Likely we created an air wave from the car that hit that deer in his hindquarter- if he points his little tail out rather than up, we probably would have nicked it! In any event, "no harm, no foul!"!!
The consensus fishing assessments from today were:
- Nice miss of the deer!
- GK – morning fishing was best
- JR – evening fishing was best
- AB – didn’t make any difference today – crummy all around!
- AM – 2 weight 5 foot rod was spectacular for these smaller fish!!
Dinner back at the El Western hotel!!