30 August 2009 - Sunday

Another day in paradise for an early morning bike ride! Off from the El Western by 6:05 for another ride on the Harrison – Cardell road. Took some more pix and had another fab ride!! Is this great country or what??!!

I took a few early morning pix of Harrison an old mining town it seems.

Heading back to the El Western, I listened to some great tunes on my new MP3 player – a great way to go when radio reception is weak to none!! I stopped at the pass on the way back and from there you could really see the entire Ennis and Madison River Valley!

When I got back, AB was replacing his home-made cleats on his hip-boots. Very sophisticated screws.  The key is to be sure the screws are not too long!!  Guys in retirement really have the time to be creative!!

We packed up and said our good-byes to Kris and John. Going through Harrison we find ALL of the sculptured fish that is part of the Madison County community fund raising. Fabulous works of art which are to be auctioned off on Labor Day weekend.

Continuing onward, we stopped by the 4 Rivers Fly Shop to say Hi! to Greg Smith with whom we stayed last year to fish the Jefferson. We talked about the fly fishing show circuit – and during the conversations you can sense that everyone knows everyone else in the business and they varying outfitters do a lot of collaboration on marketing and on resource conservation. Truly a community. We picked up some gourmet sandwiches from a local deli in town for a lunch later that day so we could fish as long as we wanted to on the Big Hole River.

Leaving Twin Bridges we head out on a 25 mile gravel road – substantially unimproved! – which takes across the countryside – almost no trees and lots of open spaces! Coming out the other side, we end up in Melrose to stop by the Sunrise Flyshop. We chat with Ryan Barbor, a co-owner with Erik who we met last year. Ryan remembered our YG Christmas Card! We acquired some more flies (you can never have too many?) and took a photo of Ryan and his pup Drifter!

We headed out and stopped by the Divide campground to check out the Big Hole River. The bottom is very slick in this section so after some deliberation, we elect to head downriver to the Salmon Fly fishing access area to fish. After everyone rigs up, we head into the fray! Fishing a nymph, GK right away hits into a big brown – beautiful fish – also a little slippery it turns out as it flipped out of GK’s grasp just as he was bringing up for a quick photo. Oh well – it lives on in his memory!(and it was a nice fish!). AB chose his 9’-6wt. Lamiglas rod as this is a big section of river and he can cast the Lamiglas farther than any of his other rods. JR & AB check out a couple upstream pools without a rise. JR moves downstream and AB checks out a rising fish in a pool under the bridge. Turns out to be a nice brown trout that couldn’t resist a purple haze Adams. JR had the hot rod this day and he consistently hookup with fish and landed about half of them.

We were all catching some fish on the Copper John nymphs except for JR who was using a true "match the hatch" approach of a Chernobyl hopper with a pinkish tan body!! Late in the afternoon, AM turned a huge Moby Dick like fish that rose to sip in the Purple Haze but alas it was not to be this time!! Unfortunately it became time about 4:30 for the mosquitoes to start coming out in force – we elected we had had enough fun this day. We left the river a little after 5 pm as they were starting to become pretty fierce. We have not really experienced this on our earlier trips but here we were getting mosquito whacked on the Big Hole right after getting beat up pretty good on the Ruby River a few days earlier (but notably not on the Madison River!??) We headed up Highway 43 toward Wisdom.

Arriving in Wisdom, we find that the Nez Perce Hotel folks aren’t there but had left us a note and the keys. We head immediately to Fetty’s Restaurant to get our access permits for where we want to fish the next couple of days. Fetty’s is closed except for permits. We meet Guy and Joanie who are friends of Sheila – we tried to meet them last year but that didn’t work out timing-wise. It took them a little time to understand that we needed access to go fishing and not hunting for antelope etc!! Nice folks who also own a ranch in the area – everyone seems to do multiple jobs and endeavors it seems in these smaller communities.

By the time we got the permits and headed back to the hotel, the temperatures had dropped from 80+F to 65 or so. Clouds and winds are starting to build.. We all head over to the Big Hole Restaurant for dinner. Coming back to the hotel in the dark, the sky is lit up with lightning strikes – very cool light show.