3 September 2009 - Thursday
AM up at 0545 and out the door for an early morning ride. Rode out of P-Berg –great hill riding and super roads again! Again almost no traffic at all.
Heading back to the Lodge, I found an NPR radio station and got to hear about the rest of the world. Looking at the Montana economy, it is very oil based – hmmm- I am also reading the book "American Theocracy" which would say that might be a social issue we have to reconcile with global politics and long term economic and environmental considerations. See what riding a bicycle will cause you to think about!! Even if it is while you are driving back in a car – the irony was not lost on me!
Breakfast was served about 0850 in the cabin by Deb who is Derrin’s wife. We all ate together with Deb, Derrin, their 4 kids, and us.
Derrin leads hunting guide trips – using the Lodge for fishing guys like us is a new experience. He begins bear hunting in May with some fishing trips over the summer. The real season though appears to be in the Fall for Elk. He would like to look at further expanding their business into the winter by offering snowmobiling. They are home schooling the kids so they have a fair amount of time to participate in family activities during the day.
We head out first to check out Flint Creek which has been the subject of rumors of good fishing. We accessed the stream downstream from the Lodge by a railroad bridge. The water is a little murky and fairly thin except for right under the RR bridge. AM catches a small brookie while AB hooks up a small brown trout. JR manages to rise several fish. The fish are small, the water thin, etc. etc. We have now added Flint Creek to our life list of waters fished – time to move on. We check out Boulder Creek but the water is fast and thin so we elect to pass on fishing it.
We pick up some more sandwiches for lunch and dinner along with ice for the coolers and then off to fish (after a 5 minute tour of P-Berg downtown).
Reaching Rock Creek, we start in a new section of water with JR and GK staying higher up on the stream while AB and AM go exploring downstream. The next pool structure downstream is fished hard, something like 15 fish are brought up, but incredibly none are hooked and landed!! As we continued moving downstream, we ran into a fellow hiking up the river – he had all the latest fishing gear but we were a little concerned that because the stream in this section is so isolated that if he fell and got hurt, he would be stranded down there for quite some time!
AB and AM continue on downstream to explore this section of Rock Creek. The stream is running slightly high with a lot of "almost" water where the structure looks promising but the flows are just too fast. At a slightly lower water level, the fishing should be dynamite due to the great quality of the holding positions.
While walking the grassy bank, AB drifts a big stimulator somewhat blindly off the steep bank (we are probably 6 feet above the stream), and BANG! Fish on! We had to "walk" the fish downstream about 200 yards to find a place to land/release the beautiful cutty – a quick photo and then release him back to swim to a new holding position, hopefully no worse for wear. In an attempt to help create more holding water, AB in frustration gnaws a tree trunk and tries to push it into the water……other than a good flossing, the tree is still there to our knowledge.
We fish down to where the stream and a fence come together, since it’s now 1630, we elect to turn around and work back upstream to where GK and JR are fishing. After all, we were worried that their radios must have been malfunctioning because in amongst the static all we can hear is "FISH ON!" repeatedly….must have been bad electronics as AB and AM had just proved that there weren’t many fish in the stream this year……..On the return trip, AM fishes the slot where earlier he had raised a bunch of fish and finally hooks up with three little fish – more of an ego save than a substantive catch…no pictures are needed….move on.
Returning to the bridge, we learned that GK had fished upstream but the water didn’t have a lot of good holding positions (kind of like what we saw downstream) and the bank structure made progress somewhat difficult. Returning to the bridge hole, they began hauling cutts and browns out one after another – when one area quiets down, cast over a few feet to a new feeding lane and BOOM! More fish!
By the time, AB and AM got to the bridge, there were valid concerns being raised about developing tennis elbow and just how many fatigue load cycles could a graphite rod take before it broke. Fortunately, AB and AM returned to rest the anglers so that JR and GK didn’t need additional medical treatment other than the traditionally orally applied alcohol. Nonetheless some of the YG were totally spent by the continuous aerobic efforts required to sustain catching fish at these high rates. Some just had to take a break.
AM started to fishing the bridge hole, and BAM! 5 fish in a row! Using a unique side arm casting method in the blowing wind, AM is able to hook the bridge structure! Fortunately with a guide (JR) and a good grip (AB), they are collectively able to repeatedly disentangle the fly line from the bridge. Heck, this is as good as fishing in New Zealand with a local ghillie!!
Leaving at about 6 pm, we head back to the famous "secret" hole downstream on RC where we had such red letter days last year. Looking for the evening fish, we all start fishing with high hopes although our experiences have repeatedly shown that you can’t recreate what you did last year. The fishing starts slow with a lot of one fish patterns – ie we catch a fish on a pattern and then…nada. We were using trico’s, pmd’s, emergers, comparaduns, etc as the fish were porpoising repeatedly but couldn’t find the key to match what they primarily wanted.
As the daylight dimmed, the action picked up with small comparaduns, and then we really hit the jackpot finally with #20 and #22 griffiths gnats – these hookups were done by a hookset when a rise occurred in about the right spot – later as the light went away we continued to get hookups by sets made on the sound of a fish rising – pretty amazing!!
The way it played out this evening, we had cutthroats stacked up against the bank at the head of the hole while browns were largely found at the bottom of the hole (with a few whitefish). One of AB’s goals for the trip was to catch a few nice fish on his custom 5’, 2-wt. rod. Using a trico he caught and landed an very nice Cutty & Brown from the pool along with several other fish. Yahoo…..what a thrill!! One of us continued to fish and may have used a small flashlight to try to illuminate the location of the fly from across the stream so we could "see" the rise to the #22 griffith gnat – now there was no chance of actually seeing the fly at that distance so we started to chant to the fish "swim to the light,…..swim to the light!" – all the fish pretty much ignored us so we packed up and headed back to the lodge after a day with some pretty cool fishing experiences.
I don’t think we had as much experience in fishing really small flies successfully as we had tonight. Pretty cool to finally find a use for flies which I have carried in the fly box for years without ever using – tonight was the night!
Dinner back at the lodge was another sumptuous feast of chips, sandwiches, pop, and a little (really, only a little!) hootch.