5 Sep 2008
Woke up to blue skies and 32F in Ennis, MT. Beautiful but cold! Since our unit
has a nice kitchen, we were able to make our good, strong Seattle drip coffee –
NICE!
JR called Greg Smith at 4 Rivers Fishing (one of our future stops) for some
recommendations since no one really wanted to fish the Madison at these water
levels for a whole day of nymphing 8-12 inches of water along shore. Greg
recommended the upper Ruby River at: 1) above Cottonwood Campground for
grayling; and 2) at Turner Ranch bridge access for cutts (hopper/dropper during
day and caddis in the evening). Lots of water in the upper Ruby especially in
the US Forest Service Lands.
John Hauck at El Western also talked to AB about local areas such as Indian
Creek, Sure Shot Lakes (gotta love the name!), and the Madison River braids (but
not at the current river flows) – go to second stand of cottonwoods by the
access near their hotel - #6 prince nymphs dropper 4 ft off dry fly or bobber –
can be a killer fishery but you often stand in the stream and fish back to
shore. That certainly is not going to happen right now at these water flows!!
Breakfast at Ennis Café – the place was built in the early 1900’s.
Over to the Tackle Shop (has a big fly statue above the door on top of the
building) where we met with Vince Pettit, manager, who gave us great service.
Loved his 3 year old German Shorthair hunting dog – “Vito”.
Heading out of town, we head for the upper Ruby River above the dam. Arrived at
Cottonwood Campground and spread out to fish. Briefly saw one fisherman on the
way in – he was the last person we saw that day! We all had a great day catching
smallish grayling and a fair number of cutts.
JR caught the biggest cutt of the day – he was shaking when I finally got back to him to take a photo – nice fish JR!!
The stream is small here and easy to cross back and forth.
Everyone hooked up well and had a relaxing day. Best USA grayling south of
Alaska.
Coming out of the stream, we saw moose (a cow and a calf) by the road.
Tallying up the day’s sightings we also saw white tail and mule deer, antelope, and sand cranes.
We saw herds of deer in the fields with groups of over 50 at
times!
We swing by our old favorite Reel Decoy for dinner (Ennis really isn’t that big)
and their all-you-can-eat fish fry. I really like the series of posters from the
Madison River Brewing Company, e.g., “Copper John Scotch Ale” etc.
After dinner we stopped at the Exxon to gas up the rigs. Lots of teenagers at
the convenience store. We met a very inebriated blonde girl (sort of glassy
eyed, slurred talking, spilled beer(?) on her shirt, … all the really glamorous
aspects of drinking) and a pretty tipsy 40+ year old guy in line ahead of AM and
AB in the pay line. At least he was polite and friendly if not all there. Looks
like one of the favorite Friday night events is drinking – heavy, heavy
drinking. (At least, I chose to think it was alcohol related.)
Back to the El Western for own small night-cap but without the blurred speech,
etc.