6 Sep 2008
El Western Motel
Up early, AM made some good coffee in our cabin and then headed to the office
for a chat with Jan who was covering the office that morning. I am intrigued in
learning how folks came to live in small towns like Ennis. Jan had lived in lots
of places in the states and even was an owner of a fly shop in the Florida Keys.
She had visited Ennis several times on vacation and elected to move there due to
all of the outdoors activities. Like many folks in these communities, she has
several jobs during the year, one of which was helping out at the El Western
during the summer tourist season. She commented that she was glad we were
nearing the end of the high season for tourists as she, and most everyone else I
suspect, use the lower intensity period to recharge their internal batteries and
recall the reasons they moved to Ennis in the first place!
JR put in a call to Greg Smith at 4 Rivers Fishing who was pleased to hear of
our success the day before and that his G-2 was right on. JR had reported to the
YG yesterday about the Bridge access to the Turner Ranch and all seemed a little
apprehensive when we stopped by to take a look yesterday. JR expressed our
concern about the bridge access path by the Turner Ranch (yes, it is that Ted
Turner of Jane Fonda fame) – no sense being clay pigeons for Ted!!
(Update: In an
article from the Feb 2009 issue of Fly
Fisherman:
Ruby Ruling
District Judge Loren Tucker ruled in October, 2008, that the public has the
right to use county bridges to access Montana's rivers, but his judgment allows
landowners to continue attaching fences to bridges. The case, brought in 2004 by
the non-profit Public Land/Water Access Association (PLWAA) blamed Madison
County for allowing property owners to attach fences to bridges. James Kennedy,
a landowner on the Ruby River, intervened in the case, and the owner of the
fences in question, argued that county right of way included only the bridge and
road surface. His lawyers contended that the property below and adjacent to the
bridges is private, and that anglers and other users trespass when they cross
fences built up to a bridge abutment. Tucker rejected Kennedy's claim saying
"that argument is unsupported by authority or by logic." The judge ruled that
the easement is 60 feet wide regardless of the actual road or bridge dimensions,
and the public can use the easement for access to the Ruby River. John Gibson,
PLWAA president, called the decision a major victory, despite the fact that
Tucker rejected PLWAA's assertion that the fences block access to the river.
Here's a recent follow-on article on bridge easement access from the Billings
Gazette
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/11/28/news/state/42-bridges.txt
Lastly, here's the PLWAA site which has a
lot of interesting access stuff going on in Montana
http://www.plwa.org/ )
After some further discussion, Greg recommended a section on the
USFS area on the Ruby River a little downstream of the grayling section. We had
noted this section when we were leaving the Upper Ruby the day before. JR was
also tasked by the YG to find out some G-2 on the Beaverhead as none of us had
ever fished it and that was part of the 4 Rivers we would be heading too next,
Greg reported that while they had done well on the Beaverhead the day before
with hoppers, it was really a drift boat situation. There are wading sections
but some of those have difficulty factors such as unstable sand deposits. We
elect to grab breakfast in town and to head out the USFS access area that we had
seen but not used the night before. We don’t need to give Ted a reason to
practice target shooting!
For today’s breakfast pleasures, we choose “Yesterday’s” which has a restaurant
and pharmacy/variety store attached. We had a loud and boisterous discussion on
politics and what ails the country (we needed Mike S. for this discussion for
sure!) – it turns out that I must be the last person in the US who doesn’t know
who Ted Nugent is (or what his political beliefs are)! Ted’s views are the
underling basis of most of the “debate” and it seems that AB and JR were
watching Fox News in their cabin last night and Ted was on espousing his ideas
on what was wrong with the country and what we should do to fix the problem- and
yes it does include stalking, killing and eating your own Game! Now the table
started to resemble the old 60 Minutes “Point – Counter Point” and I’m sure some
of the patrons might have been expecting the “debate” to erupt into fisticuffs,
alas the talk turns back to fishing and verbally exhausted all finish breakfast
and depart.
After breakfast, AM goes to reorganize his fishing vest for the day while the
others go look at……what else…..fly shops. JR desperately in need of additional #
14 Para Adams picked out two dozen flies and when he asked one shop for a pair
of shop pliers to debarb the hooks, they said he had to buy a pair and wouldn’t
let him use the shop’s pliers (they all have them and use them in the shops).
Disgusted by this, he left the flies on the counter and headed out the door of
the Madison River Flyshop – don’t know if the person there was just having a bad
day or what. So the team heads over to the other fly shop, The Tackle Shop from
yesterday, to find someone there other than Vincent. This fellow pulled the same
stunt with a couple of dozen new flies on the counter even though we had bought
and debarbed them at this shop the day before. The attitude in both shops seemed
to be “Take it or leave it”. Lots of good will evaporated pretty quickly. What
can you do?
We headed back up to the Upper Ruby. The access area we chose is about 1.5 miles
upstream of the USFS sign on the access road. It was a partly cloudy day with
temps about 60F when we began. AB chose his 7’-9”, 4wt. LL Bean rod for this
little stream, which is the same rod AM used, GK uses his 5 wt Winston, and JR
picks his 8’ 4wt Orvis T-3. As we rig up JR lets out a hoot and states he has
found a secret stash of 2 dozen #14 Para Adams in his Flambeau fly storage
system, his luck will be with us all today as we all will experience a fantastic
day of fishing. We started catching fish immediately – first cast for AM!
Then it speeded up so we were catching fish consistently. Then it got to be fast fishing – one after another. Cutts, rainbows, whitefish, brook trout, and only an occasional grayling (who must have gotten lost!). AM & JR used parachute adams – the fly of the trip – consistently all day – you gotta love fast dry fly fishing! AB & GK tried Stimulators, Ants and Trudes, with some success, but immediately went back to the HOT parachute Adams!
The average fish was about 12 inches on cutts, 14 inch rainbows, 16-17 inch whitefish, and 10-11 inch brookies.
We must have caught well over a hundred fish that afternoon (all released by the way!!). AM’s hookup to landed fish ratio must have averaged 4 or 5:1 which gives you an idea of how fast and furious the fishing was. We probably didn’t move more than a ½ mile all day! At one spot, AM counted 11 hookups in a row on 11 casts before he finally brought one fish to hand. Never moved position. Wow! This is what fishing in Montana is supposed to be like (maybe a little bigger fish but that will come in a couple of days – stay tuned). By the way, we never saw another fisherman all day. On a sad note AB and JR run across a very large Brook Trout Carcass streamside with its head missing (chewed off perhaps). It is the circle of life after all but that was one BIG Brookie.
On the way out, we get to look at the ranch house of the Snowcrest Ranch (from
the public road only!) which is the Ted Turner ranch in this area. Apparently he
is not in town and likely Jane isn’t there either so elect to move on downriver
to fish below the dam.
Below the dam, we access the river and see silty, high water running down the
river channel. We aren’t sure why there is such a large draw down on the
reservoir this late as most irrigation is being cut back by now. We find no
action and tough fishing conditions. Heading down stream we check out a couple
of more spots with similar results and conditions. It is faceless water to fish
in this section.
We dropped down to the Alder Bridge Access – the water is split into channels
and is easier to access, read, and work than higher up.
GK hooks right up with nice brook trout on the East Fork of
the Ruby. AB is fishing the, by now, infamous parachute Adams and “guide” JR
spots several feeding fish. AB tries his best to deliver the Adams to this tough
spot, but only manages to catch one small fish. AM joins AB/JR and AB says,
“They’re right over there Al, catch one!” Meanwhile AB switches to a small
bead-head chartreuse wooly bugger. AB has nicknamed this fly the “Green Monster”
due to its past successes! Both AM (with an Adams) & AB (with the Monster) cast
and both catch fish simultaneously! I think everyone does what they do best.
Maybe the fly size if key – Big Fly/Big Fish (AB) or Small Fly/Small Fish (AM)??
AB ponders the possibility of more deer hair for flies but the decomposing deer
is quite odiferous and it is daunting to even come close to the body!
We note some people going in to fish with worms at dark just as we are leaving.
Our radios are streaming invectives and “somebody should call the game
department..” so we look up the poaching hotline number but decide to check the
regs just in case……well, it turns out bait is just fine and legal in this
section of the Ruby…who knew??
All in all, a pretty good day with lots of fish caught as well as many types of
fish (rainbows, cutthroats, browns, brookies, grayling, and whitefish. Not a bad
day at all.
We had our last dinner at the Reel Decoy – a solid place to eat while staying in
Ennis.