Brown trout

At a bar in Wolf Creek Montana, my buddy Joe and I were talking about the fishing among other things amidst a three day guide run.  Ironically both of us were asked the same question by fishing guests “How long have you been fishing here?”  The answer I had to think about.  The first year I guided on the MO was 2001.  I got my ass kicked, the fish there live in totally different water.  If people fish the MO like they fish Missoula rivers, they will be in trouble.  We make the  trek to the MO when we get blown out here, as well as in May for caddis, June, July, October, and into November for various dry fly hatches.  Let’s say 20 to 50 trips a year for 18 years. The MO feels like home to me most of the time.

Eventually we figured this tailwater system out well enough and had some epic days with guests.  I briefly worked for an outfitter that was friends  with my Uncle George, a MT Highway Patrol officer in the 70’s near Browning MT.  This outfitter, Jim Mcfadyean, was a guru and introduced the fire bead to me in 2007.  One May day my clients only counted double hook ups and had over 20 in just one run that we kept making passes.  The fishing was mind blowing.  Very few boats, and flats full of thousands of hungry rainbows.

I would also follow Kuhnert, Raisler, Arnold, Bloom, and a few other guys around trying to figure a way to not look like a complete dolt. I didn’t want to be so close that my clients would notice that those guys pretty much had trout on all the time, but eventually I figured out some things and we caught ’em pretty well.

These last few days on the MO were a bit different.  The river was flowing 11,500 CFS at the dam.  When the flows are that big, it limits where you can get flies to the trout.  You need to fish more weight, and not count on finding them in as many spots as when the river is closer to normal flow.  This deep nymph rig is hard to cast with split shot, long leaders, indicator, and lots of wind of course.  Once I was sitting in a row around waiting my turn. A row around is a spot where boats float down, row back up to fish it again.  It dawned on me that nothing has really changed much except for the number of boats and my ability to put guys on fish, which seemed a bit tougher than in the past.  I also noticed that I looked like an old guide compared to these young guys going by.  They were hooking up pretty often, me not as much!  I started second guessing my fly choice, depth, all these other factors.  After a bit of frustration we started getting ’em but is wasn’t easy for me anyway.  So I pretty much said the hell with this, we are going to go where there are no boats on the muddy side of the river and do some different things nymph wise.  The tactic paid off, we stuck 4 or 5 nice browns  and we weren’t daisy chained to 20 other guide boats!  I could breath again.

With pretty much every other river in the state being blown out, the Craig, Wolf Creek, and Cascade area had no vacancy.  I couldn’t find a motel room!  Back in the day Joe and I would share a room here and there but I started snoring pretty loud apparently. Well after getting large objects thrown at me all night long in an apparent attempt to stop my snoring, I found that I would get much better sleep  in my pickup cab.  I just turned 50 and sleeping in the cab of my truck wasn’t that bad the last couple of nights. After a few injuries I’m not quite as agile as I once was and it is a bit tougher putting my long underwear in the confines of a Ford F150.   I was awakened to birds singing, a sunrise on the Missouri river, a few minor aches and pains, and of course the wind howling!  I got this!