Busy Bitterroot

Hot damn, what a busy season we have to start the year! The Bitterroot has been a shit show with boats as of lately! It seems as though everybody showed up for the Skwala hatch and I keep seeing new guides and new boats popping up like a long lost cousin after you’ve won the lottery. I was lucky to get my good friend and client here on Monday for a few days and the fishing was pretty damn good despite it all. Every day of the trip we saw all four seasons and the clothing layers came on as fast as they would come off. We started our trip on the upper Bitterroot and began by throwing the standard hopper dropper in the morning. We got our first fish on a stonefly nymph and I had told my guy that if we saw something look at the dry we would switch over. Sure enough, on our third drift we saw a willing participant head towards our dry so we switched over to a single dry fly. From 10:30 on, we ran a single dry to the boat ramp. Putting the fly against wood and on the right banks and insides led to some very productive fishing. Overall we probably fed 40 trout and ended the day with well over 20 fish in the net to start our two day trip. We did have to navigate some other boats and move around some traffic, but because we were on a longer float it wasn’t much of an issue. My rule of thumb for passing other boats on the river is that they should probably not see you the rest of the day and you should leave plenty of space between them and where you start fishing again.

Day two was a little different story. Once again, all four seasons presented itself and of course our morning felt like frigid winter. Due to the drop in the water temps, it seemed the trout were lethargic early on and we methodically picked up a few trout on some insides through a handful of whitefish. We jumped a nice brown that picked our nymph up on the swing and gave us some nice hang time before saying goodbye. We fished hard from there to lunch, throwing the hopper dropper on all the right banks but not receiving any luck. Another stop at a great inside run produced a few nice trout before lunch which padded our morning and gave me hope that they were keying in on stoneflies. We set up lunch at 12:30 to let the water temps warm up. After lunch, I moved us to a single dry fly and went straight for an infamous dry fly bank where our action was sadly lackluster. We did turn up a few dry fly eats but it wasn’t what we had hoped for. My guy comes this time of year for the dry flys and the chance at some head hunting so we stuck it out. It seemed that about every 200-400 yards we would pick up a midsize or smaller fish on the dry and I checked the nymph again but it didn’t seem like the fish were into that. By mid afternoon, we did see a nice push of baetis and some smaller fish started grinding in some foam lines but after racking up about a dozen trout it looked like our bite had come to an end. Overall my guy had a good trip, landing plenty of fish in a two day stretch and trading sub-par jokes back and forth along with some insight into life. We ended our trip at the new tap house off of Mullan Road which had a great atmosphere and plenty of tasty draft beer choices. We said a toast to our trip and locked in his dates for later in September. One of the best parts of this job is the clients I have met along the way who have turned into some of the best friends and mentors in my life. This time of year can get a little crazy with weather and river traffic as everyone is ready to dust of their rods and rafts after a long Montana winter but the fishing can be absolute amazing. On those days it’s not phenomenal it’s good to remember that we are here in God’s country, floating down the river, luring fish, and most importantly, spending time with good company.