Trip Report: Smoke On (or above) The Water

After a fire southeast of here flared up a few days ago the valley filled with smoke. I ventured out to a local lake in the Salish Mountains looking for respite from the smoke. I did not find relief...but I did find Grayling and Cutthroats!

 

 Lilly pads circled the lake for the first hundred feet. I caught a bunch of nice grayling casting a deer hair caddis about five feet off the edges. When the wind died they really started jumping around.

After the first hour that I spent deep nymphing I needed to start catching fish. After switching to the caddis I caught around a dozen grayling and one decent cutthroat!

After a long day and a treacherous drive I'm glad I took the trip. I hope to get up here one more time this summer.

Trip Report: Cabinet Mountains Wilderness

With the woman out of town a friend and I headed for an obscure corner of Northwest Montana to hike, fish, and practice photography. After a long drive and a treacherous climb up a precipitous washout we got to the trail head at around 11.00.  The trail was a little over 1.5 miles to the lake and gained around 1000 feet but despite these unimpressive statistics it was pretty hard. 

It was steep but as soon as the forest opened up we got great views of the valley.

 By this point we crossed numerous washed out, steep, and rocky switchbacks. We were close!
 

This was our first view of the lake. It was dead calm and we spotted plenty of fish rising! I heard rainbows but I wasn't entirely sure what to expect.

 I only had one deer hair caddis and no midges so after losing the caddis things got tough for me. My buddy used a little spinner and he pulled in a nicer one, but because the reel had very little line he couldn't cover much territory...

So I decided to cover more on foot! While walking on this logjam I spotted the outflow. In the first little pool I spotted, photographed, and filmed, a snake swimming after a brook trout.

At this point he had gotten a good chomp down and they were struggling. The snake kept trying to get the fish onto shore but the fish fought hard. I continued on to climb up as high as I could to get a picture of the lake from above. I got pretty high but in the grand scheme of things I was nowhere near as high as I needed to go for a good aerial photo.

 That's alright though because the colors were beautiful, the fish were eager enough, and the mountains were awesome! After a few hours up here we bid the lake goodbye and headed back toward the car. On the way home I caught a few little trout in some of the rivers along the highway.

Trip Report: Flathead Fishies

This morning I packed up the kayak and headed to the Flathead for some good ol' fashion fishing. This time of year the cutthroats feed with a sense of urgency and today orange and yellow elk hair caddis were on the menu!

The first fish, a stout rainbow, came from a shallow current seam off a gravel bar mid stream. The river braids in this section so I planned to paddle to each bar in search of 'em. I only had to paddle to one and because it was so shallow I only had to wade between them. 

 These cutties are representative of the average size fish for today. I did snap off on two really nice ones and missed a few more decent fish...it happens.

By the end of my outing I managed around two dozen of these little fellers. Only two came while I was in the boat!

 All in all a pretty good day but I hope to tie into a massive trout soon...It's been awhile!

Trip Report: Cabinet Mountains Wilderness

All week I looked forward to hiking to a higher elevation in the Mission Mountains Wilderness. The valley was clear of smoke until Friday...when I got up this morning it was way worse. I couldn't even see the mountains from our deck. I did some last minute research online and found a formidable hike in the Cabinets. The fishing did not disappoint.

We hiked along this little creek the whole time stopping intermittently for me to tease the colorful little Columbia Basin Redband Trout!

 After a 4.75 mile hike with a touch over 3,000' elevation gain we approached the lake!

 There's another lake above the ridge that's a lot bigger. We didn't make it up to this point as we have not done a long hike for a few weeks and are legs ached by now.

The rainbows in this lake must be feeling the cold nights because they were eager to eat. I caught around 5 or 6 on an elk hair caddis and a few more on a mahogany deer hair caddis. My buddy caught two nice ones on a black spinner, the biggest measuring around 14 inches! After a short time at the lake it was time to head back.

Only a few minute from the lakes we heard someone bushwhacking in the woods to the right of us. He came out of the woods behind us and stopped us to ask a favor. His hands were all bloody and he seemed euphoric. He asked if we might call his family when we got out and tell them to send some horses. He shot a big 'ol moose! We heard the shot coming in but thought little of it. He outlined the pursuit for us, which seemed pretty cool, and helped him flip it over. He shot it in this meadow!

After checking out the dead moose we continued another 4.5 miles back to the car. I saw this natural booby trap threatening anyone unlucky enough to be at the right place at the right time.

Stay Tuned: If the smoke clears out I'll be heading to the Mission Mountains Wilderness to chase the cutthroat.

Trip Report: Ross Creek and Kootnai River

I didn't catch a fish at either place but it was perty!

This swinging bridged spanned the Kootnai River just outside of Libby, MT.

Here's the falls. Kind of a neat spot but no fishes so we headed to the cedars!

 These trees are huge...

Trip Report: Complete Failure

Last night a big cold front came through the valley so I headed over to the mainstem of the Flathead River to chase some trouts! I walked about a mile down the shoreline from a popular point of access hoping to find eager cutthroats looking upward. I found 'em but they were not interested in anything I offered. I threw the box at them too. At one point at least 30-40 were surfacing all around me...It was the most frustration I've felt in a while which is saying something considering my line of work! I did get out over the Labor Day weekend and managed a number of decent brookies. No pics of them but I found some beautiful sights!

 I only brought one fly to this spot and lost it after catching around 20 brookies of various sizes. Next time the entire fly box will accompany us on our adventure.

Pretty pretty.

 I like the clouds in this one! We'll be out of town this weekend but some of the best hiking and fishing is coming up...