Montana Vacation.....

[DocSpotty]

Got back from the annual extended family vacation in Montana a week or so ago. The weather wasn’t so hot as it was rainy and really windy most of the time….we had arrived after 11 days of rain and all the rivers were very high. Aside from casting a bit in the boat harbour next to my parents house I was only able to get away and fish for 3 days.

We arrived the evening before the 4th of July. It was only in the high 60’s but the surroundings on Flathead Lake were outstanding:





The morning of the 4th it looked a bit ominous with heavy clouds but they mostly dissipated by early afternoon keeping the local fireworks show on schedule. Montana is unique in that anything short of a thermal nuclear warhead is okay to fire off…normally I do many myself but decided to just watch this year (and avoid the probability of becoming a one-handed dentist) from Mom and Dads deck.



A guy a few houses away collects most of the fireworks then sets them off on the common ground in the harbour area…on a long dock.



Gary is really good at this and fuses all the different fireworks together so he only lights one fuse….the show continued for a bit over an hour…..it is one of those yearly rituals that keeps expanding.

Monday morning dawned for me about 7 and no one but my parents were up and about. So I grabbed one of my spinning rods and geared it for the occasional pike we find in the little boat harbour right next to the house. Of course this will make the rest of the report anticlimactic but I can’t rearrange events willy nilly like all the fishing shows do. On my first cast with a good sized black and orange sputter-bug it was rolled almost immediately but I missed the strike. Two casts later another big roll and was hot onto a very nice northern…..I wasn’t exactly unprepared as I was using 15 lbs braid with 6” of nickel/titanium leader. But as I worked the critter in the difficulty was going to be landing him without a net from the dock. After playing him to near exhaustion I bellied down on the dock and hoisted him from the gill plates….largest pike we’ve ever landed in the little harbour. And, yes, I popped it on the head as they are considered very invasive in these waters….besides my wife loves pike. Fattest one I’ve ever seen:





There was no doubt in my mind this would be the largest fish we’d see on this vacation….oh well…it was still a great time. After the word of the pike spread my brother-in-law was out casting like a madman but, alas, no further fish were located. After an hour or so he wanted to hit the Swan River to look for trout. He tagged the first under a bridge in town:



Looks kind of possessed doesn’t he? Due to the high water in the river there were very few places we could safely wade without being washed away. We decided to try a stretch of river we stopped fishing more than 20 years ago due to all the cabins and the pressure it received. Well…it turned out to be pretty darn good as we both caught 10-12 bows in about 3 hours. We watched a salmon fly hatch as we were fishing and it is really cool to watch those big critters emerge and take flight from the water….surprising there were no fish rising to them…probably due to the heavy water flow…lucky for the salmon flies. Here’s a couple kept for the grill:



The next day we attempted a wade in a stretch between two bridges but the water was so high we had to hug the shore for the most part. It was difficult staying off private property and staying within the high water mark. But the fishing was pretty darn good also…..I caught 18 bows, 1 brookie and a nice brookieXbull trout hybrid:







As we trudged toward the get out point we found it protected by rabid Canadian geese:



After parking the car in front of my parents I came out in the middle of the afternoon to find this:



What a snakebit rental car….when we got it on the 3rd we weren’t 3 miles from the airport and a rock cracked the windshield….now 2 days later the driver’s side window is shattered. Lucky we had rented it through our car insurance….expenses weren’t too bad.

My stepson, Alex, came visiting for a few days from California and we got out for a few hours on the Swan. He quickly nabbed a pretty westslope cutthroat then a few more nice rainbows:





Headed over to Great Falls, MT a few days later in the week….used to be stationed there in the USAF. My wife and daughters visited with friends while I hit the Missouri River for rainbows. It was the highest I had seen it in nearly 20 years but after some prospecting was still able to locate some nice rainbows…







It was hard getting any pictures by myself and keeping the fish in the water. There were bambis all over the place:



The nicest was probably this 22+ inch porker bow with some very interesting colors:



Actually it most likely has some westslope cutthroat heritage as the spotting pattern on its side has the half moon semicircle of the cutthroats….as well as the orange belly and light orange gill slits. The origin of these wild but stocked years ago rainbows are nearly all from coastal rainbows (with some McCloud River redband influence) which is seen on the others with spots all the way down to the belly. Historically there were only westslope cutthroat (and grayling) in the Missouri ….but decades of stocking rainbows and browns both hybridized and competed them out of existence. You still see their influence in some of these fish. Enough pontification.

About noon I headed to a back braid of Missouri which was normally ankle deep….well halfway across this stretch with water almost over my waders and whipping me downstream I thought swimming was in my immediate future. But my wimpy legs held out and managed to drag back up on shallow water. Due to the water was barely able to cast to water normally holding brown trout…I wasn’t disappointed:





I was…uh…..field testing a flyrod just finished for a friend of mine (spent many hours putting together that handle section)….worked just fine:



Headed back to Great Falls and was supposed to meet my brother and his sons the next morning….but at 0530 they called me after whacking a whitetail on the road and disabling my father’s Yukon. So the wife, daughters and I headed back to Flathead….just outside of Great Falls we spotted this mutant deer (pronghorn antelope):



The girls made us stop at “The Big Cow” a locally famous landmark at Clearwater Junction…..dad was trying to take the old bull on:



Later my daughters hit the boat harbour for their annual perch derby:



There was also an occasional squawfish (for the PC out there…northern pikeminnow) and a few pumpkinseeds:



The whole time the girls competed for these “monsters” a couple of osprey were also fishing the same water:





After one of the released perch appeared to be suffering from immediate delayed mortality (yes….I just made that up) I whipped it out into the middle of the boat harbour and managed to bring the osprey in (double click the picture for the video):



Pretty cool…those birds are great hunters….even when the fish isn’t half dead.

One of the girls popped a nice, very rare, largemouth bass:



Then just to finish the entire Bambi theme muskrat Suzy came swimming by (my daughters informed me it had to be Suzy cause according to the song…..”Sammies so skinny”….this one was definitely plump):



I learned something one night after taking an Ambien to sleep (I have obstructive sleep apnea…..and insomnia….wonderful combination). Occasionally I get up after they kick in and eat pretty much everything in sight and remember nothing….well the next morning with my evil, EVIL girls snickering I looked at my back in the mirror….not very pretty:



And the little turkeys did it with permanent Sharpie pens…..ahhhhhhhhhhhh….why couldn’t I have boys?? Don’t really mean that.

The afternoon before we left all my girls get the bright idea to take our “Christmas” picture in one of the local canola fields…..what?? Another Canola Christmas?? But it did look kind of cute….and the girls did a great picture also:





We backed up and came home to lots of lovely rain….it’s still raining……..

Brian

[Fishbones]

Amazing,Amazing report and pics, thank you so much for sharing your great trip with us.
Congrats on the toad pike,and all the trout caught....i always wanted to catch a big pike...
LoL on the sharpie tattoo's,.,.thats some sweet ink!

[TroutOnly]

another great report , i love those trout,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,T/O,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[IE Fisher]

I am jealous, you live quite the angling life.

[fishboy12]

Great post. I love the Godfather shirt with that nice Pike.

[Swank909]

Very entertaining report, and i loved the video! You sure know how to have a good time!

[sawoobley]

I am living in the wrong state!

Nice report!

[SierraPeaks]

I've been meaning to fish Montana for many years.

I think you just sealed the deal for me.

Thanks for the great report and pics.

[Greg Madrigal]

Sweet report....as always. Quite an assortment of feesh u caught there. Your family is beautiful!
GM<><

[Juventino]

Great report man, Montana is much different than So Cal lol