Montana vacation and fishing......

[DocSpotty]

Got back a week or so ago from the annual family vacation in Montana. The family part of the trip was great but the fishing was pretty so-so……only fished 3 days out of 15. Part of the reason was the extremely high water….it was running at levels usually only seen during spring runoff. Wading became an extreme sport you might not survive….

After arriving on sunny Flathead Lake I immediately put on my favorite ensemble of sunny-type clothes…..my wife, for unknown reasons, was appalled.



I’m sure you guys all recognize the complete matching of the shirt and swim trunks in that picture……yep, you’re right, they both have hibiscus flowers as their theme, making them a perfect matched set.

My girls had to start off with their perch derby in the harbor by my parents’ house. It was a rip roaring contest but this pic illustrates the disparity in size:



Fortunately there didn’t need to be a judges decision on the winner between those two……Elyssa got the biggest:



A bit later there was a pumpkinseed sunnie caught…..beautiful coloration on the little beasts:



As we were walking down the dock line we noticed this little devil giving us the eye:



If you don’t recognize the little weasel…..it is a mink….I was starting to think mink coat here….but it would have taken a million of the little monsters. I have to admit to falling victim to their “cuteness” and feeding the family of them several fishes….if they propagate well maybe we can do a mink handkerchief next year…..

Managed to get up the Swan River after a few days to look for some bows…the water was a cruising. My bro-in-law, Chris, and I were able to snag several fish each….my best bow came at a great riffle which always produces one or two good fish:



Did get a nice surprise catch of this 18 inch native westslope cutthroat:



They used to be frequent on the Swan but they have diminished greatly over the past 4 decades….they have gradually been outcompeted and hybridized with non-native rainbows. Notice their lack of the mid body red stripe of a rainbow, the red color on the belly and their spotting stays above an arc drawn from the anal fin to the pectoral fin. Anyway it was a beautiful fish and immediately put back in the water.

We were fishing back down to the car and Chris had only had several small trout so I shoved him into the last little green water stretch when he popped this really nice rainbow….not sure if he was explaining something to the fish or what:



I keep telling him to keep his hands out of the gills but he hasn’t really developed the proper warm fuzzies for the fish yet. Got back to the folks house just in time to catch my daughters pulling into dock on the Addictor….a really mini boat.



One evening my wife and I went cruising through the back roads of town and came across a huge gathering of whitetail deer:



We could see 40 to 50 deer with three or four trophy bucks. I just loved this picture as a caption came to mind, “You can’t sees me I be hidin”.



Right down the road we came across a flock, herd, gaggle or whatever you call a bunch of turkeys:



Didn’t do any fishing the next several days….just got a bunch of sunlight (to promote my dysplastic skin into full melanomas) and had to keep taking the girls water skiing. By then it was time we visited my older daughters friend in Great Falls (was stationed there in the Air Force for several years) for a few days before flying home. So we said goodbye to the old folks and their phenomenal home on Flathead Lake:





My mother has gardens everywhere around here house with large numbers of big garden spiders, I think my mother has named them all…..this one kind of gave me the ebbby geeebbies:



Found this moth on the parents house the morning we took of…..not sure why I included it here except it looks really cool…..searched it online and it is a Great Tiger Moth:



Great Falls and the upper Missouri (below Holter Dam) were very hot as usual this time of year, but like every other body of water it was running extremely high and off color, which I have never seen in 20 years of fishing it. There was a massive hatch of damsel flies during the day caddis in the evening:



The fishing is normally great for 15-20+ inch rainbows and browns but they were more skittish than I’ve ever seen. Normally they are taking anything hatching on the surface but there was virtually no activity even during the heaviest hatches. Made fishing tough. Took awhile to catch a good fish:





We tagged several but then all the floaters started showing up and it got a bit crowded at times:



Got into one of my favorite back braids of the river and happened into one of the prettiest rainbows I’ve ever caught in this stretch:





We took a break for lunch and then headed to another backwater which usually holds some nice browns. As we walked in these aerial bombadiers happened over us….not sure why there are pelicans in Montana:



Our secret spot was, well, not too secret….there were a constant stream of floating craft around us. Fortunately, some of the fish ignored them and bit anyway:





We covered a bit more water with little action…as we worked back to the car one more nice bow came in:



Due to high water we had to cross at an unfamiliar spot and meander through some thick bushes to some railroad tracks. As we did a literal cloud of mosquitos came off the flora and we were running down the tracks for nearly half a mile. Must have squished a couple hundred of them and they were still coming…guess it was another issue from the high water…plenty of mosquito hatcheries.

One last picture of the majestic Missouri River and it was back to the hotel and home the next day…..it was a nice vacation.



Brian

[Ifishtoolittle]

Looks like a lot of fun Brian. Ha, I think Chris was saying to the fish, "tell the other rainbows what you saw"

-Bryan

[Natural Lefty]

Doc Spotty, how do you manage to keep your sense of humor and keep from bragging? My fish usually look like the one your daughter on the left caught -- you know, the dink yellow perch. I always enjoy your reports, and envy your fishing locations and success. Perhaps I can convince my wife to take a fishing trip to Montana one of these years -- or Alaska.