A Fishing and Camping Guide to Montana

For over twenty years I taught and lived in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. During that time I guided during the summers and eventually wrote and published, Montan Fly Fishing and Camping Guide. Later with the help of my son, Darin Archer, we published a comprehensive fishing guide for Montana from Glaicer National Park to Yellowstone National Park. GlaciertoYellowstone.com presents Montana fly fishing at its best. Beginning with the glacial waters of the Flathead River in Northwest Montana to the mighty Clark Fork River in Western Montana to the famous Yellowstone River in Southwest Montana, glaciertoyellowstone.com covers the principal rivers, streams and creeks which have contributed to Montana fly fishing preeminence. In addition to Montana fly fishing suggestions for the two national parks, this well balanced site covers fly fishing techniques and fly fishing tips from regional fishing guides, outfitters and shop owners. Visitors planning a vacation to this trout Mecca will find listings for services and accommodations for each of the five areas. I offer recommendations on where to vacation, how to plan a trip, and the right fly fishing gear to bring. Welcome to Montana fly fishing where more than one "river runs through it."

http://www.glaciertoyellowstone.com

Farewell, Montana - July, 2007

As a farewell to a state that I had fished and lived and taught and raised children, the fishing exceeded my anticipation these past two weeks. The high light of the trip was landing a five or six pound Bull Trout fishing a bass lure on a fly rod. I have been experimenting with this plastic lure with great success for some time. A former teaching colleague from my early teaching career in California joined me for this farewell fishing trip in Montana. Both of us at age 62 whine and complain about our afflictions and ailments. It would seem that the older I get the more I define myself, as do many other old timers, by my physical and health limitations. Last year’s heart attack and my subsequent walking regimen, however, prepared me to hike the river bottoms and canyons of Montana once again. My friend Joe, who had always out walked me in the past, has slowed down. Going from sea level to mountain elevation in temperatures 100 degrees and higher, Joe thought only of the farewell aspect of our Montana fishing trip. I returned with Joe to some of my favorite fishing waters. Prior to Joe’s arrival, I floated the Hamilton section and caught some very nice fish in the 14 to 16-inch range. This year Montana suffers from another serious drought. The water conditions in early July looked more like the conditions in late August. The heat was unbearable. Each day surpassed the 100 degree mark, and the day Joe and I floated from Hannon Memorial to Wally Crawford Bridge (Como Bridge) the temperature reached 106! Nonetheless, I caught a dozen fish, but most of them were small.

On the first day of Joe’s arrival, July 4, we talked about the old days and swapped stories and remembered great teachers who have died in recent years. The next day Joe purchased his license and the equipment he would need for the next day’s float trip. I talked him into buying a nine foot kick boat for $400. The next day we floated the upper Bitterroot River. It was Joe’s first day on a kick boat which I had talked him into buying. I told him that I would sell it for him for $200 bucks when I got home, and he could chalk up the loss to what it would have cost him to rent a raft. Unfortunately, it was the only day he floated, and half way through the trip he got swept into an overhanging tree and broke his new Cabela’s fly rod, which cost him a hundred dollars. I felt really bad because the kick boat had a rod holder which essentially pointed the rod skywards, something that I would never do with my rod in a kick boat. The disadvantage of this angle should have been apparent to me. Regrettably, I never recognized the flaw of this design. His accident was not a clumsy, beginner’s misjudgment. To the contrary, Joe had been diligent in following safe boat handling techniques. The blame of his mishap was due to faulty assembly.

Joe had bought the floor model of a kick boat as it was the last one. It was fully assembled and ready to float. When we laid the boat out on my front yard, Joe sat down in the seat, and the foot rest fit him perfectly. The straps were snug, and we were set for the next day’s float. What we didn’t check was the oar assembly. Half way through the float the next day the oar lock ring slipped and the oar pushed through. Joe tightened the assembly with a small pocket knife, but he could not snug it up sufficiently. A few minutes later he shot down a fast chute. The water piled up on rocks and the roots of a cottonwood and then changed course downstream in a 90-degree turn. Directly in front of him loomed a tall cottonwood tree that hung over the water. The maneuver should have been routine. Work to the far left of the chute and pull back in the slow eddy. Joe dug in with his oars pulling back from the tree and the rocky bank that absorbed the direct impact of the chute’s surging waters.

Stationed downstream I watched Joe’s approach. He crossed the chute on the left side and began rowing back from the bank with strong strokes towards the quiet eddy behind him. In my mind he was out of any danger so I returned to the waters in front of me and continued casting a Stimulator with a small bead-head dropper. A few minutes later Joe caught up to me and held up his broken rod. A broken rod, regardless of its initial cost or value, evokes an involuntary shudder and momentary nausea for any fly fisherman. I groaned inside thinking of all the fishing trips in which I took a family member or friend fishing. They never seem to work out no matter how carefully I plan the trip or where I take them. Years ago when I was guiding I would take beginners out and they would catch fish all day, but when I had a day off to take my son’s fishing, conditions would change and we would have a lack-luster day. Joe held up his broken rod. Sweat was dripping off his face from the 100+ temperature. He let out a string of obscenities concluding with, “This fucking oar slipped out of the ring again. I almost lost the entire oar. With only one oar, the fast water slammed me up against the bank and the overhanging branches snapped my fly rod.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had planned to float the Bitterroot River with Joe for at least three days, and then he could use his kick boat on Yellowstone Lake and Hebgen Lake for a couple of days. But this day was taking a toll on both of us. For the rest of the day we dragged and scooted over a number of shallow spots as the temperature climbed to 106. The next day we went back to Sportsman’s Warehouse in Missoula. We told our story separately to three managers, and each one stated the same position that the responsibility was ours to check the equipment prior to using the kick boat on the water. We asked to speak to the store manager. When he arrived, we had two of the young floor managers with their ears pin backed from our verbal assault. He asked Joe to cool down. Joe said, “Of course, I apologize, but now I have to tell the same story another time!” He told the story for the last time, and I interrupted and said that the responsibility of the store was to properly assemble boats if they were going to sell a floor model. Joe accepted responsibility for not thoroughly checking all of the equipment, but he explained that the boat fit him perfectly, and he assumed that the set screws on the oars were properly tightened. The manager agreed to replace Joe’s broken rod. The next day we decided to beat the heat and walk up the trail of the North Fork of the Blackfoot River and fish the steep canyon.

In years past I have had many enjoyable fishing and camping trips up the North Fork. Usually it doesn’t fish well until late July for dry fly action. I thought that the recent heat spell would warm the cold waters tumbling out of the Bob Marshall wilderness. I knew it would be a scramble down to the river off the horse trail. My biggest concern was whether or not we would be able to get around the huge boulders that line the water’s edge. Joe began to complain about the boulder impediments that blocked our progress up the stream. I knew he was in pain. He has a bad knee and his back was giving him problems. I kept thinking that if he could catch a good size fish, all the pain would disappear. I told him we would share the stream and play leap-frog, but Joe held back content to fish a large pool. I held up a couple of nice fish in the fourteen to sixteen-inch range to inspire him and prove to him that the trek off the trail was well worth the muscle pain and dripping sweat that creped out beneath our hats. I moved up to the next pool and flipped out a large golden stone fly. The water was fast and I mended my line. My fly began to gradually sink. Just before I was about to pick it up and recast, I saw a huge shadow move up from the bottom. My fly sunk and the shadowy figure drifted back into a deep and dark crevice four or five feet below the surface.

I am not sure when it began. Maybe it was after I retired and began building my home in Oregon. I talk to myself now. Most notably I talk to myself when I make a mistake. I flattened myself up against a large boulder and lowered my standing position to a stooped over position that I knew I would not be able to maintain for anything longer than a couple of minutes. “Jesus, fucking, Christ! Always make your first cast your best cast!” I retreated to the shoreline and sat on a flat rock. I stripped off the golden stonefly imitation and noted that I had a bead-head Prince Nymph as a dropper. So what was it moving towards I thought. It had to have been the dry because when it sunk the trout disappeared I thought to myself. The year before I had caught a huge rainbow on the Williamson River on a bass bug fished with a fly rod. I had planned on fishing another bass creature sometime on this Montana trip. Now was the time.

I clipped off a section of 5x leader and tied on the bass bug. The cast that had moved the large trout was down and across the tail-out of a pool in fast water. If I had seen this big guy, even in his dark shadowy form, he had seen me. Nonetheless, I was hopping for dumb luck. I made a number of casts. The bug was heavily weighted, and it dropped out of sight tumbling between the boulders in the dark, impenetrable waters. I made four or five casts and nothing. Directly downstream from my position in two feet of fast moving water was another dark crevice. On my final cast I let out some line and allowed my lure to drift down into this dark ribbon of water. It was an imperfect cast and I had to lift the lure up and then lower it into the dark slot. A dark, broad head drifted up out of the darkness and opened and closed its mouth on the soft, plastic lure. The closing jaw triggered a set from me and the fish was on the end of my line. I was shocked to see the size of him as he shot over into the middle of the fast water and then dove down to the bottom of the pool. Had he decided to make his run across the stream and down, I would never have held on to him.

I yelled to Joe. I doubted that I would be able to bring the fish to my hands, and I wanted someone to witness the size of this fish. As Joe mentioned later, I overplayed the fish and had to revive him. I marked the fish’s length on my rod. Later at home he would measure between 25 and 26 inches. He was not a snaky, old toothless fish. He was broad across the back and hefty. It was my fish of the decade I exclaimed, and neither of us had a camera. The next day we fished Idaho’s Lochsa River about an hour’s drive from Lolo, Montana.

I decided to take Joe to fish the Lochsa River in the afternoon and fish through the evening. It would be somewhat cooler, and I heard that the river had made a good come-back after fish limits had been lowered a number of years ago. We both caught a number of fish, and I moved two really nice cutthroats so I switched to the bass bug and caught four fish from 14 to sixteen inches. With unrelenting temperatures we headed for Yellowstone National Park.

The fishing reports were grim. Fish kills were being reported on the Firehole and Gibbon River. Hebgen Lake, which is subject to high water temperatures and algae blooms, was displaying surface temperatures in the high sixties on my fish finder. No one was catching anything so we headed home. When we arrived back in the Bitterroot Valley the Fish and Game had closed the Bitterroot River and the Clark’s Fork River to no fishing from 2 PM to Midnight. We rested up for a day and camped and fished the next evening and morning on Rock Creek. The water was very warm and by 9:30 the temperature had already reached the low 90’s. Once again I experimented with my bass bug and caught numerous brown trout, none of them exceeding 14 inches.

People ask me why I moved from Montana to Chiloquin, Oregon. I am tired of the Montana crowds I tell them. For the most part the fish are still alive and doing well, but they are educated fish. When I began guiding during the early 1980’s, the Bitterroot Valley had perhaps no more than eight or ten guides. On any given stretch of the river I would see no more than one other boat. Most days I would have a stretch all to myself. When the pressure grew to three or four boats on the river, I knew a number of guides who would float the mid-section of the river. Today trout are hammered with presentations all day long the entire course of the river. It is common to have up to a dozen or more boats on any section of the river throughout spring and summer. If you seriously want to fish western Montana, arrive in the fall when fishing vacationers are back to work, children are back in school and the locals have put up their fly rods to trek into the mountains for deer and elk. This is the time to visit and fish, but very few anglers arrive in the fall. Maybe I need to bid Montana a return farewell.

Dave Archer