Southwest Montana

Montana '12

The anticipation had built in my mind for quite some time. My chance had finally come to explore some of the better trout fishing waters this country has too offer. We wasted no time when our plane touched the ground. Every second would be precious on this trip and we wanted to conserve every bit of it for fishing. We took off down the Madison Valley. With mountain peaks lining each side of the valley the beautiful Madison river effortlessly carved through the middle. As we made it down to the middle fork of the madison river we set up camp and headed out to the river. The wading was quite different than what I was used to back home, as the water was often quick and sometimes deep. We still managed some success in the couple hours before dark. I hooked up with a couple rainbows, and Mike pulled in our first Madison River brown trout. The next morning we awoke early to try our luck at a different area of the river. We had somehow perfectly timed our trip to match up with the famous salmonfly hatch, which brings hoards of people to the Madison river each year. Big fish on big dry flies! Hard to beat! We each threw on our flies and tried our luck. It took some time to figure out how to fish the water. The quick current threw a different dynamic at us than we were anticipating. We soon concentrated our efforts on the banks. This method proved highly effective as we began to catch and miss numerous fish. I missed one good fish in a deeper run on the bank, catching a glimspe of his side, just to see him dart up stream. Mike got us started catching a couple browns. Shortly after, I hooked up with what would have been my signature fish of the trip. But it broke me off after a short fight only to leave me wondering what could have been. Then came the night. I have never seen anything like the hatches that go on in the evenings on the Madison river. Around 7:00 masses of caddisflies would hatch. Almost so much many they would cloud your view at times. This is when the fishing really turned on for us! Mike caught a very nice brown and I got a hold of a healthy rainbow slab. Danny lost a GOOD rainbow after he chased him downriver for about 50 yards. During midday we had dropped up onto the middle fork of the madison where Danny got a hold of a nice brown. Almost every run had a fish, and they were hungry too. Sizes were smaller but it made for some fast action in the midday when the larger river cooled off a bit. The next couple days we tried our luck in the park on the Firehole, Gibbon, and Madison rivers, and also a short stint at Slough creek which was still running high. Timing seemed to be the issue in some places. We noticed early morning and evening were of course our most productive times. So to give a fair shot to the Gibbon and Firehole we fished them midday with only one brown to show for. However we tore it up on the Madison river. Each of us pulled in a number of brown trout over 15 inches. It was our most productive stretch of water of the trip. And tough to leave, but we wanted to sneak in a short amount of time at Slough Creek. Mike worked a quicker run at Slough for a while and managed to hook up with a fat slab Cutt! Ended up being the biggest fish of our trip I believe. We ended the trip with some time on the big boy. Without a driftboat we feared the Yellowstone River would be a lost cause, but we couldnt go all that way and not throw a line in. What we found out was quite the opposite. Wading was fairly simply in spots and we had very good luck. We pulled in a number of Cutts and Cuttbows, headlined by Danny's catch out of a smaller channel breakoff from the main stretch of water. We wrapped up the morning and gased it back to airport, with five minutes to spare to check our bags. Plenty of time in the Bozeman, MT airport. The trip was well worth the time, and provided an experience that we will never forget. Below are a few pics from the trip, but many are still on there way, along with the video I will produce in the near future. Til Next time...

-Dreamcatchers

Mike fishing the Firehole
Camground just outside of Yellowstone in Montana

Throwing a line to the banks

Nice Madison River Brown Trout

Surverying the options

Brown is the color

Slough Creek

Finally casting in a line on the Yellowstone River

Nice pull from a some channel of the Stone

Healthy Yellowstone Cutt pull by Danny

Carolina Sunshine

We debated where we should go for about an hour the night before. We had thrown out the usual suspects: Hiwassee, Clinch, Little River, etc. The was an odd urge that drove us to pick Deep Creek though. Deep Creek is known to have one of the larger percentages of brown to rainbow ratios of any stream in the park. I had fished there three times before, and done well. David had no such luck though in previous trips. We settled on Deep Creek and made it there in the morning to begin our hike. The hike was long to get upstream enough to where the creek departs from the trail. The water was up from the severe thunderstorms a couple days earlier, so we suited up the waders and got in. We were greeted with early success, as I caught a quick rainbow on the dry. We moved up another run and again a beautiful brown jumped up and nailed my fly. I thought we would be in to catch a monster this day. Then David caught on fire landing rainbow after rainbow for quite a while. One of the rainbows being one of the better ones I have seen in the park. Unfortunately that is not pictured below. We hiked up the stream a ways until we determined we had had enough success and then headed back down. The monster brown I had dreamed off earlier evaded us another day but it was another successful trip, and day well spent in the life of the Dreamcatchers....til next time

-Dreamcatchers

Nice run way up off the trail
A little guy
Another small rainbow

David hitting some riffles

Nicely colored Smoky Mountain Rainbow

Spring Fever

It has been quite awhile since the last report, and one might think that I quit an old addiction some call fly fishing. Couldn't be farther from the truth. I have been hitting the tailwaters and mountain streams almost every weekend, with bountiful rewards dating all the way back into February. Spring came early this year, and the trout have seemed to notice. They have been out and active. I made it up to the Hiwassee yesterday to mess around in some familiar territory. The fishing was out of this world. Hits on nearly every cast continued throughout the entire day, and landing rainbow after rainbow becomes under appreciated when the fishing is hot. To my delight my catch wasn't limited to bows, as I was able to pull in a couple browns too. Most of the fish were hitting nymphs but there was good dry fly action throughout the day as well. I posted some quick pics from the trip yesterday. A video should be coming soon covering alot more of the trips in between. Til next time.....

-Dreamcatchers

Driving up

First Rainbow grab

Fiesty brown with some muscle on him apparently

Netting a catch

Walking the railroad down to the trophy section

Lunch please...

Water was a bit higher than my liking but it worked well

Fat rainbow demolished my nymph

Another brown

Gotcha

Fall Flingin

The Feast was set in the majestic Smoky Mountains this year, very familar to my heart, providing endless opportunites to hit the water. It had been nearly 15 years since I had been to a Feast site that didnt have a beach, but I welcomed the chance to get on some Smoky waters in the Fall. Every year massive browns run up the Little River this time of year. We figured to be hitting the perfect time for the Gold Rush. I had heard and seen reports of 20 to 23 inchers willingly feasting on anglers flys. So we set off with the hope of landing one of these trophy treasures. After church it became standard procedure to hit the river after Amen. Our first chance was to the Little River. We managed to catch a couple bows, but the large browns we desired stayed out of site for this trip. The next day, with a shorter alottment of time he headed up to the Middle Prong of the Little Pigeon River. Both me and Mike did very well here. There wasn't much size to the fish, but pulling small fish out of every hole makes for a fun experience. Our next trip we dropped over the Gap to the NC side of the park, trying for browns that are running up the Oconaluftee River. It started out slow, but I manage to pull one brown in which was decent size, but he flopped out of the net while I was scrambling for my camera. Mike snatched a good rainbow on the dry just a couple of runs later. Rainbows in the park dont get very big, so this was a very nice fish. After a little more messin around we dropped over the Gap and tried for the trifecta. I caught a rainbow, but missed a couple opportunites at Brook Trout. The last day we had chance to fish, we decided to drop in the gorge of the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River. We parked on the side of the road then dropped straight down the gorge. We had a larger number of people with us this time, which is fitting since if anything happens, nobody is going to find you down there. The river in the gorge is filled with massive boulders and perfect pools. We caught a number of fish down there, and I landed the first brook trout of the trip, completing the weekly trifecta of Brown, Bow, and Brook. Though missing the massive browns was dissappointing, the expeditions were fun as always. Certainly I will make my way back up in the next couple of weekends, to get one last shot at the massive browns for the year...til next time

-Dreamcatchers



View from the GAP, hard to capture the colors on camera, but they were vibrant to say the least

Newfound Gap

Another overlook

Mount LeConte in the Sun

Walking back to the truck on the Middle Prong of the Little Pigeon

Searching for Browns on the Little River, Mike made his way back to the truck

Fishing the riffles

Mike working the Little River

Colorful Bow from Greenbriar

Brook from the gorge WPLP

Danny down in the gorge working a nice pool

Working up against the rock

Another nice run in the gorge

Rainbow from Middle Prong of the Little River

Another rainbow

Releasing a colorful friend

Mike working a pool at Greenbriar

Looking for fun

Gotcha

Here is the nice rainbow from the Luptee, hit the dry

Let him breath, you can see the colors a bit better on these two

Sending him home

Western Adventures

-Wind River Range 2011

We had anxiously planned a trip to Glacier National Park this summer, to do a bit of backpacking and fishing. Those plans were thwarted by the incompetent permit system in place there. After getting our intial trail rejected we turned out sites to a different area. A vast wilderness with no roads, was waiting to be explored. It may be impossible to see all the sites the Wind River Range has to offer in a lifetime, but we had 5 days to make to the most of our first trip. We had read and heard of massive golden trout stocked long ago, being caught in numerous lakes. We figured to maybe hit one or two of these lakes on our hike, in hopes to natch a trophy for our trip. Since we had a dual purpose mission we were also set to see some of the more beautiful sites the range has to offer. As often happens, things did not go as planned. Only one day were we actually able to do what we had planned from the beginning. A series of problems arose such as complications with altitude sickness, eye infections, etc that caused us to turn away from some of the places we had intended to visit. But with each problem a new opportunity arose to fish for things we might not have anticipated when we journyed off. We settled in on two lakes that had golden trout in them, and were not very fortunate. Mike and David both ended up catching a couple goldens a piece but that was it for the trip. Where we would find our luck was in the cutthroat department. With our plans to fish a couple of golden lakes changed, we now had the opportunity to fish some nice cutthroat waters. We had great luck, thanks to Mike ordering us a number of scuds that proved dynamite in the apline lakes. Danny nabbed the beast for this trip early one morning. A good fish, I think could have been a golden cutthroat hybrid. David and Mike both lost BIG fish fishing in the outlet streams of various lakes. It was an incredible trip, with unbelievable lake fishing. One day we hope to make it back up to a certain lake we only got an hour to fish at. But in that hour I saw many golden trout over 20 inches. This trip will have to wait though. It is hard to capture the incredible sites you see with photgraphy but I did my best. Below is a mix of pics and video from our trip...til next time

-Dreamcatchers

Freemont Lake

View from the campsite. Ready to do work!

A look from the outside of the Wind River Range

David fising in the inlet to a lake on our way to Titcomb Basin

Look down from cliffs above Lower Titcomb Lake

Colorful cutthroat mashed the orange scud

Same fish as above, nice sized catch

A nice pull by David early on the fourth day of hiking

Scudded this one just on the edge of the shelf. He was a fisty fighter.

David fishing in one of the inlets to the lake

A smaller rainbow catch

Back in the Basin

Mike fishing an outlet stream from the Upper Titcomb Lake

A small golden trout from the outlet stream pictured above

Nice pull by Mike

Pressure was on to catch dinner and this is what hit the yellow stimulator

David fishing around at Island Lake

The hog of the trip

Releasing the beast

A golden David caught the last day out