Naturally, on a college visit to Missoula with our daughter, there must be some time allocated for fly fishing. That was my excuse this time, as if I needed an excuse to test some fly fishing gear for the company. The Blackfoot River, just outside of Missoula Montana is a very famous river thanks to the book and movie “A River Runs Through It.” I have this book on Audible, and listened to it on my three Delta flights from Des Moines, to Minneapolis, to Salt Lake City, to Missoula. Plenty of time to hear the stories and lore of “The Big Blackfoot” told in epic detail and was excellent preparation for my float.
A month before I had reached out to a gentleman I met on Instagram, Jacob Hensley. Jake’s Insatagram is @missoulaflyguy. I actually followed him, saw his photos of his guiding expertise, and that’s why I reached out. I book a good percentage of my guides this way. We connected, and he fortunately had an opening, June 19th, Friday, PERFECT. We connected a few times prior to our meeting, Jacob asked me to meet a little earlier than normal so we could be the first float down the river, I loved this guy already.
Our plan was to float from Corrick’s River Bend Camp Ground down to Johnsrud Park. You can see the eleven mile stretch of river on the map above. We would see some absolutely incredible scenery on this float, I took very few photos of the scenery, which I regretted.
I packed two El Jefe rods in my carry on luggage, they both clipped right to my backpack, so no issues carrying on all my fly fishing gear. I chose to fish El Jefe in six weight and El Jefe in eight weight. I wanted to be prepared to throw some streamers for big browns, and an eight weight is my weapon of choice for this. Fortunately for me, I struck gold and floated the Blackfoot in the middle of the famous Salmon Fly Hatch. Fortunately for me, unfortunately for my eight weight kit, there was no need for streamers. Salmon flys are huge. A massive source of protein for the trout. They can feed on them aggressively, which is incredible to watch. We fished a dry and dropper, which happens to be my favorite method to fish for trout when they are looking up.
These bugs are crazy big, probably an inch and a half or two inches long. The fly we used up top was equally large, which rendered my cheater glasses for tying tiny flies useless. Our dropper was something Jacob called a “Turd.” There is a photo below of this one.
The bite was on quick, we landed a little rainbow right off the bat, Jacob said he was excited to get the skunk off the boat. Soon, the rain started to fall, which proved to be an awesome thing. When it’s cloudy, the fish look up more. The sun hurts their eyes, and they avoid seeing the massive buffet of salmon flies floating above. We pulled into a nice section of calm water and prepared to make our first cast. Another boat floated by, and set up across the river. Just at that moment, I threw the giant stone flies into a perfect section of water, not too fast, not too slow, and a large brown torpedo came up from the depths, came clean out of the water in pursuit of my golden stonefly dry fly. I brought tension, and we were hooked up. The boat across the river watched the action and let out an audible celebration for us. I knew this was a large brown trout, and patiently applied pressure. We went several hundred yards down river, before he afforded us the opportunity to get him into the net.
This was a big boy for me, and the colors were incredible. The fact that this huge brown came completely out of the water chasing a dry fly floors me. We measured this beauty with a tape measure, and it was just over twenty inches long, and had a fourteen inch girth. The trout in this river are well fed.
After a quick release we were onto the next one. We floated for about 5-10 minutes to a new eddy, which was right next to a 200 foot rock cliff. It was magnificent. On the second cast, we saw a giant brown trout burst the surface and destroy the dry fly, it was on again. This fish was larger, it swam into downed logs, we were convinced it’s done this before, then after a 20 second scream of my drag up river, the hook pulled, it was over. We dusted ourselves off, and said on to the next one.
The fish in this river were incredible. I can’t even begin to describe the colors of the brown, the west slope cutthroat trout, the rainbow trout, the cutbow, and not to mention the whitefish.
Late in the afternoon, we experienced a super cool thing. A true daily double. We had a solid cutbow nail the dry, and right after, a little rainbow hit the dropper. It was funny watching this little trout keep jumping out of the water while I was landing this solid 17-18 inch cut bow.
This was a special float, and I’m glad to have met my new friend and guide in the Missoula area, Jacob Hensley. Look him up, I guarantee you will have a great experience. If you need his contact information, let me know. Until next times, tight lines my friends.
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