Floating The Bitterroot Near Missoula, Montana: Day 1

You never know what sort of weather you’re going to get when you fish in late March in Montana.  Fortunately, I lucked out and got fantastic weather.  I’ve been planning another couple of days fishing with my friend and professional fly fishing guide Jake, AKA @missoulaflyguy on Instagram.  Look this guy up if you want an incredible guide and awesome person to spend time on the water with.  

 

Jake AKA @Missoulaflyguy on Instagram

 

Jake’s done an amazing job taking me to new water just about every time we have fished together.  There is so much water near Missoula, and it all can fish a little different depending on the time of year, weather, and bug hatches.  

 

 

On this float, I brought three El Jefe Combos along for the ride, but only two of them would get any action.  I brought a four weight to cast single dry flies, a six weight to fish a dry and dropper, and an eight weight for streamers.  Spoiler alert, we didn't fish the eight weight!  The plan was to fish our six weight in the morning with a chubby Chernobyl as our dry fly with a stonefly as our dropper.  We tried several other flies below, but this small stonefly was the ticket.

 

Dry Fly Eater

 

We were hammering the trout on the dry and dropper.  They hit the dropper around 90% of the time.  We were catching a ton of cutthroat trout on this float with a few rainbows and cut bows mixed in.  

 

Love those Colors

 

As the water warmed up, Jake set up our four weight El Jefe with a single dry that looked like a Skwala stonefly.  This fly was about an inch long.  These stoneflies are large, not as large as a salmon fly, but still pretty big.  We really weren’t seeing much action or heads of trout breaching the surface, but Jake wanted to try the single dry a bit.  I’m glad we did.  

 

Skwala Eater

 

It was his theory that the larger fish may go after the single dry, and he was right.  We first hooked up with a solid rainbow around 18 inches long.  Next came a great strike.  All we saw was the dry disappear into a swirl of water, I set the hook and we knew we had a brown on!  This brown went on several long runs and avoided the raft at all costs.  

 

Jeff Ditsworth with a Great Brown

 

Catching a nice brown on a single dry fly is pretty cool thing.  The crazy thing about this day was the weather was amazing, and we landed 40-50 trout.  This day will be difficult to top, but we’ll be up for the challenge tomorrow.

 

Look at that View!

 

Until next time, tight lines my friend!

Jeff