Fly Fishing the Lower Clark Fork in Montana - Epic Skwala Hatch

Skwala on The Clark Fork

 

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.  Timing the Skwala hatch on the lower Clark Fork near Missoula, Montana isn’t an easy thing to do.  My friend and guide Jake Hensley AKA @missoulaflyguy on Instagram says this happens roughly every four years.  Generally speaking, the hatch of these big stoneflies happens every year roughly at the end of April.  The issue is that the rivers normally blow out due to runoff, and even though the hatch still may occur, the water is super high, fast, and looks like chocolate milk.  The week before our trip, Jake still couldn’t tell me what water we were going to fish because the rivers near Missoula could blow out any day.  Good news for me, they didn’t blow out until the evening after I floated.  We did get the Skwala hatch, and yes it was epic.

 

El Jefe in Six Weight with The Chubby Chernobyl

 

We were fishing mainly a dry and dropper program and only rigged up El Jefe in six weight.  We fished with a chubby Chernobyl up top, and a jig head pheasant tail below.  The chubby was our Skwala imitation, and the pheasant tail was our mayfly imitation.   We also used a turd fly for a little while, which also mimicked the Skwala.  

 

Cutthroat with “The Turd Fly”

 

Since we didn’t throw streamers all day, we allowed the El Jefe eight weight to stay in the tube.  We were planning on heading to The Missouri the next day, because the rivers near Missoula were going to turn to chocolate milk that evening, which would give us a chance to throw streamers.  

 

Lower Clark Fork, Montana

 

We headed out of town to launch about an hour outside of Missoula.  It’s always a pretty drive, and the road follows the Clark Fork the entire way offering some amazing scenery.  Where we launched, we were the only people at the boat ramp, which could be good or bad.  I trust Jake, so I knew it was a good sign.  The morning was a little slow, but we managed to boat a few fish.  The sun was out more than it was forecasted so the fish were not looking up as much as we would have liked.  We did manage a half dozen trout on the droppers.  We did hit a crazy run of big whitefish.  We landed six of them one after another right before lunch, it was actually pretty fun, but Jake wasn’t having it.  It was time to hunt trout.  We noticed that the cloud were building early afternoon, so we pulled the boat over to have a good luck beer.  This might have been the luckiest beer ever, because those clouds rolled in, and the hatch began.  

 

Clark Fork Rainbow Trout with El Jefe

 

The Skwala and mayflies were EVERYWHERE.  We then started seeing rising fish all over, they started right by the boat, and I popped the first trout on the dry.  At one point, we saw thousands of these giant stoneflies floating down the river.  At that point for about twenty minutes, we didn’t get many takes, there was just too much food on the river for our fake flies to compete.  Even though we weren’t hooking up for a bit, it was incredible to witness the feeding frenzy.  When the natural food got less plentiful, the action began.  We started hooking up with eighteen inch trout one after another.  Beautiful snake river cutthroats, rainbows, and cuttbows.  We even managed to get a couple of takes on video.  

 

Jeff Ditsworth, Owner of Pescador on the Fly with a Snake River Cutthroat

 

I’m not sure how many fish we landed this day, but it was a bunch.  Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good, and today was that day.  It’s pretty crazy to have had this entire river to myself during such an epic day.  

 

Professional Guide Jake Hensley, AKA MissoulaFlyGuy.

 

Until next time my friends, tight lines.

Jeff

 

El Jefe by Pescador on the Fly