For the last day, we changed the cast of characters. Max gave up his seat, and my buddy Drew Baker — our photographer — climbed in to shoot the day and grab video. (Keep an eye out; there's a YouTube piece coming from this one, and I'm excited about it.)
We could've fished anywhere — the Clark Fork, the Bitterroot, everything around Missoula is fishing right now. But after the two days we'd had, including that insane Blackfoot day with four browns over 20 inches, we decided to swing for the fences and go looking for something big. We put in at a cool spot and started floating.
Right away we had salmon flies coming off the water. Jake actually got a little cautious about that — when they hatch this early it's a strange thing, sometimes the fish eat them and sometimes they don't. We threw salmon fly patterns, big Chubby Chernobyls, big stones below… and nothing. So we pulled into some deep holes and started ripping a streamer.
About a half hour in, in some really fast water, a tiny fish grabbed the streamer — and then, like a freight train, a giant trout came out of nowhere and nailed the little fish. Suddenly I was hooked into it and fighting something serious. Good thing I had the El Jefe v2 8-weight in hand — that's a lot of help when you've got a fish like this on. I kept it under control the whole way, and when it finally came up it was at least two feet long — and to our surprise, a bull trout. Here's the important part: you can't fish for bull trout on purpose. They're a protected, threatened species, and targeting them is off-limits, period. But every so often one turns up by accident in water like this — eating the little fish that's eating your fly — and when it does, the only thing to do is treat it like the treasure it is. We kept it in the water the whole time, handled it as little as we could, got a few seconds of video of it holding in the current, and let it go. What a thing to have happen.
Two feet of bull trout, resting in the net in the current.
Easing it back into the Blackfoot.
Before that we really hadn't touched anything, and after it, things got technical. We went back to nymphing and tried — I'm not exaggerating — a dozen different flies, getting one fish on a pattern and then nothing. We scratched out five or six before lunch, then pulled over, ate, and talked through a game plan.
The afternoon was a grind in the best way: deep nymphing through swirly, foamy holes, a little foam on top, a streamer when we wanted to hunt. I got a nice big rainbow on the streamer, some others on nymphs and chubbies, and we had a few dry-fly eats too. It was never hot and heavy — we ended up somewhere around 12 to 18 fish on the day — but we pieced together a really good day out of genuinely tough conditions. The other boats we talked to weren't getting them either, and we still had that surprise two-footer and a hard-earned 18-inch rainbow to show for it.
A nice rainbow on the streamer — the afternoon's reward.
Tough day, big rewards, and some incredible footage from Drew — an epic way to close out three days in Montana.
Thanks to Jake — Missoula Fly Guy — for three days I won't forget, and to Drew Baker for the camera work.
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