Well another season of guiding in Montana has come and gone. This season started off with the plan to hit the Simms Ice Out. Yeah that never happened. My boy Justin met me on the Bighorn with a raft and we fished it for three days. Nothing spectacular as far as fish go but it was a good time staying at the cottonwood camp. Oh before I forget the weather welcomed me to Montana in a grand way...
Justin started off the trip quickly with a couple of nice fish...
Then I caught my first Bighorn fish.
We spent two more days fishing the bighorn both floating it and wading around. We didn't catch too many more fish and I lost an absolute giant that I couldn't move at all guess it was a 2 footer. The last morning Justin and I decided to wade fish a bit. Yeah that was a mistake as the water was high and we couldn't get anywhere and Justin almost went for a swim and scared the crap out of both of us.
So after that fiasco Justin and I headed back to his place back by the resort. The drive was horrible by far the worst head wind I have ever driven in. But the party back home was worth it. A little bit of drinking and an awesome fire always lead to a good time.
Yeah there was an old chicken coop not in use so we decided to pick it up and put the whole thing on the fire. It was a good way to kick off another season with a bunch of friends from the last season and met some new guys.
So after a couple of days hanging out Justin and I headed over to a lake that the ice was finally starting to come off of and holds some very large trout.
There was still plenty of snow up in higher elevations too.
I didn't start work immediately so I spent a bunch of time hanging out with the new guides for the resort and training them and floating and fishing the Blackfoot and some other area streams as well as the Mighty Mo'. I finally caught my first Bull trout this season as well.
There were a lot of Bulls caught this season I caught several small ones guided some friends into some including several large ones. Also had a client catch a pig of a bully.
Fellow guide Chris Stroup with a nice bully.
My client's big bully of almost 30 inches and I'm guessing around 15+ pounds. Not a bad first fish of the day. Oh yeah and he also got a big 22 inch bow.
And me holding the same bull.
Did a lot of fishing over on the Mo' this season due to high water levels. A lot of large fish we caught by all.
Brininstool with a nice one.
Murphy (Thad) finally got off the oars and caught a nice Mo' fish. I officially dubbed Thad "Murphy". It didn't seem to matter what he was up to something always went wrong or he goofed somehow so he became Murphy, as in Murphy's Law anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Case in point on one trip over to the Mo' he got car sick and almost ralphed in Brininstool's lunch bag, We also called him Ralph for a while.
Since I was "training" the new guys I got a lot of time to fish early this season and caught several nice fish on the Mo'.
A nice Blackfoot brownie.
Another Mo' fish
Some of my most memorable clients from this season were some brothers at the resort for a birthday party and fished with myself and my outfitter Jeremy for two days. The first day I had Cliff (the brother in law) and we got 9 fish when everyone else was having a difficult day which was awesome. The next day I had Kevin who's birthday it was.
Just another morning at the resort and someone was going up in a hot air balloon.
One thing I did different this season was guide three trips into the Bob Marshall Wilderness and fishing the South Fork of the Flathead River. 2 days on horseback to get to the river then 5 days of floating down the river. The first trip was a tough one with extremely high water. While we were on the river the flows fluctuated from 14-16 thousand cfs. But we caught fish none the less by hiking up into tiny tribs that were still clear.
Saddling up, I rode a horse named buckshot who was a badass and handled the sloppy trails wonderfully.
Chris Gruver aka Cookie, aka The Machine, aka McGruver, and some scenery from along the trail in in the Danaher Valley.
The clients, a really cool family from Maine.
I love Montana!
Camp at Big Prairie.
A little ways down river there is a cool pack bridge.
We bring in these nice canvas tents for our clients and what do they do. come out and sleep near me and Brooklyn the horse wrangler by the fire.
Floating the river.
And that's all she wrote for my first trip into the "Bob". I did two more trips into Bob but don't really have any pictures from either one but they were both memorable and had a great time with the clients.
Back in the clean world Justin and Thad had found a cool little stream up in the mountains so one day while the others were guiding and Justin got out of dodge early with just half days we went back and found some cool brookies and cutts.
Fast forward to Sept. and my buddy Andy and his friend Tony come out to Montana and we camp out and fish for a couple of days.
First day we fished Rock Creek and the fish were all over hoppers once the sun warmed up the water a bit.
Tony
Andy, After taking a swim trying to get across the river to hand me his camera.
The next day I took the guys down the blackfoot.
tony laughing it up holding a fish while I'm trying to navigate a small rapid
Relaxing
Rods loaded up on the Jeep.
The next day we decided to go wade a trib of the blackfoot which shall remain nameless.
We ran into this guy there.
Caught some nice fish.
This is what you end up looking like when you drink all day long and do a lot of hiking and fishing.
I love this river.
The guys and I parted ways at the end of the day. They had plans to go hit another river and I had to guide the next day.
After that there was some more guiding to be done but October was around the corner which means trips to Idaho for steelhead.
Justin, Jeremy and I made 2 overnight trips to the Clearwater which means we were not going to catch shit! I hate this river. We never catch anything, it's just huge and tough and you need to ut your time in which none of us has done yet.
But it sure is Purdy.
And we found some zombies and managed to land a small male I accidently snagged but did have a few hit a swung fly along with some whities.
After that the resort was closed for a whole week so Justin, Seth the resort's director of activities and I went to the Salmon. The Salmon I like.... A LOT!. We met up with a buddy Evan and his Pops and a bunch of random people at the campground and a good time ensued. The night ended with Evan falling over several times, once over some chairs, once nearly squishing a dog, and the final time involved me catching him and stopping him from falling into the fire.
Justin is an all tackle kind of guy which I like cause I am kind of the same (at least with bass) was using a centerpin setup which I find to be extremely deadly when you need to get insanely long dead drifts. He caught a hell of a steelhead the first day.
Unfortunately that is the only fish pic I have from this trip. We hooked 9 and landed two. Seth got a huge wild hen on an egg pattern while we were eaded to the takeout. I hooked 4 fish on the swing and Seth hook two all on one of my marabou patterns.
The last day on the Salmon we did some driving and spotted these guys just hanging out.
Check out the size of those kahones!
And that's all she wrote for my season.
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