Sunday, October 5, 2008

Big Time Fish - Big Horn River

It was a long summer with more downs than ups but the weather is beginning to turn and fall is slipping down upon us. Hopefully the change of seasons will also bring other good changes (hopefully a change to a new lab) and even if things turn out to be the same old thing in a different setting, at least it will be a different setting! Anyway, I digress. With trout season ending in Minnesota on September 30th Ted and I figured the best way to see out our trout season was to head to Montana, and the river he chose was the Bighorn River. He'd fished it many times before but for me it was my first time.


The drive is about fourteen hours if you can drive straight through and for us that meant an early start. I was at Ted's place right on time at 4:00am which is about a half hour from my place. We pushed straight through to South Dakota's Black Hills and stopped for a meal at a Pizza Buffet place and the delightful town of Spearfish. This place very much enamored me with the early fall colors, black hills as a back drop and a gorgeous, productive trout stream running right through the center of town. Of course the first stop Ted had us stop was the trout hatchery where we saw some monster brood stock in the grow out ponds. We then checked out a few stretches of stream with well manicured parks and a pleasant crispness to the air. What a great place!


When we finally got into Fort Smith it was getting dark and we were tired. We elected for a cheap motel room to rest our aching bones, bought our licenses, then headed down to the afterbay dam to try our luck. Like a fool I hadn't organized very well and didn't have any indicators on me so had quite a bit of trouble nymphing. This may or may not be the reason I wasn't hooking fish but during the same time Ted landed six or seven including a 17 inch rainbow. Within the hour the darkness (and tiredness) draped over us and we turned in for the night.


Now for whatever reason I didn't sleep very well at all that first night, tossing and turning and worrying about things back in Minnesota and when I did sleep I had the weirdest dreams so I didn't have any trouble with the early start. We raced out to the campground and secured a boat for the day, bought some flies, then set up the tent and our camp.

Back at the dam our drift boat was waiting and we were soon drifting the upper three mile stretch of the river. It wasn't long before my indicator dropped and I had my first brown trout. It was about nine inches or so but at least it was a start. A little while later we drifted towards the "meat hole" and this time when the indicator dropped an explosion erupted. A feisty seventeen inch rainbow leapt and ran through the heavy current until ending up in the net. My first decent Bighorn rainbow.


We anchored the driftboat and waded the "meat hole" hole for a good few hours and I experienced the coolest thing. As you waded the shallows you'd dig up some bugs under the rocks as you walked which resulted in a whole mess of fish (between say fourteen and twenty-four inches) sitting directly downstream of your legs, constantly sipping morsels being disrupted in the current. In fact, if you didn't move your feet for a while the fish would actually bump your legs to get you to move. It was truly amazing. Now you might think this would make them easy to catch but the opposite is true. These fish get fished to every single day of the year and they are crafty and wise. Even when you could finally fool one of these fish most were too strong to land.

The entire run was full of fish though so normal nymphing was as good an approach as any. In such big, strong water and such big, strong, wild fish it isn't suprising that even when you could hook one of these well educated fish (and that wasn't easy) the struggle had only just begun. Most of these fights began with a blistering run, a big leap clear of the water then a big head shake followed by the soul emptying numbness of a limp line. But the big fish were plentiful and you seldon needed more than a few moments to regroup and get refocused on the task of hooking up again.


The sun has high and bright in a cloudless early fall day and from what we saw on the water the fishing wasn't red hot for anybody but we were hooking up quite regularly. In fact, it was this spot that produced my biggest rainbows of the trip.


After a time we moved on down the river to a spot where I immediately encountered some good brown trout feeding in the shallows by some back channels. I hooked up with five or six in five to ten minutes but only brought two to hand, one around that sixteen inch mark and one at nineteen.



In the next hour I had a few more hits but that things slowed down quite markedly. A little further downstream I hit another good brownie from the boat and we soon anchored up for our first session at the "five dollar hole". Almost immediately after landing that first fish I hooked up with another nice brownie that took me way downstream and deeply into my backing. The angler downstream of me informed me he saw it as it swam past him and assured me it was well over twenty. Considering the great fight I had no reason to doubt him but when I finally got it to hand one fly was in its mouth while the other was in it's tail - no wonder it fought so well.

It wasn't long before Ted was also into the action and he began to consistently hit his stride. He was definitely outfishing me in terms of hookups. This spot (if my memory serves me right) was mainly rainbows but there were a few brownies mixed in. Ted got one very good rainbow from this stretch as well, either at or just below the twenty inch mark. We pretty much finished out the evening at this hole before making our way to the pullout and heading to "Polly's" for dinner. It had been a very full day and I don't even remember crawling into my sleeping bag but I know I slept like the dead.


The next morning saw us floating the lower eight miles of the Bighorn and is unfortunately where my memory becomes a little hazy. I could feel my mind and thoughts getting a little scrambled and mixed up and I struggled to keep myself together. It was a very frustrating feeling! Anyway, once in the boat everything was fine and I could just focus on doing what was needed to catch fish. As it turned out today was going to be a good day, not because I caught a lot of fish, but because I learned a very caluable lesson that I think will be very important in helping me catch more fish in the future. Actually, it was a very frustrating day fish wise for me as I had to watch Ted hooking up left right and center and I couldn't get more than the odd fish here and there, or even worse, I couldn't figure out what we were doing differently.

It started off well as I banged a nice brownie from the boat at the first nice hole we drifted through. We anchored up and almost instantly I had another brownie. Then it started. Ted began banging them. We switched positions, flies, leaders (and that did help) and everything else we could think of but that just wasn't it. I mean, I was still getting fish and it would have been great had I been alone, but when you can see there's something you're not doing quite right you NEED to find out what it is. The longer it takes to figure it out the more obsessed you become!


By midday we found a great hole full of rainbows and Ted was banging them and I just couldn't hook up - at all by this point. I was trying everything and was out of ideas. Nothing was working. This became the norm for the day. Admittedly though, there weren't too many rods bending on the river, but Ted's and some of the guide boats were doing OK. Despite the fishing being slow (Montana standards but still stellar for Minnesota) it was impossible not to enjoy the river. It has a character very different from the Madison and the rivers of that area. It was a wonderful evening and I was still getting fish from the boat (the first clue as to my problem).


After an evening of contemplation, and watching the vice-presidential debate at "Polly's" while enjoying a nice meal, Ted and I began to figure out my problem. Although my drift was good, in that it was dead drifting, I was not mending upstream hard enough to have the flies coming down well ahead of the leader and strike indicator. This probably doesn't matter as much on some streams but a stream with the kind of angler pressure as the bighorn the fish become well educated and to trick them you need to be better than in other places.


On the third day we decided to hike up to "five dollar hole" and wade fish for the day. For some reason the fish just weren't as aggressive as they'd been and both Ted and I found the fishing much tougher. Ted found himself a small pocket of rainbows and locked in on them, with some good results. We didn't do very well in the morning so had a few hours break in the middle of the day, then went back in the evening. That is when Ted found his fish and he did quite well. In fact he hooked and landed a 23 incher, but I left the camera in the car. In fact, I didn't even see the fish close up because another couple of anglers came to help him out with landing it. I did get a few fish but apart from that small pod of rainbows, none of the dozen or so anglers in the area were getting more than a few fish here and there.

After another long day we enjoyed a nice bottle of Bryan's "Krajicek estates" wine with our meal at "Polly's" and I don't know if it was the long days, the over-abundance of sun, the lack of water, or my mental state, but I was pretty drunk from my share of the bottle. It was a good kind of numb though and made for a good night's sleep.

The next morning it was overcast and we thought that might get things going. We hiked back into "five dollar hole" and took up our usual positions. The fishing was slow. My recollection is very hazy at this point but I did get a run of brownies ranging in size from small to medium. I also got one final decent (I'm going to say big because we have no proof anyway) rainbow that we lost right at the net. That would have been a great photo to end the trip on but it was not to be. We didn't fish too long as we had a long drive ahead of us and it seemed much longer coming home then heading out.


We ended up stopping at a cheap motel somewhere in South Dakota, then after a meal at a McDonalds where the craziest, most condescending to farmers, freaky speaking Ronald Mcdonald displayed for us. That will teach Ted to push random buttons! The trip back was tedious and my thoughts were really wild and all over the place. My stomach was knotting up and I was just not a happy camper. Still, it was no relection on the trip or the fishing. It was good to learn the valueable lesson that mending upstream enough to get a drag free drift isn't as good as mending a little harder to ensure the flies are presented to the fish before they can see any line, shadow from the strike indicator or anything else. That is a lesson I'm sure will pay off big time in steelheading.


All in all the fishing was exceptional with plenty of big fish and regular action. It was amazing to see the big trout zipping in and out right behind, and sometimes between, your legs but not touching a fly as you ran it through. The weather was nice, the campground was quiet and uncrowded and my only complaint is that I wish it were a lot closer. Still, I would probably never go to work if it was closer. I mean, where else do you not bother taking photos of seventeen and eighteen inch fish because they're not that memorable!
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)