TR: Big mountain fishing in Montana
With school being out for the summer, L & I paying me to sit on my ass and a penchant for hating seattle in the summer, I had to move on. During a night of heavy drinking in our myriad of local kirkland bars my good friend Tim mumbled something about heading to Montana to go fishing for a week. Being the mooch that I am and an avid fisherman to boot I decided to try my car surfing luck. Tim bit and it was off to do some big mountain creek fishing in Montana.
First it was off to the bitteroot mountains. Which might be the place i decide to retire. large round mountains everywhere, perfect for powder skiing and snowmobile access.
nice little burn
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic27172.jpg
lost trail ski area
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic27162.jpg
for some reason every little town we went through had a casino...why? no blackjack only slots. anywho, i drew first blood on hot springs creek with a butterfly for bait, and a misquito on my forehead.
yes i do look this crazy in real life
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic27171.jpg
with no holds barred we sank our drunk selves into the bitteroot river the next day and caught many small trout, mostly cutthroat.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic27170.jpg
Our next mission (aside from finishing 100 beers and a fifth of crown in five days) was the beaverhead river. The beaverhead is located on the continental divide, in some of the most gorgeous scenery in the world. Within five minutes of finding a campground, i caught the trout of a lifetime....a good 16+ rainbow that made me the pimp of the moment.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic27168.jpg
little did i know that my pimp fishing skills were actually just luck pimping skills (does that make sense?). the rest of the evening we caught nothing else, and the next day we lost out big. apparently the beaverhead is not very nice to non-fly fishermen, and in reality, not that nice to any fisherman at all. there are tons of huge trout in that river, you could see them, but they could see you and they sure didn't like us very much. it also occurs to me that since MT has been a drought for a while, and it was late in the summer, the water was probably a little warm for the fish to exert much energy (like eating my bait). nevertheless i made the best of a bad situation.....I climbed a mountain. a fairly big one, overlooking the beaverhead and one that had a big light tower on the top. oh yes, i was in my element. with a halfrack of busch, a sig .308 for the rattlers, a pack of camels, three vicodins, and no common sense i headed for the ridgeline. if you are actually still reading this i did make it to the top without eating shit, being bit by an animal, or any other mistake that would have made it very interesting. to make it even better, the light tower 200 feet up had a ladder calling my name.
view from 2,500 above the beaverhead
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic27163.jpg
tim with my conquered mountain behind him
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic27161.jpg
there is something to be said about climbing an exposed ladder 200 feet up in fifty mile and hour winds while high on painkillers and drunk on busch. the view was spectacular and fairly scary to boot.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic27160.jpg
i soaked it all in and headed back to camp. after our somewhat dissappointing beaverhead trip we started making our way back to I-90. of course we had to fish on our way back. and fish we did. i found a road on the map that ran with an unnamed river and many small creeks that were perfect for big mountain creek fishing. at valley XXXX creek we loaded our guns and headed onto unmarked private property. mostly the gats were loaded for bears, (at this point thanks to the montana fish and wildlife phamphlet i could tell the difference between black bears and grizzlies) but you never know what some hick growing weed will do. we had our most kick ass fishing here,
another one of my small little fishies
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic27164.jpg
a Z-BO runs through it.
http://www.biglines.com/photos/blpic27165.jpg
all we had to do was throw a worm into a little whitewater hole and grab a cutthroat. awesome fishing, probably the best of my life. we spent our last two days at valley XXXX creek fishing our ass off and hanging out with some fantastic ex-hippie on acid who was our campsite caretaker (i think he knew splat). the ride back home was long (10 hours), the food nasty (fast), but the memories fresh and unspoiled. of course my luck couldn't run out, and on my last little slice of battery on my cell phone i received a phone call from rehabit: "Hey Z-BO, i got some tickets for the vikings game tomorrow, i gotta got to a wedding. are you up for it?" and of course i answered "hell yes!", to which rehabit replied "well, make a ton of noise for me, i know ya will". maggots kick ass, especially very giving hawk fan maggots.
GO SEAHAWKS!!!!!
