A Partridge in a Pear Tree may be a Better Circumstance than Expected

           While Missoula, Montana isn’t known for particularly rough winters, this week so far has Missoulians hunkered down and cranking up the thermostats to battle the -20 wind-chill outside.  It would come as a surprise though that only three days previous, temps were pushing 40+  prompting Missoula area anglers to take down their fly rods from their garage rafters and from behind their truck seats.  In similar fashion, myself and some other hardy, mostly neoprene wearing, compatriots set out in search Western Montana’s most put down salmonid.

The previous year, before the spring semester had really gotten into the swing of things, I earned myself the title of Whitefish Slayer when my impatience got the best of me and I searched out the shallow riffles, catching twenty whities in about two hour (little did I know, had I stayed with everyone else, the hole from which I had departed now was producing 17”+ cutts about every half hour). Having enjoyed myself greatly in these exploits, I decided it was time to reassert myself as the King of the Whitefish.

So, in seeing as though conditions were similar to those of the previous year, myself and some friends decided to take a short afternoon trip to the Bitterroot in search of anything that’d take a fly.  While I figured I would stick to my previous strategy of standard whitefish habitat, I was rerouted when the water I thought crossable turned out to be too deep and too cold.   Another fifty yards upstream and I was on a high bank overlooking a pretty nice run.  Had I been a more observant angler I would have noticed this as prime lower Bitterroot bow and cuttie habitat.  And needless to say, I wasn’t more than 100 ft back down the bank in the other direction, when my day’s focus was completely turned on its head.  There, feet below me, was a beautiful 16” rainbow.  The next twenty minutes was spent throwing just about every small wet fly I had at it.  Natural nymphs wouldn’t rise the fish, but it soon fell to a #18 partridge in yellow, my fool-proof Montana trout slayer.

Now, seeing as I had just turned 20 but a few weeks earlier, I have yet to come into the classic fly-fishing patience.  Having just gotten my hands on a new underwater camera I was eager to get some underwater shots of something wet and covered in spots.  This being the case, I brought the fish in handily.  But given my youthful exuberance, my landing technique left a lot to be desired and the full bodied and full colored fish threw the hook as soon as I set my wetted hands on it.

Given that the fish I had cleared from the run was the only one in the hole, it was time to move on down the river (and maybe brag a little about the fish I just landed).  I met up with a friend working a deep hole just after a log jam and mentioned he might be more well served with an attractor pattern rather than the natural nymphs we had all vowed to use before we got on the water.  I handed him another partridge in yellow in the same size and set off down river in search of similar water.

Not half an hour later my ears were met with the yells of another twenty-something, clearly marking some interaction with a fish, whether for better or worse.  I marched my way up the bank, as my patience was waning again.  Upon arriving on the scene, I was soon informed that my friend had lost two monster trout and that he was giving up on the hole and I was welcome to take a few casts myself.  I thought that a great privilege and decided to test my line.  Fifteen minutes of drifts later and the 6x that had the little yellow soft hackle fly attached to was taut and my new Konic was being baptized on its first serious run by a nice trout.  Unfortunately, the hole led into a deep fast current with a nice sized, beaver felled, cottonwood right in the middle of the current.  It didn’t take long for the bow to recognize this as an obvious place to put some dings in the Rio Classic I had just outfitted on my new Lamson (hallelujah for the holidays and a chance to update gear, piece of crap Okuma!)  As one might suspect, even the dumb Montana trout turned out to be smarter than a University of Montana sophomore (perhaps because the trout consumes less alcohol).

With so much more excitement than I had previously expected and temperatures quickly dropping, I thought it was time to put the rod down and pick up the camera.  I couldn’t have asked for more out of a midwinter fishing expedition, especially since it wasn’t too long ago all the rivers were choked with ice.  I happily spent the rest of the evening snapping pictures and  enjoying the setting sun.

                As the case had always been, when I was a child fishing mountain lakes in BC, my top producing wet fly was a soft hackle attractor.  For all you natural nymph folks, maybe drop the bead head for a couple of casts and try out something different.  My best luck here has been on flies I thought would be the least likely of candidates, hell that’s why we fish with foam in the first place.  Anyway, hit the water soon, and those of you who are snowed in, sit down at the tying bench and break out some colors other than brown

Learning Goals…(They’re all the rage at the U)

1.     .        If there is a partridge in a pear tree…shoot it!  His feathers will be better spent tied in as hackle on a size 18 fly than in a tree.
2.              Don’t believe what you read, THERE ARE NO TROUT IN MONTANA, even though this post may say otherwise, and especially don’t get any ideas about coming in winter.
3.        Finally, take every chance to get on the water, not much is better than a few hours with a fly rod in your hand, even if your guides are frozen and you can’t feel your toes (or just move to Mexico and fish permit and roosters)