Tough Walking, Tougher Fishing, Troublesome Mosquitoes But...

...all in all seems a small price to pay for the chance to gaze handsome trout such this one. The best of the best of high country cricks is often found in the meadow sections. Many of the best meadows are wet, full of holes, some deep and large enough to swallow a moose and worse, hidden like land mines amid the tall grass. Little wonder Gale carries a big stick, eh?

Some meadow streams are wall to wall trout, many on the small side due I suppose to overcrowding a mostly sterile environment. Others, such as this one, hold fewer but fatter trout on average. 

Not many, however, produce trout quite so handsome as the cutthroat pictured above. 

Yesterday we spent a couple hours stumbling about the mud and hole-pocked meadow, amid a nasty swarm of hungry mosquitoes. All told we spied probably only a dozen or so brookies and cutts, managed to not spook and actually cast to about half and landed only about half those. No where near the sort of fast fishing we've come to expect from most high country cricks but you won't hear us complaining. For sure, the skeeters were thick and troublesome, the hidden holes frightening but check that trout one more time...I rest my case.       

Fly Fishing A Favorite Highland Stream

Ever since returning home from the NOWA conference in Seeley Lake (see previous posts) we haven't accomplished much other than moping around the house feeling sorry that we somehow just can't manage to shake the nasty coughs we both contracted...

A couple times we decided enough already and feeling bad just didn't cut it so we headed to the hills hoping to get over the mountain perhaps find the road into our favorite little crick open and maybe, just maybe, get up gumption enough to at least make a couple casts...didn't happen as each time we made it as far as the locked gate and that was that...

Yesterday same game plan but this time around no problem, road open and snow free all the way to the crick. Instead of the usual dry fly I rigged up a pair of soft hackles instead. The idea being what could be easier than swinging a pair of wets? In other words keep it simple stupid... The onslaught of warm weather of the past few days had the crick rolling pretty good, but thanks to a colony of busy beavers behind the dams the current was at least tolerable. With the dogs wild to get started and dancing about dangerously underfoot I pitched the pair into a foam pocket beside a nifty run. Second cast I felt a tug and next cast hooked a fat 10-inch brookie. 

Handing the rod off to Gale in no time flat she had the grayling pictured above flopping in the shallows. After the requisite photo shoot it was again my turn. Several drifts later another fat, though somewhat smaller brookie. And so it went. Given our weakened conditions over the next few hours we didn't cover much water and we didn't set any catch records...But every so often one of us connected and really that was more than we wanted from the excursion in the first place. The dogs had a blast, so much so we expected Annie any minute to break a leg or worse...Kate spent so much time in the cold water she shivered such her teeth rattled nearly all the way home. Annie of course slept all the way...no surprise there, eh? 

Except for the single grayling and cuttbow I caught later all the rest were brookies...just in case you wondered.  

Heaven On Earth

Off the beaten path, narrow, deep (relatively speaking) and cold (most urgent), grass-hung (bug factory) wall to wall undercut banks equates to ideal living for trout and heaven on earth for Chuck and Gale (do you suppose Kate the wirehair would agree?).

The trout live here--mostly brook and cuttbow with the occasional cutthroat (to our untrained eyes anyway)and grayling are all wild and fat (in comparison to many living in similar small as often as not infertile environs) and pretty as hell.
One day way downstream from here where the tiny crick merges with a tiny river I hauled two really fat whitefish and a sizeable brown of about 15-inches (perhaps 16-17-inches so long as honest to God truth isn't an issue).

One day several years ago Gale pitched her go-to Orange Stimulator, four times to, as I recall, the first pool she tried that day and hooked--a brook, a cuttbow, a gorgeous cutthroat (had to be pure strain although a fisheries buddy would argue vehemently against it)and an arctic grayling. The fifth cast also brought a vicious strike but no hook up so we had no choice but to officially call the phenomenal run of luck (leavened nicely of course with excellent fishing technique)good and move on...

The bad news to an otherwise paradisical spot is about every three years in four cows are allowed in over summer. In the worst years "bovine stomped" is truly an understatement...and while I can't prove it with each invasion the crick seems to get a bit wider and a bit shallower and damn how we wish the USFS would step in and do something...like a little bobbed whar would do this little piece of heaven a world of good...besides there's plenty of evidence out there nobody, including the cows and the rancher's bottom line would suffer.