In one word ... Epic!
It was an act of frustration and impulse. Having been "Corona'd" out of an April Redfish trip to Louisiana, I scoured web sites for an opportunity to find a state where there were fish to be caught and not hindered by bureaucrats who obviously don't fish. I found it in Montana, and Mary and I lit out for Big Sky country to fish in the Flathead National Forest.
Over the course of a week we spent a couple of days in Whitefish, four days at the Spotted Bear Ranch, and over-nighted in Kalispell before flying home. The draw of the area is Glacier National Park. Whitefish and Kalispell, towns respectively north and south of Glacier International Airport, are excellent spots to hang out, enjoy some great food, craft beers, and tour the area.
While I'm not much of a scenery guy, the drive through Glacier National Park was pretty damn impressive. The main draw is the Going-to-the-Sun Road, a 50 mile, two-lane, narrow and twisting road that was built between 1921 and 1932. The road crosses through the middle of the park, the highest point about half way at Logan Pass, about 6600 feet. Driving along the road kind of felt like being on a road in Afghanistan; straight up on one side, straight down on the other, and not a lot of room in between. But it's paved, and there's no bad guys trying to kill you, with the exception of a driver not paying attention.
A second reason to tool around the park is to see some wildlife. Unfortunately, our only encounters were a Mountain Goat and a Marmot. (The Marmot looked like a western version of a ground hog, not particularly blog-worthy)
With the tourist portion of the trip over, it was time to head to Spotted Bear Ranch, our fishing destination for the next few days. The lodge is located about 55 miles inside the Flathead National Forest, just south of where the south fork of the Flathead River empties into Hungry Horse Reservoir. From Whitefish it took us 2.5 hours to traverse the 70 miles to the lodge, most of the drive on windy and gravely roads that followed the reservoir, albeit a few feet above....
We got to the lodge a little after 1:00 PM on Saturday, checked into our cabin, and got our gear together. The layout is pretty simple; a handful of cabins next to a main lodge, where meals are served as well as a daily happy hour after we returned from fishing.
As an Orvis-endorsed lodge, you can expect the meals to be first rate. And SBR did not disappoint. There was plenty of craft beer and wine during happy hour, and feasts that included, trout, rib eye steaks, shrimp and grits, and duck on our last day. There were, however, a couple of aspects of the place that I didn't fully appreciate when I booked the stay. The first was that, while the owner was renovating the cabins, ours looked like it was the last on the list. A bit more rustic than I anticipated.
Hard to pick up sarcasm in a photo. but you get the idea. The other interesting aspect is that lodge is generator powered. At around 10:00 PM the generator shut down, and the place went DARK! Not really a biggie, because after a long day fishing, beer and wine, amazing dinners, and then bourbon on the deck of our cabin, we were out well before the lights.
But fishing was the reason I booked the trip, and as I said at the beginning, it was epic. We walked/waded a tributary to the south fork one day, and for the next two days floated different sections of the Flathead. All of the outings were spectacular in their own way. The walk/wade was a pretty decent hike for about a mile or so and a thousand feet descent to get to Spotted Bear Creek. Picking and eating wild Huckleberries was a good distraction from the beating that my ankle was taking. As we headed down the trail, though, is wasn't long before we discovered that we weren't alone. Fresh bear scat along the trail was the first indicator. The second was when our guide, Hill Kirkland, a twenty-something from Alabama, noticed some crashing sounds in the woods below us. While had hoped to see a bear, the preferred venue was from a vehicle, and not on a trail in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, the bear had other things to do, and we never got a look.
We finally made it down to the creek. Over the next several hours, we hit three separate pools, with a good deal of hiking in between. The creek was glacier fed and crystal clear, and looked a lot like the streams we had fished in Alaska. But the stream bed was also fairly slick. Fortunately, the lodge had felt-soled boots in our size, otherwise we would have been slipping and sliding the whole day in our rubber-soled boots.
We were targeting Cutthroats, native to the stream, but also saw a good number of Bull Trout, a char actually, but capable of growing well beyond 30 inches, and feast on Cutties. This first run we fished was more of a warm up for the rest of the day. We fished the same tandem fly rigs the entire three days; a small hopper pattern with a dry trailer. The dry was called a Rocky Mountain Mint, kind of an Adams-looking dry with a purple body and tail. The combination proved to be killers. All we had to do was master a couple of techniques.
The first was casting so the two flies didn't get tangled up.
Pro tip - wait a little longer on the transition between back cast and forward, and give a little more oomph on the forward cast.
The second was the set. These fish weren't like our PA trout attacking a dry fly. Oh, these fish want to eat really bad. The bug season is so short that the fish have to eat whatever comes their way. But it's their approach to the fly that throws you off, especially in crystal clear water whenyou can see the trout slowly come all the way up from the deep to the fly. The fish is no hurry, and it knows it's going to eat, so it takes its time. So the take is best described as a leisurely slurp. The problem is, at least for the untrained angler, is that the excitement of stinging a 17 inch Cuttie is so great that more often than not you set the hook before the fish has actually eaten the fly. As hard as it is, patience is key. The trout slurps, turns its nose down, then you set the hook. And the fight is on!
With the help of our guide Hill, we quickly got the cast and set down, and we transitioned from fishing to catching. We brought 12 Cutties to the net that afternoon. And, with the exception of one 12 incher, all the rest went from 15 inches up, with Mary taking honors for the day with an 18 inch fish. Despite their lethargic eating habit, once hooked these fish fight, and if you don't keep the trout from heading downstream you're done, even on 4X.
For me, the highlight of the day was catching my first trout on a Tenkara, a Japanese style of fly fishing that consists of a 10 foot telescoping rod (they go longer than that), 9 feet of furled line, and 4 feet of leader. That's it ... no reel, no extra line to let a fish run, and no way to strip the fish to the net. Instead, you use the rod the bring the fish close enough by bending back your hand and letting the flex in the rod bring the fish close enough to net. It's challenging, but also a cool way to catch and land a trout!
Of course, the guide is an absolute key to success on new water. And Hill was flat out phenomenal. He had all the qualities that you'd expect in an Orvis guide: patient, low-key, an expert on the water, yet also really excited about being out fishing. Just fun to be with on the water. And the guy moved through the woods like a mountain goat, in sandals nonetheless! Ah ... youth.
It was a fabulous day, and even back in our rustic cabin we were looking forward to floating the Flathead.
To be continued....
Mikey D Fishing
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