6-11-07 HARDIN, MONTANA: Today was our second day of fly fishing. Yesterday Jon and I had lessons for about an hour, and then a day of fishing from the drift boat with our guide, Dell. The boat is a large dingy with upturned ends, each end with a chair for the fisherman. The guide sits in the middle and rows, down stream, taking the boat from side to side to the places where the fish hang out, and sometimes back upstream for other runs through a good section. We cast the artificial flies, no live bait is used, into the indicated spots. All the fishing is catch-and-release. The largest lures don’t have barbs on the hooks. The river is the Big Horn, from a put-in site below a Yellowtail Dam for about thirteen miles to the take-out site. The guide’s car is moved from the first place to the second while we are on the river. We put-in at about nine AM and finish about six PM. Lunch is served by the guides on riverside tables they set up with linen and tableware when the group stops, more or less together. The picnics are prepared by the lodge and are excellent. Our party of eight uses four boats and four guides all moving at about the same rate.
Jon and I each caught fish the first day, but today Jon caught a 23 inch rainbow trout, in a section of the river callled the landing strip, that fish was the bigger than any caught by Eagle Nest Lodge guests today. Several of the experienced fisherfolk promise to catch bigger fish tomorrow. My biggest fish today was 19 inches, pretty big, but not in the same category.
In addition to the fish, we have seen: muskrat, bald eagle, great blue heron, killdeer, ring-necked pheasant, turdey buzzard, canada goose, mallard, great-horned owl, osprey, red-winged blackbird, magpie, kingfisher, merganser.
After we got back there was a thunder and hail storm and another excellent dinner and another early bedtime.
record setter.
two rainbows.
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