What a beautiful weekend it’s been here in Montana. After all the yard chores and the “honey-do” list was mostly done Corey and I went for alittle late afternoon fishing on the lower Madison River. The campgrounds were full of tents, campers, and bonfires……..lots of families out enjoying the weekend too.
There’s always more to fly-fishing than meets the eye. I grab my fly rod and am ready to march off to the river bank and Corey says, “Wait you need more tippet.”…….Arrggh I think to myself. Tippet is the finer line that is tied to your leader, and to do this you tie them together using a knot, in this case we use a blood knot, which I am mostly hopeless at tying and may take me 30 minutes to get done and I really need two more hands to accomplish. Corey is very good at tying the blood knot lucky for me.
Like any sport there is an endless collection of needed accouterments. Here’s a small sample…..
Once the tippets on it’s time for the fly selection.
There is always much discussion between us about what flies to use. Corey is very analytical….he considers the time of day, the month, are they eating on top or down below and he also usually goes on a short search for what bugs might be hatching………..here’s what he found today.
He calls this a March Brown. I say why’s it a March Brown if it’s hatching in April? Corey’s eyes roll back in his head and I’m pretty sure he mumbled something under his breath.
My fly selection process is much simpler………what would I eat if I was a fish.
Once I have more tippet and the flies tied on Corey brings out the secret sauce. It comes with a warning label “If your fly floats for more than 4 hours consult your local fly shop” ….Seriously it does say that.
Today we are fishing with fairly small dry flies (the fish are eating on top of the water) and the secret sauce helps the fly stay up. I should back up and say that Corey went on a special fly buying mission for me this week, we have been fishing with small flies and I have been having a very hard time seeing the flies between the snow, the size of the fly, the light on the water, the foam lines we often fish in ( I often think I am watching my fly and it turns out to be a foam bubble and my fly is drowning under the water somewhere) So off to the fly shop he goes and comes home with several flies with vaious colored “posts” on the top of them to try to help me see my fly better. It doesn’t help that I know have to wear glasses to help my distance vision. Arrrggh.
So finally I am marching off to the river bank and my third cast in I miss one 2 ft off the bank right in front of me. Several casts later I landed this nice Rainbow and I’m hollering at Corey to come take a picture. He hollers back “Is it worth a picture?”…..”Yes, hurry” ….So Corey stops fishing and comes over to take the picture of my Rainbow, which also happened to be the nicest fish we caught that evening…….I happily say with a smug smile on my face.
We fished until it was almost dark. I caught a few more and missed a gazillion because I was still having trouble seeing my fly….but that’s the way it goes, however I will be glad to be fishing soon with some nice Caddies flies and who doesn’t love grasshopper season !!
Corey also caught several and missed some too, he had a very nice fish on……but it was wild, jumping and it came off in the middle of the river. Here’s a nice little Brown Trout he landed.
We had fun and unlike last weekend I didn’t freeze to death ! Hope you all enjoyed your weekend too.