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Trip Summary

Montana Fly Fishing by Rachel Andras
Fly Fishing the Rockies

I had been struggling to catch a steelhead in the Rogue all summer (with little success) and found myself really NEEDING a trout trip to Montana.

Last year I had the pleasure of spending two nights on the Yellowstone with one of our favorite outfitters, Tom Jenni. Tom is a true professional with great guides, gear, and attitudes. He worked hard for our group and I was so impressed with the quality of his float trips. He had mentioned I should check out his Missoula programs so this year I invited a few of my favorite fishing friends for a few days on the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers. Our guides met us in front of our hotel that first morning ready to go. After a short drive with drift boats in tow we made it to our put in on the Clark Fork River. We all had to reprogram ourselves as we were now fishing 6X tippet with size #20 tricos. It was awful at first since I have been fishing 10 lb maxima for steelhead all summer. I managed to break off the first two fish as they came up to sip my fly. We encountered pods of fish eating tricos most of the morning. Then we switched to nymphing because the hoppertunity never really surfaced. We caught some nice fish and ended that day back in Missoula hitting one of the local establishments. Missoula is a charming college town with nice restaurants and shopping, and we were all happy to do what we could for the local economy.

Mary and I choose to float the famous Blackfoot the next day and had the river to ourselves. Norman McClean made this river famous with his novel River Runs Through It and the Blackfoot has been on my list for many years. It truly is the perfect trout river with great pocket water and good populations of rainbows, browns, and native cutthroat trout. We had an incredible day of pocket water hopper fishing and Tom impressed us with his low water boating skills.

We then made our way to Crane Meadow Lodge, after a mandatory stop at the Patagonia outlet in Dillon. This was our second year in a row going to Crane Meadow and Cody and his staff were really wonderful at making us feel at home and fishing us hard each day. The ranch was teeming with plenty of deer and bird life especially the musical cranes. I enjoy Crane Meadow because it is a down home and intimate lodge right on the Ruby river with a superb fishing program.

Each morning our guides would pick us up out in front of our cabins and take us to our desired locals… the Ruby, Madison, Upper Beaverhead, Lower Beaverhead and some special spring creeks. Everyone did well and we had one extra large brown that was caught by Mary that impressed us all. It struck on the Madison and was at first thought to be a log. Both the guide and client were gleaming when this 26 inch fish was landed.

My best personal day was on the Ruby (again this year). The Ruby is a magical small stream home to brilliant browns who love to eat dries. It is easy to wade and around each bend is endless trout habitat. I fished my favorite hopper pattern, Quiqley’s Stacker Stone fly under the perfect undercut grassy bank and had a monster mouth open up and slurp my fly. He showed himself and then turned back into the bank and disappeared. Luckily Judith and Bob witnessed the size and how special this fish was to me. J

After four days of fishing at Crane Meadow we were all smiles. Our last day had us scraping ice off the windshield, yet it was another great year in Montana and I was lucky to share it with so many wonderful people.