What a difference a day makes, today it was sunny with a bit of wind. Where we found hundreds of rising fish yesterday, there might be one rising every few minutes. During the hatch peak, we were able to find a couple of pods, but for the most part the day was spent stalking difficult rising fish with a little nymphing mixed in to wet the net. Ryuichi’s got a big rainbow attached to a size 22 psuedo here.
My old friend Kojima is back in Montana after 12 years. He brought his friends Ryuichi and Takao for a fishing adventure. They just finished 2 days on the Henry’s Fork and a day on the Madison. We changed things up today with some spring creek fishing at the Milesnick ranch. The weather cooperated most of the day with calm conditions and we had a good time fishing the pseudo hatch on Benhart creek. These guys are master anglers, but as always, MZ will test you. We caught our share and spooked a bunch too.
Fishing magician turned big game archery hunter, Manao Hoshina is in town for an elk/deer/antelope hunt with Tri Mountain Outfitters. He took a day off from hunting to fish the Madison with me today. Yesterdays rain continued through the night and most local waters were dirty. Hoshina likes streamer fishing and we had good action in the nice clear water of the Madison, until a gully washer flooded a small canyon on the river right and pushed debris over the road and muddied the left side of the river for the last mile. We were looking for big browns fishing Hoshina and Steve Copeland’s favorite, the sprue fly. All we found were a bunch of rainbows.
On Takashi’s schedule it said “choice day” for today. I was hoping for a choice day too. Driving to the river of choice, it was pouring rain with lightning and thunder, unsettled weather to say the least. We had to sit through several booming thunderstorms and had fairly steady rain, but good to great fishing. Takashi was hunting a twenty incher and got one about 3pm, after pictures and releasing the brown at 3:05 pm Takashi hooked a fish that I’ll have dreams about for a while. Of course it got away all the big ones do…right? I’m not one to dwell on lost fish, but I’m writing this on Oct 3rd and I can still see it in my mind shaking his head and disappearing. At least we didn’t get hit by lightning.
Takashi and I fished MZ Ranch today. Broken record, a few rises to tricos in the am on the East Gallatin, then good pseudos on the spring creeks. Today a serious thunder storm blew through about 3 and shut it down. Pod feeding before the storm.
Takashi Noguchi reminded me the first time we fished together 8 years ago, I got a speeding ticket…Slow down. No tickets today and good fishing. Got em on streamers, nymphs and dries today.
Chris Bahn from the Howlers Inn Bed and Breakfast fished with me today. Again the fishing is good to great and Chris made the most of it. Look out, that one’s getting away..fast.
Patrick and I hit MZ Ranch today. We found a few fish rising on the East Gallatin in the morning, and had outstanding pseudo fishing on Beharts in the afternoon. It didn’t hurt that it was calm and cloudy and Patrick is a sharpshooter. The fish were super selective to size…a 22 super pseudo worked the best.
My good friend Patrick Eisenhaur is in town for his 3rd of 4 trips this year. Today we went for a relaxing float. By 3pm, Patrick had caught enough fish, so we cut the nymph off the hopper dropper rig and tried twitching the hopper….wow, did that ever work.
Rex and Rod Litchfield hired me to show them around MZ Ranch today. The trico hatch is waining, but we again found good rising on Benharts and we followed it up with hopper droppers on the East Gallatin. Not too many hopper takers today, but the nymph was very effective.
