After all the small stream goodness outlined in prior reports, the Montana Road Trip 2009 took a turn for the worse… or – more accurately – the stormy.
[Name Redacted] and I found ourselves headed for Georgetown Lake – a large, shallow impoundment that’s heavily stocked, and where the fish grow quickly under the impetus of a staggering food chain.
Thunderstorms do have their advantages, but fishing isn't one of them.
Last year, my first cast on Georgetown produced a good sized fish, and a gratifying percentage of the subsequent casts did too.
Fly fishing Georgetown isn’t hard if you’re around at the right time. In truth, it’s a little like a visit to fly fishing’s red light district; the fish are easy, and too much self-congratulation over the result simply looks stupid.
Of course, with that mindset, the Undergrounders can already see into my Georgetown Lake future, which involves only a glimpse of the kind of fly fishing the lake offers.
Karma, it seems, it not the warm, fuzzy construct that some would have us believe.
The First Clue
After cruising the state campground once, [Name Redacted] and I seized a prime camping slot, and because I’m a seasoned outdoorsman, I began setting up my lightweight-but-sizable backpacking tent without even glancing at the directions.
For someone with my utter lack of spatial analysis skills, this, of course, is an act of hubris – a grandstand guaranteed to draw the attention of the gods.
And sure enough, no sooner had the tent gone up (only two do-overs) then “the flash” came. The very bright flash.
A thunderstorm had snuck in over the Pintar Range, and the flash was followed almost instantly by a loud crack of thunder – the kind of thunder that might send a fly fisher back to his just-erected tent for a clean pair of underwear.
Then, of course, it started raining.
No problem. Afternoon thunderstorms roll through here all the time, and we still had plenty of time before the much-anticipated evening caddis bite went off.
Problem was, one storm followed the next, and we finally found ourselves fishing a narrow 1.5 hour window in the evening between storms – the last chasing us right off the lake.
The rainbows would barely have a chance to form before the next storm rolled in.
Big Dries, Big Trout
The fishing – using #8 caddis dry flies – was spectacular… while it lasted.
You’d cast this enormous dry onto the relatively still lake surface (remember, this is between storms), then either twitch it or simply drag it back.
A surprisingly high percentage of the time, a trout would hammer it (in much the same way the Trout Underground hammers slaw dogs).
The take to hookup ratio is fairly low, and it took me a while to finally get a trout to the boat. That my hosts kept apologizing for the slow pace of the fishing only made me wonder more about what it’s supposed to be like.
I mean, we were getting big, splashy takes from good-sized trout, and a lot of them.
And it was slow?
Broken, Not Beaten
The fishing didn’t get any easier when I performed a long-distance hookset, and broke my Orvis Zero Gravity 9′ 6wt fly rod.
In truth, this was what we in the high-tech world called a “user problem,” and yes – I’d been expecting this. More than a year ago, a pair of us were fishing big streamers on this rod on a local river, and the bottom ferrule came a little loose, and neither of us noticed, and the inevitable happened.
After we picked up the pieces, I realized the Zero Gravity’s bottom ferrule hadn’t broken, but you could visible signs of stress on the female ferrule, and I figured this rod’s lifespan was limited.
I gave it another month, but I was off by more than a year.
Convenience Versus Breaking Shit
Ian Rutter warned that 4-piece rods require a lot more attention when you’re fishing big streamers and putting them under a lot of stress, which is why I started using ferrule wax on my travel rods.
I’ve paid special attention to the thinnest ferrule at the tip of the rod, which have simply cast off a pair of other four-piece rods, but clearly, I started using ferrule wax little too late to save this rod, and now it’s back to Orvis, who hopefully have a replacement section.
Simply put, my bad.
The Next Thing
We figured we’d fish the next day, but it rained at night, rained in the morning, and was going to rain (and storm) all day, and while I’ve got nothing against getting wet, I do have some questions about the concept of electrocution, so fly fishing during the long string of electrical storms was out.
We left, ate a warming breakfast at a nearby joint, then headed back to Missoula, and with work and home issues looming – and the forecast for more crummy weather – I headed home.
The long, long (boring, flat, hot, straight, featureless, high desert) road home.
The Wrapup
This Montana Road Trip was tougher than last years; my time on the little streams was just as gratifying, but the weather – cold and stormy – pushed the better fishing out just beyond the scope of my visit.
Still, I fished the Bitterroot twice, returned to the sites of last year’s small-stream nirvana moments, and – despite a long string of electrical storms – hammered trout for a sterling 90 minutes on Georgetown Lake.
My trip home – in the Underground’s new, air-conditioned Subaru sedan – was a breeze, though a meeting with a client put me on the road late.
I got home at 3 AM after 14 hours of driving, and the only real glitch was my brain’s increasingly inability to process the data my eyes were sending it the last hour of the drive.
Sometimes, things just get weird that way.
John Gierach once told me that his readers had essentially turned him from a fly fishing essayist into a fly fishing travel writer, and in a sense, I can see how that happens.
You can write volumes about your home waters – and the Undergrounders read that stuff with interest – but there’s something about applying the same perspective to new places that wakes us all up just a bit.
We are creatures of routine, but even the sniff of adventure is enough to get the grey matter engaged, calculating fuel costs and available vacation time against the risk of divorce and the chance to see something new.
See you on the road (at least once in a while), Tom Chandler.
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