Clark Fork fishing report and the Dude Rig

The fishing is completely back on in western Montana!!  The streams are still pretty big so your going to need a boat or know where the fish are safely accessible.  Here's some things I saw yesterday fishing right near Missoula:

• 2 adult salmonflies ovipositing (in town!!)
• Caddis all over the place
• Trout rising to dry flies
• 4' or so of visibility
• A cloud of PMD spinners
• Golden stones
• Lots of big healthy trout as well as some little guys

The Dude Rig for streamers

For the past couple of weeks, one of the most productive setups in western Montana has been the double streamer Dude Rig.  This is a rig that guides use for clients because in the hands of a beginner, it is dummy proof.  Dead drifting streamers is super effective on the down side of runoff and this rig makes it so anyone can nail em.  Got a friend new to fishing, who can't mend or maintain a good drift?  The dude rig is perfect!  Bad mends just jig the fly.  Dragging it also can trigger a strike.  Similarly, in the hands of an effective fisherperson, the dude rig should be illegal! 

The Dude Rig:

Your going to need the 1" Thingamabobber to float your 2 weighted streamers.  You'll be fishing this rig right up against the banks so your flies should not be too deep.  More than 4' to the first fly is usually too much.  You can use whatever two streamers you want but the JJ Special/ Big Hole Crawler has been the bee's knees for the past couple of weeks, on every stream I've fished.  You can also trade out the bottom fly for any nymph, say the worm.   

Wood's rose - Rosa woodsii

The wild roses have bloomed and the snow is off Snowbowl.  Get off your ass and go fishing!

Brown trout, brown cows, blue soil, clear water

Mount Powell and the upper Clark Fork

The Clark Fork above the Little Blackfoot is running big and clear, and is fishing well.  It looks like it would be a great float and I didn't even see one boat.

I fished  from below the spillway, all the way down to Galen over two days.  The fishing slows down as you go downstream but you won't see another person for miles.  It was too windy to mess with the ponds.

A green Matuka or JJ Special worked great in the mornings and the large browns were pissed and came out of the shadows.  Nymhing worked best in the afternoon.  A firebead Ray Charles with a Little Green Machine or Rainbow Lightning Bug dropper killed it.  There are some huge rainbows which show up on my line up there every so often.  The common belief is that they've flushed over the spillway from the ponds.  I like to think they swam up there from the lower river.

Copper salts percolating out of soil 

Something important for folks to witness is the toxic, metal laden soils which line the banks and floodplain. The majority of the contamination came in 1908 when a 100 year flood turned the entire Clark Fork Valley into a massive toxic mudslide.  The flood waters flushed decades worth of industrial scale mine waste out of Butte and Anaconda and deposited it over 90 miles of floodplain.  A bunch of the sediment from the flood filled in the brand-spanking-new Milltown Reservoir.  The stumps are dead willows which could not grow in the toxic soil.  We call them "ghost willows."

Copper salts up close

Overly friendly brown cows