Daily Camera (Boulder, CO)
April 6, 2000
Section: SPORTS
Page: 2C

REACHING FISHING NIRVANA ON BIGHORN RIVER

Author: Ed Engle, Great Outdoors
Article Text:

FORT SMITH, Mont. __ Every fly fisher who heads to the Bighorn River this time of year has midges on the mind. Midges are the tiny two-winged flies that have been known to hatch from the river in such astronomical numbers that they come close to covering the water from bank to bank. There is even a term for the phenomenon in fly fishing jargon __ a blanket hatch.

As euphoric as a blanket hatch of midges is for an angler, there is another side to the coin and that is spring time in Montana. Springtime on the Bighorn can mean many things, but most commonly it is high wind and/or weather conditions that can change in the blink of an eye from sunny and warm to snowing and cold or vice versa.

Wind was the operative word when we got to the river last week. I struck up a conversation with a guide who was huddled outside of one of the fly shops who said that everyone who lives in Fort Smith ends up having to put artificial tears in their eyes because the wind simply dries them up.

Nonetheless, the plan had been to meet my friend Peter Kummerfeldt, who was bringing his drift boat. We would fish the river. When you travel to fish you have to take what you get in the weather department.

The current dope on the fishing was that water flows were down from the last couple of seasons, which is a good sign. The not-so-good sign was that water temperatures were also at about 39 degrees below the dam at the Afterbay put-in.

We decided to float and fish the upper three miles of the river despite the water temperatures on the first day. The morning was clear and we made our first stop to fish an inconspicuous riffle within 300 yards of the boat ramp. I was feeling OK when we got there because on the short drift I`d been fiddling around with a little #22 Hare`s Ear ribbed with Krystal Flash and picked up a nice rainbow trout.

Things got even better for me at the inconspicuous riffle. It turns out that there was an inconspicuous little hole not much bigger than a bathtub just off the riffle. I took six trout out of it on either an amber soft-hackle sowbug imitation or the Hare`s Ear. And the wind wasn`t really that horrible. Apparently, all the trout weren`t suffering from frostbite yet.

After the riffle we made a brief appearance at the well known Breakfast Hole which is sometimes referred to more coarsely as the Meat Hole and managed to land a few more trout.

There was a dry spell that lasted for several hours after that but we ended up on a gravel bar that looked promising. Peter headed upstream and I headed downstream. I could see lots of midges blowing across the water`s surface in the stout wind. Although dry fly fishing was out of the question, the trout came alive to the sowbug and Hare`s Ear imitation that I dead drifted through the deeper water below a shelf. I even managed to see a rising trout or two.

All in all our first day on the river was successful considering the conditions. An added bonus was that we saw only a couple of other boats the entire day.

Day two was just as windy. We decided to float straight to the gravel bar to see if the trout were still hungry. They were. We literally had periods of time where we took one trout after another mostly on the soft hackle amber sowbug and a soft hackle pink sowbug. The bright colors of a number of the rainbow trout indicated that the spawning run is beginning which probably accounted at least partially for the success of the pink sowbug.

After hammering a good number of trout on nymphs I wandered downstream in an attempt to warm my feet. Which reminds to mention that if you go to the Bighorn in the next few weeks the only waders that will keep your feet warm will be boot foot neoprene`s. My stocking foot waders did not do the job in the cold water. Anyway, when I turned the corner there was a large backwater bounded by a shallow riffle. It was totally out of the wind. Trout were rising everywhere. I took the lead off my leader and tied on a #20 parachute Adams. I caught trout. I put on a #18 Griffith`s Gnat. I caught trout. I put on a #16 Midge Cluster. I caught trout. Over the day-and-a-half that we`d been on the river I`d been blown away, frozen out, rained on, and snowed on; but on this little backwater it was sunny, warm and windless. The trout were rising to dry flies. I caught some. It was as close to nirvana as I can get on a windy spring day in Montana.

Copyright (c) 2000 Daily Camera Record Number: 0000134174

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