A Good Ending to a Rough Week

The past week has seen fall show up to Southwest Montana with a significant amount of snow falling on the mountains and nights starting to dip below freezing. 

I fished hard all week, sometimes in rain, sometimes in heavy winds, and for the first time in months was actually cold a few times.  I fished large rivers, a huge tailwater, a tiny tailwater, a freestone, a famous river that is supposed to be full of lake run fish right now.  Basically I put in a lot of hours hoping that the change of weather would put fish in an aggressive mood. 

Magazine articles and book chapters all speak of fall in Southwest Montana as being the time to get big fish and the time to see huge fish rush streamers.  As I've never really given myself to fishing streamers in the past I decided this year I would get serious about it.  For the most part I spent my week fishing streamers, both with my new spey set up and my 4 wt.  I picked up the spey rod with two goals in mind.  The first is to force myself to start at ground zero learning new skills.  Casting and fishing a two handed rod is a completely different animal than anything I've done before and I am, for the most part, enjoying the learning process.  The second goal in picking up the two handed rod was to be able to fish bigger water more effectively, particularly with streamers with the ultimate goal of getting some bigger fish.  Over the past week the two handed rod was a bust, producing very few fish and none of them being impressive in the least.  I'm beginning to feel like a true steelheader...that is a guy that spends all day casting with no fish to show for it.

On the other hand, the best fish of the week were actually taken with the 4 wt.  Yesterday I fished one of my favorite winter fisheries, a small tailwater that has been nearly unfishable all summer.  It still looks terrible with less than 8 inches of visibility and tons of floating moss to contend with.  However, I convinced myself that it would still be good fun if I could force myself to stick with fishing streamers all day.  Fortunately, I was correct and caught many fish.  The fish still aren't as aggressive as one would think with fall setting in and their time to spawn coming within weeks but enough ate the streamers that it kept it fun.  I landed a couple that exceeded 18", one Brown and one Rainbow.  I did see some larger Browns follow the streamer but wouldn't commit.  Theoretically, this will change in the coming days as the big fish become super territorial and start to actively chase space invaders.  We'll see..

Nice Brown