Float fishing the Bitterroot

I got a call from a customer of mine who has an old Harley Panhead and he is a former guide turned farmer. He invited me to go fishing with him in his Aluma-Weld drift boat down the Bitterroot River. Man, what an opportunity! Our weather around here has been so hot and dry that many of the local popular fishing rivers have been closed to not only afternoon fishing but many were on 24 hour closures. We got a little rain in the past couple weeks, so some of them were opening up again. It was still a little smoky from the forest fires plaguing Montana and Idaho in the morning. By late afternoon it was very smoky and placed a dark yellowish paul over the whole area. The sun looked like a red lightbulb high in the afternoon sky. Yech!!!!
My fishing friend, Jay, is pretty much done with irrigating his fields so could take off fishing anytime I had time off from work, so we decided that Thursday last week was a perfect day. He had me meet him in Florence about 7:30AM then drove down to the river bridge and dropped off my car, then with his drift boat in tow behind he Land Cruiser, we headed south to Stevensville to put in there and float down to where my car was parked.
We unloaded his boat into the river about 8:15 and began assembling out fly fishing gear. The water was pretty low and slow so we had to actually get out of the boat at several low flow spots and pull/push it along a little.
While Jay was assembling his rod, I cast out into the riffle at our launch point and caught a couple 4” Brown trout just to get warmed up. I was a little concerned how well we would do considering we were in full moon phase, and fish like to feed during full moon.
We headed down stream, visiting and fishing all along the way. We saw only a couple other drifters the entire day. The weather was warm, about 80º or so. We each took a lunch along and pulled into a shady spot around 12:30 to munch down. Jay hooked a couple fish but did not get the hook set on the first one, and snapped his hand tied fly off on the second one. He put another fly on but really didn’t get another fish the balance of the day.
We were ¾ the way down the river and the fish really just stopped rising for several hours. We were on the river a good 8 hours altogether. Just about an hour before we arrived at my car I cast out towards the bank where a fish just rose to feed and BANG, he nailed my fly. I worked the fish over to the boat knowing it was a pretty good size one. Jay got my net and scooped up a 3 pound Cutthroat trout out of the water. I grabbed my camera, showed Jay how to take a picture and snapped the obligator pose before carefully releasing this nice fish back into the river. The whole area we fished that day was catch and release only, by law. That catch made my whole day, and was the largest fish I caught this year! We made it down to where the car was parked, beached the boat and loaded the gear out of the boat into my car. There was a grandmother there with her young grandson enjoying the beach area by the bridge, so we asked her to keep her eye on the boat while we drove to Stevi (what locals call Stevensville) to get his truck and trailer. We got back with them and got his boat loaded with no trouble. We finally finished up and went our separate ways about 7:30PM. We really enjoyed the time on the river together and he said we could go again any time I wanted!
Halfway down the river is a train trestle that spans across with a bit of ‘floater’ sentiment. There is also several old cars that line the river in some spots that were used for erosion control.

Wednesday morning we leave on the Harley for a two day trip up through the Flathead and Glacier National Park before the Going-to-the-Sun Road is closed early for the season and needed avalanche repairs. We'll stay in East Glacier Park on Wednesday evening as we are taking the south then eastern side up the park, then on Thursday morning up to St. Marys then down through the park on the Going-to-the-Sun Road. This two day outing, and hopefully several more afterward is probably the best we'll be able to do this year. We will both have some official vacation time next year and hopefully will be able to coincide our time off for longer outings!

All for now!

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