The Ignorant Angler

I didn't need the alarm this morning, I was up at 3:30.  Maybe I was excited to get out and go fishing.  I nursed a pot of coffee for a couple of hours. When I started the second pot, I knew that I wasn't getting anywhere.  Motivation?  Well, I got up didn't I?  I just couldn't bring myself to make the drive to the Park.  You see, the fishing season in Yellowstone was to open today.  With high water everywhere I had visions of hoards of anglers pounding the few trickles with any visibility.  At 6:30, I made a big breakfast.  A guy can get mighty hungry procrastinating.
So, I took a little hike instead.  I'd made a dry run earlier in the week with just a fanny pack.  I was surprised to find open water.  Naturally I'd neglected to bring the fly rod.



Different story today.  I had my pack, camera, rod, some munchies.



It was a little breezy when I arrived at the lakeshore.  I promptly rigged up and caught a couple on a Zug Bug.  Then, thinking that the fish needed …

With the valley rivers blown, and several days off, I needed an alternative if I wanted to fish.  I'd originally planned to fish the Missouri, but it doesn't offer much to the wading angler when it's flowing near 9000 c.f.s.  Given my soft spot for spring creeks, I booked a day on Nelson's Spring Creek.  It was a first for me, as I've spent my spring creek fishing career across the Yellowstone at Depuy's.








Nelson's is regarded as being the most difficult of the Paradise Valley spring creeks. Now tell me, who doesn't appreciate a little challenge?  Surely I could manage a fish or two.  Well the first piece of water that I looked into contained hundreds, maybe thousands of trout.  Did I mention that they also raise fish commercially for local restaurants?  Oh well, these fish weren't nearly as standoffish as their  spring creek brethren.





I spent the morning exploring while waiting for some sort of a hatch to come off. There were plenty of fish.  The c…

I refer here to the natural area, not the guy.  
Us fisherman need to stay in shape, sniff a few posies too.  Fact is, with high water, our mid-May fishing options are limited. We still need to get out of the house, get a little air and stretch the old legs. 
Kirk Hill is a short low elevation hike near Bozeman.  It's a popular nature and wildflower hike.  Trail runners like it too.  I got reacquainted with this trail yesterday.











With the cool wet spring that we've had, we're relatively early into green-up.  But, there's still lots of early season flowers for us naturalist types.  Here then are the common ones, along with a few sights from along the trail.....

It was warm.  Heat radiated off of the canyon walls.  The temperature on my car gauge stretched into the low 80's.
Geez, what's this?
Sweat.
I've avoided Bear Trap Canyon, outside of winter, for decades.  It can be hot.  Dry. Theres snakes.  The last summer hike that I took, I saw seven rattlers, on the trail.   That's plenty for one day, don't you think?
Then there's ticks, poison ivy too.
It's really not that bad.  One does need to watch where one places important appendages though.



Ah, poison ivy.  It's incorrectly been called poison oak.  What we have here is western poison ivy.  It  grows as an upright vine and can be found along the banks of the Madison.  While fishing, I've also seen it along the Missouri and Clark Fork Rivers in Montana, the Selway, Lochsa and Clearwater in Idaho, and the Grande Ronde in Washington.  I still have flashbacks to childhood summers spent broken out and itchy from rashes.  The rash on unmentionable body parts i…

It took forty years, and then some.  I'd read about it.  Thought about it.  Driven by it.  Shot elk in the nearby mountains.  Regarded the flotillas of angler laden drift boats.  But fished it? 
Nope.
Until today.
I planned to hike up Beartrap Canyon on the lower Madison, but didn't stop. I kept on driving, all the way to Three Dollar Bridge. 
The upper Madison is, as they say, one big riffle.
And it contains fish. 
After all of the years, they missed me.
Thank you.