The Ignorant Angler

Welcome to Wyoming.  Nothing like a little scenery to go with ones fishing.  Camping too.  Take a hike.  Just a few miles to stretch the old legs.  Get out in the wind.  Blow the stink off as my wife would say.





Best have a fishing license.  You never know when Mr. Warden will show up.  Riding a horse no less.   Maybe talk about fish and bears and stuff.  Then, just like any good cowpoke, he'll ride away.  What a great way to spend the summer.






Like mountains?  Well, there's lots of 'em.  Better have a camera.  Keep it handy, you'll want to take a picture every few steps or so.





Smell that?  It's fresh air.  Well, maybe with a little forest fire smoke thrown in.  Then there's the sweet smell of grouse whortleberry.  What's a whortleberry?  I'm glad you asked.  It's a member of the blueberry or huckleberry family.  They're small, but good eating.  Go good in pancakes too. Gotta be patient to pick the little buggers though.





This is high country, bro…

With August winding down I had one last chance to strap on a pack before the arrival of September. Summer, so slow to arrive, then it's gone in a flash.  Working every other weekend as I do, it passes even more quickly.

I left home before 5 a.m.  It's a slow drive through the Paradise Valley while dodging deer.  This particular morning, several nice whitetail bucks were intent on ending their lives prematurely as they ran across the highway.  My car survived this part of the trip without needing any auto body work. Then, there's the drive through the Park.  Tourists.  Enough said.




I arrived at the Clark Fork trailhead, loaded up and hit the trail by 8 a.m.  The first few miles of the trail are rather so-so.  It's hiking through the lodgepole forest while trying to avoid stepping on horse apples.  The section along Kersey Lake passes through an old burn and allows views of the surrounding mountains. Then it's back into the timber for another couple of miles.  Russ…

Here's a sight to gladden the heart of any trout fisherman, especially a brook trout fan.   Hundreds of trout rising on a calm mountain lake.  In clicking my way around the blogosphere, it's apparent that there are many ardent brook trout anglers.    Here in Montana, brookies don't get much love.  Indeed, in many locales, they are considered vermin.  They were introduced with good intentions, while trying to create fisheries in places that were formerly barren.  The most notable place is in the Beartooth Mountains where they were packed in on horseback, in milk cans.  Naturally aggressive, and able to pioneer new water readily, they spread quickly.  Any interconnected lake trickle served as a conduit for fish movement.  A good convenient means of getting fish into new water cheaply.  But not so hot when one considers the aggressive nature of these little guys, with little being the operative word. Brook trout breed prolifically, overpopulate, and eat themselves out of hou…