Beartooth Country

Absaroka Range

Where are the words? Sometimes I think it's better if I just just shut the flip up and let the pictures tell the story. Plus, even though this installment is only half finished, I wanted to get it out there before WikiLeaks gets their hands on it and beats me too it.

The following photos reflect a recent day I spent tramping around up in the Beartooth Mountains to escape the summertime heat down in the lower Yellowstone River Valley. I didn't catch any dramatic light but it was still fun just the same. The ambient temperature up top never got above 60F, the winds were at times strong enough to blow a Burlington Northern boxcar off the tracks up at Browning, the mosquitoes were well.......ubiquitous and by the time I got back down the mountain to Red Lodge the entire plateau was engulfed in a raging summer storm. I saw the whole thing play out in my rear view mirror, which is really the best way to watch a Beartooth storm play out. Thanks for looking.

Beartooth Highway

Rock Creek Canyon

Climbing out of Red Lodge.

Hellroaring Massif

Still climbing... I'm no Charles Kuralt but I think I counted 11 switchbacks. But who's counting?

Line Creek Plateau

Up close and personal.

Cinquefoils, Phlox and Purple Penstemons

Dancing in the wind.

Alpine Avens & Buttercups on the Beartooth Plateau

Dang Forest Service and their "Let it Burn" policy! Pretty soon there won't be any trees at all left in the West.

Hellroaring Plateau

Boulder River
Around the Chippy Park shipping corrals.

Boulder River

Top of the World

Stillwater River

Around Nye, Montana.

Islands in the Sky

The upper Clarks Fork Valley.

Island Lake

Beartooth Butte & Beartooth Lake

"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."

-John Muir

One love, people!

The Gallatin Divide

Self Portrait - The Gallatin Divide

The Gallatin Range is one of my favorite mountain ranges in the world. It's towering peaks, untamed rivers, radiant stands of timber and sagebrush meadows instill in me a sense of wonder every time I visit. It's home to some of the most beautiful mountain scenery of which it is possible for man to conceive.

Gallatin River

The Gallatin River is hardly the most remote river in Montana. With the exception of it's headwaters where it's born from secluded snowfields in Yellowstone National Park, a major highway runs right beside it for it's entire length. It's not a river where you go to catch a lot of large trout either. It's brawling & dramatic pocketwater sections in the canyon can be a bear to safely wade for hours on end, and it's waters run bone-chillingly cold even during the height of of a mid summer Rocky Mountain heat wave. It's usually the last river to warm up and turn on and the first to cool down and turn off during the course of a days, or seasons, fishing. What it lacks in remoteness and large trout it makes up for in spectacular western scenery and a huge population of perpetually hungry modest sized wild rainbows sprinkled with a few hefty browns, cutthroats & cutbow hybrids. Nonetheless, it's one of my all time favorite western rivers, partly because of sentimental reasons, and I always try to make room for at least one day on it's gin clear waters on every trip. Except of course when Greg G is dragging me off into remote hinterlands of the Bridger-Teton in pursuit of Snake River fine spots.

This year I was hoping to meet and fish the annual salmonfly emergence as it propagated it's way up through the canyon around Cinnamon Basin. Two years earlier I had encountered excellent fishing to the adults at the tail end of their emergence just above the same basin during the last week of July, surely this year would be even better since I would be on the river a full two weeks earlier. Sometimes, despite even the best laid plans, things can and do go wrong. I didn't see one single adult salmonfly on my entire drive up the Gallatin Canyon to Taylor Creek. Not one. It was now painfully obvious that Mother Nature had her own timetable and the emergence had already run it's course for another year. Once again I would have to adapt my original plans to suit the nuances of her timetable and not my own.

Which really shouldn't be a problem at this time of the year since we were looking right at the onset of prime hatch time on the river. So I headed for one of my favorite sections on one of my favorite rivers, the Taylor Fork to Snowflake Spring section in the subalpine basin just outside of Yellowstone National Park. For once, I made the right choice for a change.

I was the only one there when I pulled into the small dirt parking lot around 10 am and began to assemble my gear and survey the conditions. Some of the best fishing on the entire river is in this 7 mile stretch. The Gallatin here is your typical freestone/meadow stream with some fast riffles and runs, a few longer slower pools and some nice cutbanks that provide ideal habitat. Fifteen inch fish are not all that uncommon and I've caught browns & cutthroats up to 18".

Dang, I forgot to grab some SPF30 sunscreen at Albertsons market this morning -always a fairly serious concern during a sunny day in Montana, especially at this elevation . I would pay for this seemingly small oversight before the day was done.

As was previously mentioned, it takes a few hours for the Gallatin to warm up and turn on for good fishing, even during the summer months, so there's usually no hurry for the angler to rush to hit the water early. Once noontime rolled around though the hatches started in earnest; first the caddis had fish popping all over the river, then it was the pale morning duns joining the mix and pulling a few nice fish out from the undercut banks and if that wasn't enough already a decent hatch of western green drakes began to emerge in mid-afternoon that brought some of the days better fish up from the bottom of some of the deepest pools. Those green drakes never really came off in big numbers but the fish certainly knew they were there. All this activity under a bright & relentless afternoon sun.

The spruce trees in the background of the above photo mark the confluence with the Taylor Fork which, along with Bacon Rind & Fan Creek, is one of the better Gallatin River tributaries. Downstream of the mouth of Taylor Fork the Gallatin becomes a much bigger & boisterous river.

Taylor Fork

The variety of water in this area is just one reason why this location is one of my favorite on the river. Upstream of the confluence you can fish a smaller and more intimate river that often runs much clearer that the water below, or if your in a big water frame of mind you can work your way downstream into some serious mutha-lovin pocketwater and the very beginning of the Gallatin Canyon just above Cinnamon Basin, or you can fish the Taylor Fork itself. You decide. I'm just glad to have the options.

The fishing was fast enough over the next few hours that my gnat-like attention span soon began to drift in and out. Maybe it was that big sandwich I ate for lunch but by late afternoon the easy fishing had become soporific. These days a few fish seems to be enough for me anymore and a I tend to get bored easily when there isn't any challenge involved or any problem to solve. So I decided to forgo the evening rise & spinner fall and went geeking around up in the northwest corner of YNP instead. It's just the way I roll these daze.

Daly Creek Trail

Into the heart of the southern end of the Gallatin Range.

Fawn Pass Trail

The portal to Fan Creek. Click on over here for a virtual tour of what lies ahead on the Fawn Pass/Fan Creek Trail.

Caution Horses

On the Black Butte Ranch. Just downstream from Snowflake Spring.

This is easy water to wade and fish with little brush to interfere with your casting except for a few willows. You can wade pretty much anywhere except the deepest pools. Access is superb.

Big Horn Peak

From the Big Horn Pass Trailhead.

Upper Gallatin River Valley
Away from US 191 with Big Horn Peak in the background. Dang Blister Rust!

A Bluff Charge

Got sunburn anyone? Evidently, the Rivers men have very sensitive skin, my face is just as red as my shirt. Do yourself and your skin a favor and don't forget your sunscreen. They don't call it Big Sky Country for nothing ya know.

Coming up next: Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey...

Chasing Rainbows in Paradise

The Murray Hotel - Livingston, Montana

Livingston, Montana (aka Deadrock) has, over the years, become like a second home to me. I enjoy the laid back small town atmosphere, the fine fishing, friendly folk and the eye-catching views of the Absarokas & Crazies right from Main Street in town. It offers easy access to the Yellowstone, Sheilds & Boulder Rivers, two world famous spring creek systems, Yellowstone National Park's northern range, a petrified forest and even the fertile Gallatin Valley is just a short ride over the historic Bozeman Pass. And anytime I'm in town you'll find me hunkered down in one of the comfortable and tastefully appointed rooms in the Murray Hotel. A local landmark that still features claw foot bathtubs and huge soft pillows and is even on the National Register of Historic Buildings. For me, staying at the Murray, or the Grand Hotel over in Big Timber, is part of the total package when fishing the lower Yellowstone River Valley. It sure beats a lonely sheepherders wagon up in the Trail Creek drainage. Long may it run.

Absaroka Mountains

Our goal on this trip was to spend a few days fishing the pale morning duns and summer baetis hatches on Armstrong Spring Creek as it flows through the Depuy's and O'Hair's Ranches on the west side of the Yellowstone River around Pine Creek. These rare gems have been in the same respective families for generations on down. Let's hope that it stays this way for the foreseeable future as both families have turned down several generous offers over the years to sell their land to individuals like Ted Turner or other groups of individuals for astronomical prices in the many of millions of dollars. Turner paid over $20 million dollars for a piece of Sixteenmile Creek up by Maudlow. How much do you think Armstrong's or Nelson's Spring Creek is worth? Why would these families turn down such ungodly amounts of money? Because selling the land & water that has been in their family for generations would cut right through the heart & soul of their lives. They are true champions of the American spirit in every sense of the phrase.

DePuy's Spring Creek

Reservations were made almost a year in advance, proper artifices were cranked out at the tying bench, the PMD's had been reliably hatching for almost two weeks now, the heavy rains of June had passed and the region was settling into it's pattern of delightful summer weather. What could possibly go wrong?

Rainbow Bridge

Welp, for starters, my first day on Depuys I was greeted by a dry low pressure system that moved in overnight and ushered in sustained winds of 25-30 mph with gusts up to 60mph. One of those gusts almost knocked me off my feet at one point. Compounding that issue was a confounding lack of PMD's pouring out of the riffles at their usual appointed hatching time or at anytime for that matter. It was mystifying at best and unleashed a string of expletives at it's worst.

The Blue Gate

What's an angler to do? Thankfully, I had my box of terrestrials and another box of small spring creek nymphs with me. I spent the day plying the fast water along the grassy banks with black Letort crickets and the various riffles with small beadhead nymphs. Both of these techniques turned out to be fairly productive and salvaged for me what otherwise could have been a very difficult day on a very technical spring creek.

Paradise Valley Rainbow

There was even a light caddis hatch still coming off some of the riffly sections and a CDC & elk hair caddis was good for a couple of fish that weren't interested in anything else I had in my box.

Dick's Riffle

Dick's riffle is almost always good for a fish or two by deep running some small nymphs through the obvious channels and lenses and this trip was no exception.

While it's certainly true that my catch rate was down from previous years on the same creek, I took particular satisfaction in noting that none of the fish I brought to net were under 15". The following day on the Depuy's section also presented a dearth of PMD's but at least the wind had layed down. In fact, during these first two days on Depuy's I counted a total of less than six (6) pale morning duns on the water. There were clouds of PMD spinners swarming over the streamside grasses (of all places) in the morning and evening but they never hit the water.

Betty's Riffle

The evening Baetis tricaudatus emergence up at Betty's Riffle and the Ph.D Pool was pretty much more of the same however, but at least we had a few rising fish to work over although not nearly as many as in years past. The pool right below Betty's Riffle gave up a 19" Yellowstone cutthroat on this evening while I had the entire pool & riffle to myself for a couple of hours. Even Buzz's Fly Shop was closed. This hatch may have been just cranking up because it seemed to get a little thicker each night.

Dick's Pond

The Smiths (owners of the Depuy's Ranch) are currently working on narrowing Dick's Pond and building a small diversion channel around it so anglers who aren't packing float tubes don't have to risk their lives wading through waist deep muck to try and reach those free risers that are always just a little out of range in the pond. The diversion channel will help to moderate downstream temperatures in this important spawning ground for Yellowstone cutthroats who come here from out in the main river.

O'Hair's Corral Beat

So it was with mixed emotions that I said goodbye to the Depuy's Ranch and the very next day I headed up to the O'Hair's. Maybe things would be a little better upstream I thought...

Armstrong Spring Creek

And it was, sort of. The following morning dawned cool and clear in the low 50's but warmed up very quickly into the upper 80's. Finally, good numbers of pale morning duns appeared right on schedule around 10 am and the fish were up and on them in a hurry. It was some very fine fishing and rarely was their another angler in sight, and even then always at some distance. I know it sounds strange but the fish definitely seemed to show a preference for PMD cripples on this morning.

PMD's literally poured out of the above riffle on O'Hair's which is located at the upper tip of the large island by the corrals and just downstream of the main spring which is out of sight and just around the bend and to the right in the above photo. The density of large resident fish in this section has to be seen to be believed.

The Old Trail Creek Channel

The following morning we were right back where we started with another lackluster PMD emergence. The only saving grace was that the late afternoon baetis hatch was getting a little stronger each evening.

The O'Hair Ranch

On a normal summer morning this flat would be alive with large trout sipping pale morning dun emergers, cripples and duns.

Armstrong Spring Creek

It's almost time for those afternoon baetis to start hatching in earnest.

Rainbows All Over Your Blues

The summer baetis hatch on the Paradise Valley spring creeks has always been a challenging hatch for dedicated hatch matchers to successfully fish. When it's on, huge trout are boiling all around you to size #20 mayflies and 80-90 percent of them are taking emergers just under the surface. I've always been a "one fly on the terminal end of my tackle" kind of guy but this time I finally embraced a tandem setup of a #20 CDC & biot baetis dun with a small flashback pheasant tail nymph on a short dropper and experienced a surprising amount of success. I have to admit that it was quite a thrill to see the CDC dun suddenly dip underneath the surface and then set the hook into a fat slab of a trout.

She's a Rainbow
She comes in colors...

Early Summer

Blanket hatches or not, I honestly can't imagine a better way to spend a delightful summer day in Montana.

Ph.D Pool - Depuy's Spring Creek

I flunked out of the Ph.D Pool this year -a pool which I've always done well on in the past. I'll have to take some extra summer school classes again next year, I guess.

Late Afternoon on O'Hair's


Yellowstone River - Paradise Valley

Parting Shot: The End of the Rainbow

Coming up next: The Gallatin Divide.