The streak began on the Fourth of July somewhere west of Divide, Montana, on the Big Hole River. It continued on a slough fed by the Beaverhead River, on the Missouri River outside of Craig and on a small stream near Missoula.
At the end, when a cutthroat trout on Rock Creek took a purple haze on Thursday, my father and I had caught fish on eight consecutive days.
We’d spent the last week and change fly-fishing our way through Montana. On Friday, we drove from Missoula to Spokane without stopping to fish, so the streak stopped at eight.
Streaks aren’t anything to brag about. They mean nothing other than that we had the ability to fish for eight days in a row, which happens for us about as often as a total solar eclipse. Even more rare is having that kind of time coincide with good weather and fish that want to play. The trip would have worked if the fishing was tougher, but it sure feels nice that it was easy.
This all began with a simple request that I ultimately ignored. The old man wanted to fish on his 70th birthday. As I started to put things together, it morphed into a road trip through Montana and eventually to Spokane, ending with an evening at Avista Stadium on his birthday. Baseball is almost as good as fishing.
My parents live in Twin Falls, Idaho, so getting together meant we were going to need to drive separate cars and meet somewhere. We eventually settled on Dillon, one of the loveliest towns in Montana, and plotted a course that would take us to Craig and then Missoula over eight days, beginning on the Fourth.
In Dillon, we found that the most fun fishing within a short drive might not be on the Big Hole or the Beaverhead, but on Poindexter Slough, a narrow stream that provides challenging fishing for portly brown trout. It’s also where I had a promising hole ruined by an angler who insisted on walking a fish downstream for 100 yards before landing it. My anger subsided when I found a fish of my own an hour or so later.
On the Missouri, the old man hooked a chunky rainbow within an hour of our arrival. Not long after, he ventured into water that was too deep and took a swim in waders, which he does not recommend.
Waders were unnecessary for the rest of the trip. My wife’s uncle, who owns the Missouri Riverside Lodge, rowed us down the Missouri for a couple of days. We fed small dry flies to plenty of good fish, including a rainbow with a strange pattern of leopard spots. Then, on the road to Missoula, we splashed around in a tributary of the Blackfoot River, stumbling into a couple of cutthroats.
Thursday’s drive up Rock Creek was the nightcap, the last stop on a fishing binge that felt like it could go on forever. The day started out tough. We stopped at three different places over the course of a few hours and found nothing, but we continued driving upstream. It seemed like the streak might end at seven, which was fine. At a certain point, all fish are bonus fish, piscatorial prizes you’d like but do not need.
Finally, behind a campground way up the narrow canyon, a westslope cutthroat ate the fly, and we were on the board again. I passed the rod to the old man and soon he was hooked up too, proving that for some reason those fish only like purple flies.
By then, it was hot. Around Montana, as the temperatures climbed north of 90 this past week, evening fishing restrictions were ordered to protect trout that get caught and released from going belly-up in warm water. Restrictions are ordered nearly every year. The rules didn’t directly affect us, but they did indicate that we were wrapping the trip up just in time, before high temperatures and low flows turn catch-and-release trout fishing into catch-and-accidentally-kill fishing.
We called it good after a couple of fish on Thursday and toasted the trip over ham sandwiches and ice cold co*kes in the parking lot. The fishing was good, but so was everything else.
There were debates over the origin of automotive memorabilia in a restaurant in Dillon. There was white wine on a patio overlooking Canyon Ferry Reservoir with my brother, who happened to be in Montana at the same time. There was even a run to Missoula’s Wal-mart for socks.
The drive through North Idaho took us past some great trout rivers, but we agreed to let them be.
Besides, if we spend any more time waving fly rods in the air, our arms might fall off.
