Montana Ho!

Barb and I left our cabin on the Delaware on Saturday, August 9 at 7:30 a.m. At half past noon on Tuesday, we arrived at the Sunset Motel in Lewistown, Montana.

One of the highlights of the trip occurred on the Chicago Skyway, when the young black woman taking our toll noticed my cowboy hat and remarked, “That’s one jazzy hat you’re wearing.” She made my day.

While rolling through Wisconsin, we were surprised to come upon fields carpeted with swaths of bright, chromium yellow: thousands upon thousands of sunflowers. This was a startling sight after passing nothing but corn or soybean fields.

As we passed through Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin, we noticed nearly every farmhouse and barn was snuggled tight against a small copse of tall trees, just west of each building. I guess this gives some protection from the howling winds of winter.

In the later afternoon on Monday we arrived in Circle, Montana. It was 102 degrees in the shade.

The following morning on the route to Lewistown we spotted our first-ever antelope. There were three adults and two young ones right by the side of the road.

Everyone uses the phrase “wide open spaces” to describe this part of the country. You really cannot appreciate this phrase until you have experienced how immense this land is.

Now, when I stand up straight, I am six feet, one inch tall. However, after an hour or two of driving through Montana, I began to feel that I had shrunk to Lilliputian size. Cattle the size of small automobiles appeared as small black specs, far off in the distance. The sky seems endless in every direction.

Between Circle and Lewistown, Montana has its own version of the badlands. Deep dry washes and sugar loaf hillocks stretch for miles. It is an inhospitable-looking land, yet I am told it teems with game along with the occasional wandering cow. We are nearly to Lewistown.

It is now Friday afternoon in Montana; so far our fishing experiences on Big Spring Creek, which flows through Lewistown, have been quite humbling. The only fish we have caught so far was a fourteen-and-a-half-inch brown trout that tried to eat a size #12 olive-bodied Stimulator dry fly: a small reward for two-and-a-half days of fishing.

This morning, I foolishly tied on a size #6 Olive Wooly Bugger to a light tippet. Within five minutes a nice trout waltzed off with the fly, wearing it as a lip decoration.

Fishing success is hard to come by when you make such a basic mistake. I was too lazy to change to a heavier lead and thus, blew my chance.

This little spring creek has one beautiful pool after another. The creek’s source is a huge spring that gushes up from the ground at a flow-rate of 130 cubic feet per minute, at a constant temperature of 52 degrees. This makes for very good trout habitat.

Some of the pools we have fished appeared deep enough to float my cowboy hat.

Until this morning, Barb was wondering just how many trout there were in the creek. However, when a good fall of Trico mayflies occurred, she was surprised at the number of trout that rose where she was fishing. Unfortunately, these mayflies were very tiny, smaller than the head of a pin. We had no imitations that small. So, no hook ups.

We have certainly not solved the problem of taking trout on Big Spring Creek. Tomorrow morning, Saturday, we will head south to Cooke City and Soda Butte Creek. Hopefully, the next column will be filled with tales of big, fat trout. Stay tuned.