Holy Indian Summer!!

Pheasant season opened up last weekend and I had the rare opportunity to hunt a client/friend's private ranch near Belt, MT. The hunting was great as Chase and I shot our limit in about 2 hours. It could have been sooner but it was hard to identify some of the birds as roosters since they were so young. Apparently the Spring storms this year knocked down the first brood of chicks and what you see now are a bunch of second and even third hatchlings. If they make it through the winter, next year should be good. It's good thing the hunt was quick though because the temps were in the seventies and it's pretty hard on a dog to push them in that kind of heat.

Speaking of which, the weather has been crazy warm for the past few weeks. A lot of dudes are frustrated with that because the water temps are still in the upper 50's, which means the BWO's are still a little ways away. There are still tons of pseudos and we all know how much they suck. Fish aren't really on the streamers on a consistent basis so the main reason people come out at this time of the year is kind of bunk. There is hope however.

I took a really good guy out two days ago and since his self-proclaimed level of competence was as a novice at best, we went up to the dam to get into some quick fish before doing anything else. He hooked up a bunch, landed a few and as the wind started howling, we headed down stream. We had spent quite a bit of time at the dam so when we finally started heading down, everyone else was well out in front and it seemed like we had the river to ourselves. Shortly after the Wolf Creek bridge we started seeing pods of fish feeding in lanes and even though there was wind and high sun, we couldn't give up the opportunity to throw at them.

Mike stuck a few and it seemed they ate readily anytime we got the fly in front of them. It was actually pretty good and he had a blast being introduced to what technical dry fly fishing on the MO entails. They weren't the dinks either. These were legit 18 to 20 inch fish and even though they were taking pseudos, they also ate the big stuff.

Keep 'em where they live...