Irony

The other day I took clients from Craig to Mid-Canon thinking it was a Sunday and no matter where we went, it was going to be busy. I thought we might get lucky and put in somewhere where everyone else would think it would be too busy and might avoid...a little reverse psychology. It didn't work.

After launching, we rowed up-stream and worked the seam above the put-in to let some of the boats go down but about four of them parked on the Craig Riffle so after about 40 minutes, we decided to just head down and fish the hard bank down from the bridge. It turned out to be a good call because the browns had moved into those hard banks and we crushed them.

Most of the boats on that stretch were from Bozeman guides. Apparently, there was a group of 17 dudes staying at a rental up here and didn't trust the local guides so brought them up from the Bozeman area. At one point we had eight boats parked on riffles between Bloomquist's Bridge and Bernie the Billionaires Place, which is about a quarter mile. There were also at least that many boats parked in the islands above Bloomquist's. We rowed past all of them and all I could think of was, "F'n Bozeman guides..." Our only response was to hook-up right in front of, beside, and behind them. Like I said, we crushed them.

Well, last night I got a call from Montana Trout Fitters out of Bozeman to run an intro-class to fly fishing and then take clients out on the Madison. So now it's just after 5am and I'm about ready to head out the door on my way South. Madison River, here I come.

Keep 'em where they live...