Number 8

 

Jill, Patrick and I hit the river for one last trip before the snow flies. (It's flying now, BTW. I'd be out duck hunting but the kitchen is so close...) Jill caught this guy to round out the season. It's the eighth legit cutthroat I've seen in my boat on the Missouri in the past year including one late last season. So where are they coming from?

 

The most reasonable explanation would be from some of the tribs like Sheep Creek, the Dearborn, or maybe even the Smith and the Sun. Fish do migrate quite a bit. I even heard from a friend who talked to FWP that they were reintroducing cutties up Beaver Creek, which is above Holter Lake. That would mean they would have had to move out of the creek and then down to the lake and over the dam. I'm not sure how plausible that is but check this out; this is a yellow perch that made it over the dam and onto one of Jim Murray's Czech nymphs during the Project Healing Waters trip a couple weeks ago. I've heard of pockets of the fish hanging out in some deep, slow water above Craig but this one was caught all the way down past Spite Hill.

 

 

As for cutties that are legit cutthroat versus those so-called, "cut-bows," I was looking at the Montana Fishing Regulations and they define a cutthroat as any trout with a red or orange slash under its jaw. A lot of us would probably disagree with that but it does ensure that all cutthroat in the rivers are let go.



 

Keep 'em where they live...