We had three absolutely outstanding days of fishing with some newcomers to the Missouri. Even with the wind gusting into the 30's and 40's at times, the boys got to see what the Mighty Mo has to offer so Chris and Ben decided to get an early start before they had to jump on the plane back home to do one last short float. It was my first day off in a 35 day stretch but you got to make hay, right? So I offered to do the half-day with them.
I picked them up at their cabin near Spite Hill at 6am. The plan was to float down to the cabin, let them jump out, and I would take out at Spite. They had until about 10:15 if they were going to make it to Bozeman in time for their 2 o'clock flight. We were on the water by 6:15.
We threw the big stuff right out of the gate and it was clear the fish were happy. We jumped about 8 or ten and landed a few before hitting a riffle below the islands down from Craig. Tricos were just starting to come up and fish were getting on them. We stopped and grabbed a dry fly rod and targeted some heads.
It was pretty clear they didn't want to see anything else but a trico. I rigged up a second dry fly rod with a couple hi-vis trico duns and Ben started taking his shots from the back of the boat. I had a trico trailing behind a caddis on Chris's rod and they didn't want anything to do with it so I re-rigged it with the double trico set. Before I could finish, Ben stuck the first fish on the dry.
It was about 7:30 in morning and the tricos were insane. The riffle was blanketed with bugs and little tiny dimples as trout were slurping them down. Tricos were landing on us and molting leaving behind shucks. They were in my glasses, up my nose, crawling on my neck and in my ears and completely covering the boat and fish were all over just slurping away.
We parked the boat and the guys got out and wade fished. Chris had jumped a few on the Chub O'licious and missed a really nice brown he had up to the boat. He also had a little bit of a tough day on the dries the day before; hooking a few but not landing them. This was time for redemption.
I was watching him from the bank cast over a couple dimples. He was close, his drift was good but maybe just a couple inches off. Cast after cast I kept thinking, "Maybe???" Then he threw one right in this guys wheelhouse and with a tiny little slurp, his fly disappeared.
"There!" I said and he lifted his rod and his line came tight on a twenty-one inch rainbow.
He landed it with a, "Hell yeah!" and then started chucking line again.
His next fish, probably only a half dozen casts later was a twenty-one inch brown. It's amazing how these little dimples produce such big fish. We left the riffle and hit pod after pod of fish; passing up the ones in really tough water just to target the "good" fish in good water. We did get out at 10:15 but it was tough.
Keep 'em where they live...
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