Recent History

There's something special about fishing freestone rivers and streams during the two to three week time span at the tail end of spring runoff. As these waterways are dropping and clearing, the trout are remarkably willing to take a fly. In Montana that window of opportunity is closing, the transition into the dog days of summer is in full force. Looking back, there's no denying that the past three weeks or so of post-runoff fishing has offered up some of the best freestone fishing since, well, the same time last year.

Make no mistake, the fishing that is in store for the remainder of the Montana summer is incredible...terrestrials, PMDs, caddis and attractor dries make for plenty of action. And the higher elevation, headwater fisheries are just now coming into their prime for the summer. The spectacular fall season can't be discounted either, what with its lonesome rivers and lovestruck browns. Of course the pre-runoff fishing of April ranks right up there as well, often presenting the first opportunities of the year to catch trout on the surface during times of BWO activity. Yet the season that arguably trumps all of these is that amazing post-runoff window in July.

During this period, the trout are generally stacked up in predictable holding water. The trout haven't seen a hook in a month or more, and fishing pressure often remains relatively light (salmonfly rivers excluded) due to many anglers apprehension to wade or row bank-full rivers. Water temperatures are at ideal levels, hatches are occurring and the trout are hungry after a prolonged period of poor feeding conditions in muddy water.

Whether it is a small creek, or a big brawling river, this period of time often provides some of the most productive fishing of the year on that particular fishery. Anglers can expect high numbers of fish per rod, but what's more is that many freestones will give up some larger than average trout at this time. On Montana's Gallatin River for example, trout in the 12- to 15-inch range are standard fare throughout the year, but during this post-runoff time period, persistent anglers are suddenly tying into fish of 18 inches or better with some regularity (see the above photo of a 19.5 inch Gallatin brown caught 2 weeks ago). This phenomenon plays out time and time again, year in and year out on freestone trout rivers throughout the west. From Arizona's Black River in May, to Montana's Yellowstone River in July, it is a great time to be on the water.

It's an undeniably difficult window of opportunity to predict. Many an angler has traveled great distances, only to arrive at the river's edge to find a raging, muddy torrent of water. Wait too long and many of the lower elevation waterways will be low and warm, their finned denizens less active. The potential reward is worth the risk, for if you keep your ear to the ground and manage to time it right next year, you just might be in for some of the best fishing you've ever experienced.

In Search of Salmonflies

I consider myself a fairly avid angler, yet one of Montana's classic fly fishing experiences has long eluded me...the salmonfly hatch. In large part I blame the situation on having resided in Billings for far too long, distanced from the hatches of southwest Montana. It wasn't as if I didn't make the effort in those years, it was just that my annual pilgrimages to the epicenter of salmonfly activity and locations such as Gardiner, Big Sky, Cameron and Melrose, never seemed to find me in the right place at the right time. I never so much as saw an adult salmonfly, to say nothing of catching a trout on a salmonfly dry.

This year would be different I told myself. My recent relocation to Bozeman was a step in the right direction, putting me within striking distance of some of the best salmonfly water in the country on rivers such as the Big Hole, Madison, Gallatin and Yellowstone. In fact I made significant progress in my quest to experience the hatch this year when, in late June on the Gallatin River, I observed an adult salmonfly for the first time. The occurrence was bittersweet since the river was in no shape for fishing, still in the throes of runoff.

Luckily I had a recent opportunity to get over and float the upper Madison River for a day. Reports varied, but the word was that salmonflies were out on the river somewhere between McAtee Bridge and Lyons Bridge at the time, with fair to good dry fly fishing. We arrived at Lyons mid-morning to find somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty vehicles in the parking lot! Opting to try and get ahead of the pack a bit we drove downriver and launched at Windy Point. The morning started off terribly slow, and our insistence upon fishing the big dries didn't help matters. The day was windy and cool and the few salmonflies that we saw were clinging lethargically to the riverside willows.

Finally at about 1pm things warmed up and before we knew it salmonflies (and goldenstones) were in the air and on the water in large number, and quite a few fish were looking up for them. We were frantically pounding the banks with our big, ugly dries while fish crushed naturals on the water all around the boat. I missed two or three good fish before finally hooking up. The big rainbow was holding in a pocket, maybe two feet off the bank under an overhanging tree, the take was viscous and the hook set solid. The strong fish fought hard in the fast current. As I plucked the Rogue from the corner of the trout’s mouth, I realized that I had, at long last, accomplished my goal of catching a trout on a salmonfly.

The action died as quickly as it had started, despite the continued presence of naturals on the water as we floated downriver. Our best guess was that the fish had gorged themselves on the big bugs and were no longer all that interested in eating. It was fun while it lasted.

At this point salmonflies are pretty much done for the year in SW Montana. There may still be a few buzzing around in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, or between the lakes on the Madison River, but for all intents and purposes it's over. I'm already looking forward to next years hatch, and I have a new goal...a 20- inch plus trout caught on a salmonfly!

Grand Canyon Trout Reduction Project

I have an ecological conscience, but...

I just received some very bad news about a trout fishery near and dear to my heart. As I did when a similar situation arose with this fishery a few years ago, I feel the need to share the news.

If you're interested in learning a bit about the situation, continue reading. If not, tune in next time for your regularly scheduled programming.

Once upon a time I lived in AZ, on the S. Rim of the Grand Canyon. I was already a fairly avid angler at the time. Not long after moving to The Canyon I naturally began exploring its depths with a backpack and a fly rod. I soon discovered the incredible trout fishing of Bright Angel Creek and Tapeats Creek.

I'll never forget my first trip to fish BA Creek. I made the long hike down the S. Kaibab Trail and upon arrival at the creek I wasted no time in tying on a curious, beadhead creation of mine. As I worked my way upstream along the creek's pocket water, drift after drift was met by beautiful, wild browns and rainbows. I was mesmerized by the whole experience. To this day that tattered fly still resides on my bookcase as a memento.

I visited BA Creek countless times during the years that I lived at the canyon, and I've returned to visit many times since. BA Creek is without a doubt my favorite fishery in AZ. Despite the pull that BA Creek had - and still has - on me, I managed to slip away to explore other trout streams in the canyon, among them was Tapeats Creek.

I believe that Tapeats Creek offers the finest fishing for wild rainbows in all of AZ - Lee's Ferry included. The plunge pools along the creek's course are teeming with hungry rainbows, including some very healthy fish. The creek is ridiculously remote, the drive to the trailhead is a serious journey and the hike into the canyon is - if you're fortunate - death defying. The creek is seldom fished and while I wouldn't go so far as to call it a virgin fishery, it's about as close as it gets, particularly on its upper end.

These fisheries have it all in my mind: wild country, wild trout, solitude and scenery. Soon though, these great trout fisheries will be severely damaged. NPS is out to kill as many trout as possible in the park.

You see, the GC trout fishery is essentially a downstream extension of the famous Lee's Ferry tailwater on the Colorado River, created by Glen Canyon Dam. The pre-dam Colorado was a warm, silty, highly fluctuating river with great backwater habitat. The post-dam Colorado is clear, cold and calculated. Sadly, since the construction of the dam, many of the native fish species which once thrived in the river have either dissapeared entirely or, as in the case of the Humpback Chub (HBC), are now protected by the Endangered Species Act. These days the river and its tributaries through the canyon are dominated by non-native trout.

You can probably guess where we go from here...the dam isn't going anywhere and NPS is mandated to do all it can to save the HBC. The non-native trout are one of the few variables in this whole equation. The justification for killing trout is that they are preying upon HBC. Studies have found this to be true, there's no denying it, but the level of predation is rather negligible. Trust me, predation by trout is the least of the HBC's concerns. I'm generally all about native fish preservation and restoration, trout or not. However this is a unique situation, the ecosystem has been degraded/altered to such an extent that it's no longer suitable habitat for the natives which evolved to thrive in the pre-dam river. HBC can't reproduce in the post-dam Colorado, it's too cold. Their reproduction is limited to a single, warm water tributary, the Little Colorado River (LCR) - a severly limiting factor for HBC.

Of course the only real solution to restoring native fish populations in the GC is to first restore the river to pre-dam conditions by either decommissioning the dam, or installing a temperature control device in the dam to take water from various levels in the reservoir, thus warming the river to simulate pre-dam conditions. Both scenarios carry some potentially serious consequences.

Several years ago this very issue came to a head, and thousands upon thousands of trout were killed in the GC by NPS and SWCA. Among the casualties were over 500 spawning brown trout in BA Creek, including some fish approaching 30 inches. Fortunately I was able to experience the fishery prior to this tragedy. BA Creek is major spawning habitat for Colorado River trout, and a fish weir placed near the creek's inlet during the last round of trout reduction efforts proved an all too effective way to pick off fish moving into the creek to spawn. Fortunately the program was halted upon the appointment of a new superintendent. Over the subsequent few years, the fishery has steadily recovered from that event, fishing quite well in '09 and '10. It was a short respite. The project has become a renewed priority for NPS, perhaps due to an increased availability of funding for such projects under the Obama administration.

To be clear, I fully support the mainstem river trout reduction efforts in the vicinity of the LCR confluence, as an experiment to see if localized trout removal will in fact benefit HBC. What really bothers me is the tributary removal efforts throughout the GC and in particular the apparent lack of science behind them. Why is there no PIT tag data to prove the hypothesis that browns spawning in BA Creek are subsequently migrating 27 river miles to the LCR confluence and preying upon juvenile HBC? If these trout are being killed based on an assumption, that is utterly irresponsible. Tracking the movements of trout in the mainstem and tributaries seems like the logical first step in this process. Furthermore, neither BA Creek or Tapeats Creek are HBC habitat, never have been, they're simply too cold. NPS openly admits that in some cases (Tapeats) the removal of non-native trout will be done despite no expected benefits to native fish populations in the creek. That seems like a pretty radical philosophy, implying that there is some inherent value to the removal of non-native species in and of itself.

It looks like these incredible trout fisheries are soon going to take a serious blow. Although it is ultimately the goal of NPS, trout will never be eliminated entirely from the greater GC aquatic ecosystem, it's simply too interconnected and too vast to accomplish such a task. Pisticides will never be employed in the park due to the liklihood of incidentally harming native fishes with its use. Fish barriers will never be built at the mouths of restored tributary streams since they would block the upstream passage of not only trout, but also native fish. Rather, seasonal fish weirs and backpack electro-shocking will be the removal methods of choice on tributaries...effective enough to suppress the trout population greatly, but not eliminate it entirely. This project too will fade in time, a future administration will undoubtedly divert funding, putting the project on hiatus, allowing the trout fishery to rebound for a few years. There's nothing quite like bureaucratic inefficiency.

I'd like to tell you that there is something you can do if you'd like to get involved, but aside from writing the park superintendent, Steve Martin, I'm not sure that there are many options. I've seen no mention of an Environmental Assessment and public scoping period for this project, but hopefully that is still to come. If you'd like to keep an eye out for a public comment period on this project, periodically check here.

For further reading on the issue enter, "Bright Angel Creek Trout Reduction" into your search engine of choice. The issue has been written about and addressed by such individuals as Ted Williams and Charles Gauvin, the former president of TU. For a very interesting article in Fly Rod & Reel by Ted, written during the turmoil surround the initial project in '03, click here. I've always respected Ted's writing, but in his more recent article on the subject for High Country News, Ted has gone so far as to suggest that any angler with an ecological conscience should be supportive of the trout reduction project - I beg to differ.

Legend & Lore

I don't remember just when or where I first learned of the creek. Maybe it was at Bud Lilly's in West Yellowstone as I eavesdropped on a hushed conversation while perusing the fly bins. Or perhaps it came from loose lips over a frosty pint at the Silver Dollar in Ennis. Truth be told I probably couldn't trace my fascination with this particular fishery back to any single source. Bit by bit over the past couple of years I've accumulated a pittance of knowledge about the place...never enough to really go by, but just enough to keep me intrigued.

Legend has it that the creek hosts a mysterious, almost ghostly run of very large cutthroat trout. What's more, the rumor of this run is substantiated by sound, but antiquated, stream survey data compiled by fisheries biologists. My own trips to fish the creek have done little to sort out fact from fiction. Were it not for an occassional rare, unabashed report from fellow anglers, I'd probably have given up on the place long ago.

Last Friday marked my third trip to fish the creek in search of its phantom cutthroat trout. The two previous trips had resulted in few if any trout caught and those that were caught certainly weren't of mythical proportions. This trip proved to be no different, nary a trout was brought to hand despite the fact that a very able angling comrade and I spent eight hours methodically prospecting some excellent looking water along various portions of the stream.


Fortunately the creek offers more than just a long shot at hooking up with migratory cutthroat trout. The watershed harbors a remnant population of a rare, wild fish native to Montana - the arctic grayling. I've caught the species in some mountain lakes throughout Montana - and even as far south as Arizona - but this particular population is special. This is one of the few remaining fluvial/adfluvial populations of grayling occupying native habitat in Montana - the only state in the lower 48 where the species still occurs naturally.

I'll always look forward to returning to this mountain valley for its unspoiled beauty and for the grayling, yet I'll always be hoping for something more. I've bought into the rumors and hearsay, and it may have been a stream-side conversation on Friday that cemented my belief. As we got back to the truck after fishing an unproductive stretch of water, another vehicle coasted to a stop alongside us. The rig's lone occupant, an angler, stepped from his truck and proffered a bit of experience based knowledge of the creek. As he rigged his rod he seemed quite confident in his ability to find what we had missed. The thought of him catching big cutts in our backwater that evening was almost too much to bear, but at the same time it was an oddly comforting thought.

Should I ever find myself tight to a big cutthroat on this stream I'll thank my lucky stars. In the meantime I'll enjoy the legend and lore that the creek is enshrouded in, and the process of unraveling the mystery.