Bighorn River

Headed west with the boys for a 5-day fishing trip to the Bighorn River in south-central Montana. It was a relatively short time for the 1700-mile round trip, but the water was up on the river, and my guide assured me we'd get the boys on some big Bighorn browns and rainbows.

We started out Friday afternoon right off of their last day of school for the year and made Dickinson, with the boys sleeping the last couple hours. They did pretty well in the car, the excitement of the trip helping a bunch (along with a bagful of grapes - it's amazing how long one of those little guys will hang on to the back cover of a pickup truck at 80 miles an hour). North Dakota has 350 long miles of "are we in Montana yet?"

We finished the drive Saturday morning and swung through the Little Bighorn Battlefield site enroute. Apart from fueling hours of Indian wars for the duration of the trip, it was an interesting diversion. It's one of the few battlefields where you can easily tune out the few rudiments of modern civilization to imagine yourself standing there alongside Custer.

The Bighorn is a tailwater fishery created only because of the constant stream of cool water leaving a system of dams on the river - perfect for trout. In the spring and early summer the outflow is high to rid the reservoirs of the snow runoff.

We had a down day on Sunday. We tried fishing the river a bit, but the water was too high to effectively wade- or shore-fish, and there's no other stream fishing in the area. We headed up the few miles to the Yellowtail Dam and checked out the visitor center, which much to Sean's chagrin did not sell anything. After dinner we tried a few casts into the Afterbay, which only resulted in a 3/8 oz. Little Cleo getting lodged through my hat and into my scalp. After several failed attempts to pull it out, I had to push the point through the other side and have Sam crimp the barb down. At least I now know how a fish feels...

Monday - Day 1 on the river. It had been raining in Ft. Smith for the better part of the previous 10 days (and raining still), but we were lucky enough to slot right into the two most gorgeous days of the month. Our guide, Eric, showed up at 9, and the boys were finally able to ask him all the questions they'd been saving up (how long have you been guiding, what's the biggest fish you've ever caught, etc.). Not 10 minutes before he showed up, my Winston rod was the victim of a car door. Luckily, he was gracious enough to let me use his.

We put in at Yellowtail around 10:30, and the boys were almost immediately on fish. Eric set them up with a 'teton rig', spinning rod with a 3/8 oz bell sinker at the end and a couple flies dropped from the line a foot or so above the sinker. It was deadly effective.

Here is the first of many doubles the boys hooked into over the two days. Yes, those are two black labs in the front of the boat - two of the best trained dogs I've ever seen. They didn't move an inch unless Eric told them to, although they would cock an ear and give a pleading glance every time they heard a rooster pheasant cackle from shore.

With the water so high, there weren't many places to pull over, so we had to make do over the boat when nature called. With temps in the high 70's we had the boys drinking lots of water, so she called often.

Sam was on fire the first day. He pulled in around 20 fish, including this beautiful buck rainbow.

Day 2. More of the same. The weather was beautiful again, but a system was coming in the afternoon, so we got a little earlier start. Tuesday was Sean's day, as he caught a ton of beauties.

This was an awesome double - perfect casts, perfect drifts, and two hits within seconds. Sean got the 20-inch brown and Sam hauled in a rainbow nearly as big.

All good things must come to an end. We pushed the last few miles to stay ahead of the storm and got a few drops at the end, but everyone was still smiles.

We'd broken down the camp that morning, so we were able to hit the road right after getting off the river. It was tough driving after a long day in the sun fishing, but we made Dickinson that night and finished the drive home Wednesday.

Trip highlights:

- Outstanding fishing. We all brought in 20+ fish, many around the 20-inch mark. Sam caught the largest rainbow and the largest brown, but Sean and I weren't far behind.

- Great weather for the two days on the river - high 70's/low 80's, slight breeze. Spectacular.

- Plenty of space and diversions at the campsite. We stayed at the NPS campground on the town-side of the Afterbay.

Lowlights (producers of some tears, Dad included):

- Sean losing his wallet for a few hours. Never has the loss of a plastic, neon orange, Aerosmith wallet with $26.52 caused so much pain. Fortunately we found it a half day later in the side door of the truck.

- Sam dropping the bail tension knob for his bait casting reel into the murky waters of the Afterbay.

- Getting a hook caught in my scalp.

- Losing the last 4 inches of my fly rod, the one I spec'd specifically for use on big western waters.

BWCA - Missing Link Lake

4-day, 3-night trip over Memorial Day to Missing Link Lake in the Boundary Waters with my brother ben and his boys, Aidan and Owen. Story to follow...

Whitewater State Park - Spring Fishing

The boys were on Spring Break this week. We weren't going to Florida, and the weather was looking good, so we headed south to take in the Spring catch-and-release season in southeast Minnesota.

We rolled into Whitewater State Park mid-afternoon on Thursday. The day was to be our coldest but even so the sun came out and we quickly set up camp. We had the whole campground to ourselves and picked a nice spot by the river (#91). There weren't any facilities yet (toilets, showers, or water), so we were basically leasing a plot of dirt and grass for a few days. In a few weeks you won't be able to get a spot here. This was a great trial run of the wall tent, in anticipation of heavier use out West.

Here are a few pics of the layout inside - it was great to be able to stand up, walk around, and generally have room. It didn't rain while we were there, but there was plenty of room to eat a couple meals around the table.

The Alaskan stove from our winter camping kit came in handy, though it was a bit undersized for 12x14.

The first night was pretty cold, but I didn't hear any complaints so I figured the extra blankets helped the boys. We were getting ready for bed the next night when I noticed Sean layering on extra clothes. In the course of talking him down from three t-shirts and a fleece he explained how cold he was the previous night, quickly corroborated by Sam. I'm pretty impressed that I didn't hear any sniveling from the boys - they just took the cold in stride, drove on, and came up with a plan for the next night.
Happy Sam - fleeced up and ready for bed.
Fishing: It's why we came down here, and I don't think I've ever had a better couple days fly-fishing in Minnesota. The weather was warm, the water was clear and high, there was nobody else on the river, and most importantly - the trout were hungry. Sam counted 22 caught altogether, and we missed just as many - mostly browns but some rainbows too, including a couple nice 14"+. We were catching them on nymphs in the morning and evening (pheasant tail and copper john) and both days there was a great March Brown hatch mid-afternoon. I didn't have a matching pattern, but dark elk hair caddis worked pretty well, especially in choppier water. There was a hole right below our campsight where the flish were slapping at the surface for hours. At times the browns were porpoising out of the water to get at the bugs. It was unreal.
Sam was all over the fishing. Every second he could steal away from camp he'd head down to the river with his fly rod. He had some bad luck with gear though. We found a leak in his wader on the first day, and he snapped the end of his rod the second (I was just casting...).

Bent rod and tight line on a nice rainbow:

Signature Sam pose
I was cleaning up after breakfast when I got the "Daddy get the camera" call.

Sean gave it a go for awhile, but he got pretty frustrated with the fly-fishing and switched to spinning off and on. Still, for the first time he did pretty well and actually remembered several of my admonishments.
Sean the "gizmo man": binoculars, pocket knife, and two multi-purpose compass/magnifying glass/thermometer/+ thingys that he's picked up over the past couple years. After having to untangle the mess of lanyards a couple times, I lighted on the idea of storing it all in his fishing vest. Apart from the hassle, I was worried he was going to trip and snag himself on something.
He also did a bit of whittling - or commissioning me to whittle. I would have had one for Sam too, but I nearly sliced the tip of my finger off digging out the "M".
Sean did manage to muscle in this beautiful rainbow on a fly rod. Yes, he's clutching all that fish slime hard to his t-shirt. Thought I'd throw in a pic of one of my fish. The browns were absolutely gorgeous.

Fish punks

Boundary Waters - Winter Trip to Duncan Lake (aka One Fish Lake)

"You guys might not know this but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one man wolfpack. But when my sister brought Doug home I knew he was one of my own. And my wolfpack, it grew by one. So there were two of us in the wolfpack. I was alone first in the pack and then Doug joined in later. And 6 months ago, when Doug introduced me to you guys I thought, wait a second, could it be. And now I know for sure that I just added two guys to my wolfpack. Four of us wolves, running around the desert together in Las Vegas looking for strippers and cocaine."

Made a 4-day/3-night journey into the Boundary Waters 27 February - 2 March with my brother Ben and Mark Janosy.

Pile-up at the entry point. We shaved about a mile off our hike into Duncan from a couple years ago by looking at the map. We entered at Bearskin Lake, which is totally out of the BWCA, and there were a lot of ice fishermen in for the day.

We had to cross Bearskin and one portage and we were on Duncan. Relatively easy - but the gear had to be secured.

We were happy to find that there was no slush on the lake, so we set up the tent right on the ice, carving out working and campfire areas. The weather was great - highs in the low 40's and single digits at night.
It took one night for us to figure out that we could put the third cot back behind the stove. Shorter cots certainly helped.
Splitting crappy firewood. We got into a couple good logs but had plenty of duds that didn't burn well in the tent.
After setting up camp, we hit the ice, and Mark caught this beauty within an hour. Prospects were looking up, but alas, it was to be our only fish. Mark caught the only fish here a couple years ago as well.
We had a full moon every night - lots of great illum. As we were sitting around the campfire the first night we heard a wolf howling out on the lake. After a while we could see it sniffing around our ice holes, and then it started coming towards us. It stopped about 100 yards away, barked at us a bit, and then cut into the woods. Minutes later it reappeard about 50 yards away, scooted to the center of the lake, and howled for another 15 minutes.
On Sunday we trekked back to the Gunflint Trail and the Windigo Lodge to catch the Olympic gold medal game between USA and Canada. Not much of a crowd, but they had a great TV. The beer tasted good too...

We daytripped to Moss Lake on Monday. It was a gorgeous day, most of which we spent in our shirts out in the sun. No fish.

Heading back to Duncan from Moss.

Hay Creek - Winter Trout Season

Spent a few hours on Hay Creek today. It was a beautiful day, somewhat unfortunately - I would have preferred it to be overcast. As it was, it was cold and sunny. Great to be outdoors. You can almost see the branch that was soon to take half my leader here...

Find the roosters...

Camping Season Recap

I think I can say with some confidence that the camping season is over for the year. Overall, the boys had 17 tent nights in 2009:
- Forestville SP (1) early May
- Crosby Manitou SP (3) Memorial Day
- Wild River SP (3) June
- BWCA (4) July
- Badlands/Black Hills (4) August
- William O'Brien SP (2) Labor Day

I added another 3 on a February BWCA trip and 4 on a May BWCA trip, for a total of 24. Pretty solid work - we'll give the tents a few months rest.

Sam Scores a Touchdown!