Incident at Milesnick's could reignite debate

I heard this morning that an angler on the MZ- Ranch - better known as Milesnick's - was recently electrocuted when his fly rod touched a power line. It is a horrible, unfortunate incident about which details are sketchy, but Tom Milesnick confirmed to me via e-mail that there is a lawsuit pending from the angler or his family, and that he could not comment further.

He also confirmed that access to fishing and hunting on all of their properties has been suspended pending the outcome of the lawsuit. If the outcome favors the unfortunate angler, they may never allow access again.

Thompson Spring Creek, just above its mouth.

The Milesnicks allow access to two spring creeks on their property north of Belgrade, Montana for a fee, and have a sign-in system that allows anglers free access to their property on the East Gallatin River.

They have a longstanding record of cooperation and allowing access to anglers. They are model landowners from sportsmen's perspective, which is why burning the bridge to them would set a scary precedent for the other pay fisheries including Armstrong's, Depuy, and Nelson's spring creeks in Paradise Valley and other creeks and lakes on private property statewide. Moreover, it sets us up for another stream-access battle.

The Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks brochure on stream access does say: “the Legislature has limited the situations in which a landowner may be liable for injuries to people using a stream flowing through his property...The law states that landowners and others covered by the restriction on liability are liable only for acts or omissions that constitute ‘willful or wanton misconduct’.” So to rule against that (which would be the cast if the angler wins), would be a ruling that directly contradicts the stream access law. Once that seal is broken, the rest of our beloved law could be up for grabs.

Let me be clear, however, that many details about the incident and litigation are not known at this time.

In my opinion, anglers need to take responsibility for themselves, and if and when an accident occurs, they shouldn't seek reparations from those who allowed them to be there (not that it's anything new or unique to Montana or fishing). It's a tragedy and I feel for the angler and his family, but responsibility should not be spread where it does not belong, especially when so much is potentially at stake.

UPDATE: As of 2014, the land is no longer open to access the creeks via a rod fee. Apparently, so the goes the story I've heard, the property is under the management of different family members who are not interested in this aspect of the business. The creeks should still be open to fishing, as they still fall under Montana's stream-access law. Access, however, must be gained legally which can be difficult here (thus, the advantage of paying the rod fee - you could hike across their property to the creeks).

Runoff = ice-off

The stretch of the Madison below Hebgen was clear until Cabin Creek had something to say about it.

The mountain snow is melting. This weekend, we were kind of in that no-man's land where the river's are mostly too high and muddy to fish, but most of our favorite mountain lakes aren't quite de-iced. We went to Hebgen yesterday hoping to drop some Buggers off the ice edge, but there wasn't much open water. Where there was, there were fishermen so we kept driving and ended up at Quake Lake, where we found a little spot of open water with trout.

Both Hebgen and Quake should be fishable this week. They had both started peeling back, and both lost quite a bit as we sat there yesterday.
Today, I took a little drive along the East Gallatin - it's impressive.

Upstream from Hamilton Road.

It's flowing at 1,280 cfs - the previous highest for today was 679 (granted it's only from nine years of record). It's well over its banks in many places and will be interesting to see when it's over. Talked to a gentleman who apparently lives there, and he said he's only ever seen it like this a couple of times. I hope the fish don't get washed away.

Hebgen Lake Ice-out Report

Friday we hiked in to the Madison Arm of Hebgen Lake from Highway 191. It wasn't an easy hike over snow and through mud, but if there's open water on Hebgen, it's usually worth it. To our surprise, it appeared as though the entire Madison Arm was open (can't be positive, though). There were lots of Hebgen midges, but it was blowing a gale and no fish were rising. The lake even appeared to have slightly turned over as it wasn't very clear. So it was one of the few times when fishing Hebgen seemed futile. There were lots (I counted about 50) baetis along the river, and we found one pod of consistently rising fish (alas this section of the river is closed until May).
The estuary is interesting water and hosts some big rainbows.
But, the point is that there are definitely sections of Hebgen that are ice-free and on less windy days, I have no doubt that the fishing is lights out (rumor has it that the South Fork Arm and Whiskey Bay also have open water - the north shore has a ways to go). It takes a little work to get there, but anyone who has fished Hebgen knows of the reward.
On Saturday I towed the camper out to the lower Madison and floated Black's Ford to Greycliff with Clay, Brady, Caroline, Josh Duchateau and his fiance' Sandy. The fishing was good for the first half of the float (for everyone but me, but I digress...). The closer we got to the takeout, the bonier and less fishy the water became. We capped the day with beers around a campfire, enduring that infamous lower Madison wind. We hit the hay thinking the wind would soon stop; alas it gusted and gusted all night. It was kind of insane. I got up at about 6, broke down and came home.
The rest of them floated again today and apparently the fishing was quite good, but windier yet. I wish I could've joined them, but I popped home to get my aggressive dog before last night's campfire, so I was on my own.
Also, last Wednesday I found some new public water on Bozeman's locally "secret" stream. It's a place that doesn't have much for public land so it's always good to find more. The fishing was good - they wanted the baetis nymph.