Socializing with skwalas at Stevensville

We've had some pretty pleasant days on the Bitterroot River during skwala season, the best coming with an outfitter who was helping me write an article for Northwest Fly Fishing magazine. That Tuesday in late March of 2013 was a total romp, complete with long, sparkling westslopes and dry flies.

A male specimen, as Bitterroot legend John Foust explained to Liz while waiting at the takeout. 

But I, like many, look forward to seeing the crowd of trailers at the put-in about as much as I look forward to watching the Yankees trounce the Twins. I'll be over it as soon as we catch a trout, but until then, I'll need to stew a bit.

This year, we decided to avoid the rush, but somehow at 10am on Saturday April 2nd, 2016 under sunny skies and a 70-degree forecast, we were the first boat at Darby Bridge. Second, it turned out - one boat was below our view in the water and had already shuttled their trailer. As we wadered up, a third arrived. But we quickly learned that it isn't the sheer numbers that cause the grief.

Our trip was planned around visiting an old friend who is renting an cabin on gorgeous Kootenai Creek, a Bitterroot tributary in Stevensville. She grew up an outdoorswoman in Butte, but is just now getting adept with flies. And she gets it.

Of course the three boats launched roughly simultaneously, so we hustled to try to get separated. But as soon as we stopped to let a boat get ahead, that boat would stop behind us. And as soon as we decided to row down to get ahead, a boat would push off in front of us. Three boats on a seven-mile stretch, all within two bends (later deemed the "two-girl-one-guy-green-raft-with-a-dog-who-chases-waterfowl float" or the 372 float). Eventually we stopped for a long lunch and lost them, but other boats had showed up by then. The Bitterroot's "social" anglers.

Fly-shop advice was to use low-profile, skinny skwala patterns, or something the trout hadn't already seen. We thought we'd do the latter by fishing Brindle 'Chutes, a local pattern that matches March browns. But there was nary a March brown on our stretch, so we thought "terrestrial X skwala hybrid", and fished a Turk's Tarantula. We didn't catch tons, but we caught some good ones, all on dries.

Bitterroot bass. 

I usually chuckle when my buddies rant about the "jack-offs" who've beaten us to the river, or the "clowns" who dare share our five-mile stretch of river. But Saturday, I was ranting. Bunch of oblivious, clingy, communal-fishing rubes. It does not take a village ...

But all of this said, we'll be back to visit Mary and the Bitterroot socialites soon.

The Outcast PAC 1300 - a perfect boat for the Bitterroot. 

Ink for cutthroats

We stopped by Chuck Stranahan's fly shop in Hamilton, and after a few minutes of chatting, he made a phone call to see if he could line us up with his outfitter, Jed Fitzpatrick of Sula Mountain Fly Fishing. Sho 'nuff, Jed called later that day and we hammered cutthroats all Tuesday.

Fitzpatrick is a nice man and a terrific guide - he had us into fish from put-in to take-out. He helped Liz with her dry-fly cast, gave me a few tips on my own, and had some valuable advice on everything from fighting fish to photography to rod storage and fish release.
And we fished.
We floated a short stretch on the upper-middle mainstem and never touched a nymph. Trout, all but a couple appeared to be (as-close-as-they-can-be-to) pure westslope cutthroats, were all over neumora and March brown dries. We saw a handful of skwalas on the water, but the fish didn't.

Fish of the day.

One thing we learned - the skwalas bring the anglers, but the other bugs bring the fish; neumoras, capnias and March browns. Big, slow cutthroat rises, mostly on Stranahan's Brindle 'Chute.
The "good", fishy day for which I yearned finally reared its frantic grin. It only gets better from here...

Brindle 'Chute.

Prospecting for skwalas

Clay and I hit the lower Gallatin River this afternoon near my old stomping grounds - my old neighbor Jake let us come out. It was good - between the two of us we got 18 fish in about 4.5 hours. The were eating the skwala nymph, the baetis nymph, and the pheasant tail. Oh, and the skwala dry. We saw one shuck and based on appetite for the nymph (and the fact that a fish rose for my indicator and for a baetis nymph dangled carelessly just under the surface), I decided to see if they were looking up. They were- I landed two fish and missed about 6 others on the skwala dry.