Montana Troutaholic Bitterroot River

It was like a Hank Patterson fly fishing film reunion as everyone stepped out of their trucks to launch their boats on the Bitterroot river. Joel Thompson, whose house was invaded by Hank and his crew in the movie “Hank Patterson’s Reel Montana Adventure“, had set up three boats with shuttles through his outfitting business, Montana Troutaholic, for a day of fishing with the crew. The crew included: Ami Trina, who played the yoga girl in the 2nd film, Jason Jacopian, who was the president of the Hank Patterson Fan Club; and, of course, Travis Swartz, Hank Patterson himself.  

I had to hand it to Ami. Despite my immediate success, she stuck it out with her dry fly. She did add the same dropper as I had on, and tried her luck with that as I continued to nymph deep. 
“Get that seam, there!” Brock said, and he added a few extra back strokes to give us more time to deliver a good presentation. 
Ami hit it first with her dry dropper, and I with my nymphs. My orange indicator shot under right in the seam Brock had pointed out, and I set the hook fast. 
“Got it!” I said, and Brock went for his net. 
“It’s a nice one!” I said happily, noticing the fish was fighting harder than the last two. My hands were lifted over my head to bring up the fish over Brock’s net, and with one healthy scoop the fish was landed.

In the mean time, Joel had poured everyone a shot of Kentucky Bourbon to toast the passing of Reese Ferguson. Parked on the side of the Bitterroot river seemed like the right place to honor a man who we got to know through fly fishing, and it was a nice gesture by Joel to include Reese in our day.

Just as Joel was packing up his gear to continue our float, Brock pulled out his fly rod and walked up the slow stagnate braid in the river that looked uninhabited. Armed with a skwalla, Brock took careful steps to get into position to make the perfect cast into the deeper part of the side channel. His skwalla landed with a splat right on the outside of a small stump in the water, and the next thing we heard was the thrashing of a nice sized brown trout. We all watched in disbelief as Brock landed his fish, and I didn’t waste any time running down to get a picture.

The excitement of Brock’s fish had us all determined that a dry fly skwalla was the way to go for the rest of the day. I was now behind the sticks and doing my best to get Gabe into some fish. We would often stop and fish some promising runs that looked fishy, but would turn up empty before pushing on.

After a while of rowing, Gabe took the oars so that I could have a shot at the front of the boat.  With nothing hitting Gabe’s dry fly, I switched back to a full nymphing rig.
 

The success rate had gone up after that, only I kept losing every fish I was hooking into. One fish in particular ripped line from my reel before it became unbuttoned. The thought of losing that fish haunted me, but it was short lived because the take out was just up ahead. 

“How was the rest of the day?” I asked Deb who came to the edge of the river to see us in.
“It’s a little tough when the guy in the front of the boat is flogging the water.” She said, glancing towards Travis. I quickly looked over to see if Travis had heard Deb’s comment. 
“Darn, he didn’t hear.” I said, smiling. 
“It was okay. I did get a fish on a dry fly.” She said, after Joel and Gabe got the boat on the trailer.
“That’s good.” I said, as we all gathered our gear and said our goodbyes. 
Tomorrow we would fish Rock Creek, and with any luck the flows will remain neutral, providing us clear waters for good fly fishing. I can hardly wait.