Wednesday April 4th. I had met Beth through a friend of ours who decorated the interior of her Mountain Home at Moonlight Basin. She had contacted me through Dana and we were scheduled to do two half day trips while she was out on a ski vacation with her kids. Our first day was supposed to be Monday the 2nd but we awoke to several inches of new snow and blizzard like conditions. I spoke with Beth in the morning and told her that there was no way that I was going to risk life and limb to get to Big Sky and go fishing. She was not excited about the prospect of standing in a river during a snow storm either so we made the call to put off the trip and give it another try on Wednesday. The weather was much nicer on Wednesday and I met her at the Hungry Moose Market at 10 am. When I left Bozeman the air temp was a whopping 27 degrees and I was concerned that it may be a short day with the cold weather. When I got to Big Sky the inversion was in place and it was a balmy 38 degrees with a bit of sunshine poking through the clouds. We stopped at Super Dave's Mad Wolf sports and picked up a license for the day ahead.
The first stop was a quick walk into the hole at the bottom of the Porcupine Wildlife area and we hooked a few decent rainbows and one beautiful cutthroat. After a couple of hours of fishing the run we walked back to the truck and headed back down the river to find a new spot to fish for the rest of the day. Guiding on the Gallatin poses some interesting challenges as the Forest Circus owns much of the land and with evil people in charge such as Becky Heath the ability for any new blood to get commercial Forest permits has become impossible. Thus creativity and some understanding of Emminent Domain can gain you access to the river via highway easements. We got into the Hog Hole by using the Highway and as we got to the river I gave Beth the rundown about what we were fishing for and why they were there. Once we waded to the other side of the river Beth made her first few cast with a Idlywilde Bead Head stone # 10 trailed by the Fluery Ugly egg. I had to adjust the weight and she was fast into her first hog hole fish. It was a nice fat healthy rainbow with no color that went a solid 19 inches. I managed to get a hand on the fish but my tippet lanyard caught the point fly and the fish made a quick escape before we could capture it's digital image. She hooked a couple of more fish and then she was fast to another Hog Hole Bow and we managed to get our hands on it and bring it to the hand for a quick photo before sending it back to the bottom of the Gallatin. The baetis started to come off around 2 pm and fish were really feeding on the opposite bank. We did try a few cast with a dry and we realized that we had better get back to her vehicle so she could be at the house when the kids got done skiing.
We had a wonderful time catching fish and we also shared some great conversation since we both have similiar views on what is going on in the world.
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