During the Week of May 19th-26th, Tim Graham and John Walker traveled to the one of the more fabled trout fisheries in the United States, the Missouri River below Holter Dam. Our base of operations was the tiny little Hamlet of Craig, Montana, a fly-fishing mecca for this part of the world between March through November. Tim got us an amazing little cabin on the river just down river from Craig in the canyon. It was a beautiful location. We were in Craig during a transition period for the river. A few weeks earlier, there was some good dry fly-fishing and starting about mid-June there would be incredible BWO and Trico hatches with amazing dry fly fishing. But for now, it was mostly nymph fishing with maybe some surface takes in late evening.
On the first day we adhered to the standard best practice for a new location and took a guided float. This provided us with valuable information for going out on our own later while also giving us a chance to see lots of the river and start catching fish. We floated from the Dam down to Craig. This part of the river is a tailwater, obviously, so there are a lot of fish here and they are generally big ≥ 16in typically. As you move further downriver past Craig it becomes more of a freestone type river.
The Missouri river is wide without much structure other than a few small islands that create some interesting side channels and maybe no more than 4-6 ft deep in most places during this stretch. The surrounding scenery, however, as the river runs north through the mountains is gorgeous. One piece of advice the guide gave us was to not cast out too far from the boat. He pointed out that these are pretty big fish here and you had to get a strong hook set to land them because they would fight very hard when hooked. So, getting a good drift and line management were extremely important. A lesson Kenny goes over repeatedly in his classes and one reinforced on us many times throughout this trip. For this time of year, the guide basically had us use only 2 flies – a perdigon (which I learned is a Euro nymphing fly) which is a good imitation for most mayflies and an unweighted pink sowbug, size 16. For the Perdigon, we used 2 different ones. A brown one and a multicolored one called a rainbow warrior. That was pretty much it for the whole trip. On the float we caught several white fish, some large rainbows (18-21 in) and a lone brown trout caught by Tim. The float was a lot of fun. One nice thing about this river, because of the width and gentle flow, the guy in the back of the boat is not at a big disadvantage to the guy in the front of the boat as is often the case on so many other rivers we’ve floated.
With the guided float done, we then wade fished the rest of the time. The guide told us that there is roughly 40 miles of fishable river with several access points for wade fisherman and currently the Missouri has about 7000 fish per square mile. The best spot, at least that we found, was at a place called the Bull Pasture. It is about a half-mile down from the dam and offers over a mile of contiguous, wadable fishing. Below the access point there is a small island you can wade out to, fishing off it as well as the opposite bank in the side channel. We tried several other places, with some modest success, but always tended to end up back here. Most days started out cold and overcast and moved to partly cloudy as the day wore on. We found that the best fishing started about noon or a little later and then was consistently good until at least 5pm. The typical rig most days was to have the heavy weighted perdigon as the top fly and the unweighted sow bug as the bottom fly. We usually had some weights up above the top fly and fished to a depth anywhere from 3-6 ft above the top fly. The guide told me that the perdigon would get down to the bottom and the unweighted sow bug would float up a little higher in the water column and flutter a little bit. The first few days that rig with the rainbow warrior perdigon did the best but we landed fish with both flies. As the week wore on, however, the mayfly hatches got stronger each day. Since the perdigons are good mayfly imitations, not coincidently, they seemed to be more productive than the sowbug, probably because of the strength and frequency of the hatches. By the last day the sow bug was discarded entirely, and we were only using the perdigons with the brown one being particularly good. Tim had a monster day the last day using that brown perdigon. The hatches would pick up once the sun came out a bit in the afternoon and once the bugs came out the fishing really picked up. We found that if we cast out longer than say 20ft, we’d have too much line out and the strikes would often result in lost fish. Either initially when they shook or after their first big jump, and these fish jumped! I would say our success rate on landing fish on these longer casts was less than 25% which we attributed mostly to insufficient hook sets. The guide also recommended “bowing” to the fish when they jumped. This meant lower the rod in the direction the fish jumped so there was some slack in the line and then lift the rod tip back up when the fish hit the water. This seems a lot easier said than done, at least for me. Anyhow, our success rate was better when we hooked up with fish on casts of shorter distance, ~10 -15ft. Another great thing was there were not a lot of wade fisherman out there to bother us, which was surprising to me, at least. Most people who were here were here to float so lots of spots to wade in at.
Overall, this was a great trip. We experienced a great river for the first time and caught lots of big fish, several over 20 in. We also lost many more big fish, with our success rate being less than 50% on landing fish. We learned a lot about trying to catch these big guys. We have a long way to go to be as good as the pelicans were. But the fishing was amazing, nonetheless, and the scenery beautiful, it was just a great time. Tim is already thinking about going back next year as a bigger trip. The big question is should we go back at the same time of year or go later and catch the really big hatches to fish dries. If you do go, we really liked the Crosscurrents fly shop. They were very helpful with what flies to use, where to fish and affordable guide rates.
