Six of our FATC members headed for a week to beautiful Montana to fish the famous Bighorn river. Tim Graham set up the trip during the “best” time to fish the Bighorn river, but Mother Nature had other ideas.

Five of us, Ron Fiala, Jim Craig, Charlie Trankler, Jerry Lybarger and Kenny Klimes, flew from St Louis to meet up with Tim Graham (who now lives in Colorado) in Montana. The flight was uneventful except for a diversion to Bozeman, Montana – we were going to Billings, Montana. But after an hour delay, we preboarded and headed to our destination. We met with Forrest Rogers, co-owner of Rock Treads, and had lunch with him, then picked up a few supplies at the grocery store before driving to Ft Smith where we would live for the next week. We stayed at the Bighorn Angler lodge in a nice, huge cabin (see pictures). Before I get off on a tangent and discuss our fishing, I want to add that the meals that were served to us (breakfast, lunch and dinner) were nothing less than outstanding.  The guides were great, and the lodge employees were friendly and very helpful.

As I said above, Mother Nature had other ideas for this trip. The first morning we woke up to snow covered grounds. That didn’t deter us as we met our guides and headed to the river for the first time. It was cold but we came prepared. We all fished with guides the first day so we could get the lay of the land and know the “spots” to fish during the rest of the week.  We all did well on this day and were convinced that this trip would be something awesome. We were watching the weather close because the reports were not what we hoped for, but it could change – it didn’t.

Day two and three brought rain and lots of it. It didn’t stop raining all day but that didn’t stop us from catching fish. At one point we got hailed on. We rented drift boats from the lodge and we selected our boat “teams” by lottery. If you wanted a good laugh you should have been there to see our “rowing techniques”. It proved to be harder than we thought. But we managed and found the spots that the guides told us about. Each day we put in a good 5-6 hours of fishing and at night in the cabin there was no doubt that we were beat. BUT the fellowship was awesome, and we spent several hours each night discussing different techniques to use the next day. Drop shot, tippet “tags” and other techniques have been put into our bag of tricks.

Day four saw the sun come out and unfortunately, the barometer rise. This day was the nicest weather-wise but our toughest fishing day. Was like the trout had lock jaw. We caught fish but not in the numbers that we wanted and again we rowed our rented drift boats.

Day Five we gave up. The weather forecast called for 25-30 mph winds and we all voted to get the “guides” to row the boats for us. We let them fight the winds and it was worth it. They had a hard time so we figured there would have been no way for us to row.

Overall, even though the weather and water temperatures were not at their ideal (which they should have been this time of year) we all had a great time. New friendships were made and many stories to tell. I just don’t have the time and energy to put every little funny story in this report, so you’ll just have to ask us. And then again, some things that happen on the Bighorn stay on the Bighorn.

We took a side trip on our way home and stopped at Custer’s Last Stand – the Little Bighorn battle. Very interesting and learned some things that were not in our history books. Great trip, great guys and great fellowship.