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Fly Fishing Scenes, August in Montana
From the Bighorn to Glacier and backI started the month down on the Crow Reservation, on the Bighorn river below Yellowtail dam. Cottonwood camp was the base for the first few nights, then I moved to the Bighorn access point downstream. A nasty thunderstorm blew in and threatened the huge tree I was parked under, so I beat feet up to…
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Labor Day Fish Tales from Montana
Hebgen gulpers and late summer callibaetisI’ve spent the last couple of weeks on Hebgen Lake, near West Yellowstone, chasing callibaetis-eating rainbows and browns. Today, on my last day on the lake, I found an honest to God “gulper”, a fish that’s eating bugs on a steady tempo… about one every three seconds. That allows you to predict where to place…
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July in Montana, Broken Bikes and Brown Trout
A KTM that didn't like getting wet and dry flies on the BighornMy last post had me dreaming of dry fly action on the Henrys Fork, and sad to say, it was a two week exercise in “hope springs eternal”. Maybe tomorrow the bugs will come out and the fish will start looking up? Apart from a few nights of substantial brown drake hatches, where I at…
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A Look Back at Fly Fishing in 2024… WTF, Mate?
2024 was the ninth year that I’ve been a full-time RV’er and I have been looking to upgrade to a new model for the next ten years. My business has been good this last year, or rather you could say I worked more than I wanted. A happy result is that I’ve saved a substantial…
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A Day on La Barge Creek, Wyoming
I was really hoping to find a creek full of wild and colorful cutthroat trout, and to have a day perhaps like that one years ago on Long Draw in Colorado. I’d watched some YouTube videos of guys fishing small creeks up in the boonies of southwestern Wyoming, and I pinned a couple of rivers…
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Wyoming Rambles: The Ham’s Fork
I’ve made it to Wyoming after a somewhat leisurely drive across the Great Basin in 100 degree heat. I had been eying West Wendover, NV for the first night, about five and a half hours out of Reno. But as I approached one of my regular stops, Carlin Canyon on the Humboldt River, I thought…
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Mountain Passes in a Heavyweight RV
I’ve finally managed to break free from work in California to head east towards the Continental Divide. The heat wave has yet to break, and my motorhome complained to me on the way up CA-20 towards Grass Valley yesterday. For the first time in almost ten years, the temperature gauge moved off the middle and…
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Missing Montana
Longing for Big Sky Country and Cool Clear WatersI had planned on making opening day on the Henry’s Fork on June 15, the start of my summer in the Yellowstone periphery. Technically, that would be missing Idaho, but I generally think of my trips to the mountains as “Moving to Montana“. And it is only 30 miles to the border at Targhee Pass.…
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The Old Volvo Chronicles: Coast to Coast in ’89
I was in Detroit from the Fall of 1987 to Spring of 1989, a student at the Center for Creative Studies. I had decided on a college path I think when I was 16 or so, and I had to work hard to generate an art portfolio that could impress the admissions staff at CCS.…
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Wintering in the Desert
October, 2018: It got pretty cold in West Yellowstone and I finally had to face up to the end of my Montana adventure for the year. I started south towards warmer weather, but lingered on the Teton river in Idaho for a final week, and twice had pipes freeze in my motorhome. It had been…