Can I?

Swiped straight from the annals of Chum comes this mother of all functional fishing inventions: whisky in can. That's right angling drunks (remember, only alcoholics go to meetings), it's 12 ounces of premium low-grade, Panamanian-produced whisky in a convenient, crushable and recyclable container. According to the Scottish Spirits Ltd. website, the green aluminum cylinders of goodness will be available worldwide soon, and each 12 oz. can will carry a suggested retail price of $5.00 USD. Where was a six pack (12 pack?) of these babies while we spent five frigid days on the Smith in a snowstorm two Junes ago?

¡Saludos!

Run Off? Is that you?

Nope, it sure isn't. But if you cover one eye and quickly steal a glance at the hydrographs for Missoula-area rivers, you might think it were June. Inches of rain on top of snow the past couple of days have doubled the size of our rivers, and since all this rain is decidedly not rain above 6500 feet or so, we continue to sit in a pretty good spot this winter as far as water is concerned. Bring it on, La Niña.

New Look, Same Fishy Taste!

If you're gonna be stoked about your blog, you better like the way it looks. As an extra motivation to getting BHWM fired up and kicking again, I mixed things up a bit. Not that I disliked the old look, it was just becoming a little stagnant.

This seems a lot more fishy to me—and a lot less dark and scary. Just look how stoked Big Timber and Baker are. If you want to leave me a comment and let me know your reaction to the new steez, feel free. Or don't—I won't reply anyway.

S.A.D.

It hits every year at this time. It's not like it creeps up on you. Those of us who choose to live in this part of the world have seen it coming for months—the warmer seasons inevitably surrendering to the sulking gray ceiling and scattered snowflakes of a long Missoula winter. The summer toys are put away, the rafts stacked half-inflated in the garage, quietly waiting it out like old dogs who know better than to go outside in the cold. The focus doesn't fade, but it changes.

Not that winter is bad—winter means watching the sun rise over decoy spreads bobbing in steaming side channels, football and, if we're lucky, lots and lots of face shots.

Freshly satiated off big game and upland bird seasons, late-season trouting and, again if we're lucky, a few swung steelhead, most junkies manage to keep the fire stoked well in to late December. A waxing ski year and a waning waterfowl season further lend a hand in keeping the shack nasties at bay.

Never is that more true than during a winter like the one we're having, what with La Niña frequently puking her frozen goodness in the high country and all. Two weeks ago, snowfall amounts at several Montana ski areas were ranked amongst some of the most famous snow meccas in the West, at least temporarily silencing the argument that our snow has a tendency to, well, suck. Early season has been deep, if not downright dangerous—avalanches and tree wells have claimed the lives of multiple skiers and snowmobilers over the past few weeks as the snow continues to pile up.

But at some point, as if it's in fact too good to be true, things change again. In western Montana, that all too often means interrupting a perfectly good, crushing snow year with a week of warm weather and rain. This year, the unwanted warm-up and steady rainfall has the nerve to come just after the close of waterfowl season, effectively shutting folks like us indoors with little to do but hunker down and watch it pour while we wait for the snowpack to recover.

Having once again failed to plan ahead and figure a plane ride south of the Equator, I'm forced to break out my best coping mechanisms for this annual outbreak of S.A.D., or Seasonal Affective Disorder. An actual clinical term for cabin fever, S.A.D. always seems to hit me the hardest in mid-late January. With bowl season over, our beloved powder experiencing an old-fashioned flogging and every game animal in the woods breathing a collective sigh of relief, NetFlix downloads and used book sales take a decisive jump as Missoulians struggle to pass away the gray without sitting on a barstool—or gnawing their own arm off.

For me, this time of year forces me to start the always-daunting winter fly tying production. Up to this point I had all of the excuses I needed to avoid tying the dozens of these and tens of dozens of those that my clients will need to catch trout, trees and/or my various body parts come summer. But now, with the rain falling and the tying desk fully cleaned, organized and ready to be destroyed, it's time to start cranking.

As inevitable as each winter's S.A.D. outbreak, spring is not far off. It won't take many days of February sunshine to stir the skwala nymphs and the trout that are lying in wait to eat them. Once the circus starts, the rest of the season always seems to have a way of snowballing from one hatch to another, leaving little time to prepare for the next big event. If that weren't enough to get the fingers spinning, I know for a fact there are a few thousand B-run steelhead sitting in the main Clearwater, just begging all of us to come over the hill and hit them in the head with our miniature boat anchors and "flies" when the water starts to bump. The list of old stand-bys and new ideas needing to be twisted in to existence seems never-ending, and no matter how much I get done, I'll still run out of the most basic bugs by mid July, frantically running in to fly shops before my morning meet times to buy handfuls of Pat's rubberlegs.

There's no better time to get going. Then again, I could always watch another episode of West Wing...

Signs of winter...

If you live in western Montana, it's hard to say no to wild game dinners in the dead of winter. Freezers are full, the world outside is encased in ice (or fresh snow, or slush, or rain if you live in Missoula...) and there aren't many things that feel more worthwhile or wholesome than to have a few friends over, open a bottle of wine and eat some dead critters.


Compliments of several different contributors, this evening's cuisine consisted of soy sauce/ginger/garlic marinated mallard breast under the broiler, whitetail backstrap marsala and, for an exclamation point, elk backstrap on the grill. Oh, and steamed spinach and Caesar salad, but those don't really count. What counts is sharing the fruits of our labor and enjoyment from the past season while chowing on some of the most delicious, pure food on the planet. ¡Provecho!

MMXI

2011 New Year's Resolutions:

1. Live to see 2012. Sounds easy, or fatalistic, depending on how you want to look at it, but face it: every one of 'em is a gift, so enjoy it. Which leads me to numero dos...

2. Fish as much as possible, as many places as possible...ideally with my old man, whenever possible. Because you never know how many more fishing seasons you'll get together. See above.

2. Kick the can. I've quit Copenhagen snuff before; weird thing is I find it necessary to quit again. So, I'm more focused this time, more "dissiprinn." Wish me luck.

3. Resuscitate some semblance of life back in to this web log. I used fishing season as an excuse to not write about fishing season. Then school got in the way, despite the fact that most of my course work involved writing things like short stories, features, blog posts, you know, stuff like that. Well, school's a done deal and it sure as hell isn't fishing season judging by the fact that right now Missoula looks like a giant snowman crapped on it. I can't guarantee any regularly scheduled postings or any such BS like the real bloggers offer you, but I can assure you I'll try to be more frequent in my own personal brand of BS on a somewhat to completely irregular basis. Sometimes I just don't have anything to say to the intranets. I think we'd all be better off if more people in the world felt that way.

4. Claim it. Because as Warren Miller likes to say, "If you don't do it this year, you'll be one year older when you do."

An untimely update.

Alright, I'll admit I've been a little lackadaisical in blogging recently. OK, non-existent. Bottom line: it was a busy summer, me and a bunch of other people were wrong about the water thanks to A TON of rain during April-June, and the fishing was great, albeit odd. Hatches were stalled, if not "canceled" altogether, and up until just yesterday, we were still waiting for the first solid overcast of the fall season to bring on mahoganies and BWO's (at least with any consistency). Now that fall weather seems to be here to stay, I'd anticipate awesome dry fly and streamer fishing from now until it gets cold. Bow, backcountry, and waterfowl seasons are open, and the willows are turning yellow. Four days from now I can legally shoot technicolor ditch parrots. It's here, and it's all good.
Irregardless, I kept ya'll out of the loop (who are "ya'll?" No one reads this shit.) for the whole season. So there's no better time than right now, the start of hunting and steelhead season, when all the really beautiful things in the western US are happening, than to reflect on a season of trout fishing with some gratuitous hero shots of some of the more impressive fish that made the mistake of eating my flies this summer. Enjoy, and in the coming weeks make sure to take advantage of all the stuff that doesn't have ice and snow on it yet.

Tailing Loops

Observation: I'm slipping. There was a time when I proudly placed myself in that now so often-overused category of trout bum; I didn't make any money, but I also didn't have any real responsibilities that prevented me from fishing eight days a week. Although certainly not the best trout fisherman in the world, or the county, or even this neighborhood (you have to consider my surroundings. Insert appropriate Norman Maclean quote here), I was good. Really good. If practice makes perfect, I was doing my best to achieve a perfect 10 in the trout-nerd subculture.

Fast-forward 49 dog-years. My obsession and "drive," if you can really use that term in this context, has kept me in the Big Sky where I'm managing to scratch out a living rowing boats and keeping people alive and entertained while they catch some trout. A lot of folks say I've got the best job in the world. I agree. Taking people fishing and introducing them to an activity I feel so strongly about is the most enjoyable thing I've ever received a paycheck for, and even if it comes with it's share of ups and downs, there's nothing else I'd rather be doing.

The fact that I love my job is not the point here, however. The point, per se, is that while I have managed to pay the bills while working in the fishing industry, all while continuing to live in the best place in the lower 48, the amount of time I spend actually fishing these days is surprisingly low. And it shows. Sure, I get out this time of year, when the warm weather melts away the seasonal affective disorder and the first stoneflies of the year begin to die untimely deaths in the mouths of hungry, heartless predators. Every spring I'm reminded of why I love this game when I see my skwala disappear in a confident boil: the first dry fly eat of the season. It will always be fun.

But I'm also reminded of how quickly one can fall from grace without practice. I haven't forgotten how to cast; the fly still gets where I need it to be, it just isn't very pretty (I'm a big fan of the overshoot-drag-mend-it-in-to-the-spot technique). And it's not a matter of knocking loose the cobwebs, breaking in to my stride just as the salmonflies pop, because there won't be any time for cobweb-clearing. About the time I remember how to not throw a tailing loop in a 30 foot cast and the big bugs start crawling down my neck, John and Jane Doe climb in my boat, and they don't leave until October. John and Jane don't let me fish very much, and they shouldn't, because this is their time on the water and I need to make a living.

Where this leaves me by mid-season, however, is sitting in my office chair with a fairly comprehensive understanding of where the fish live and what they want to eat, but with a personal inability to catch them myself. I can row the boat for days on end without tiring, and tie blood knots with an efficiency that surprises even me sometimes. But ask me to stack mend a drift in to a pod of risers and you might as well throw a lit quarter-stick of dynamite at the lead fish's nose and hold your breath.

There's an old motto in the guide community that you never want to make a cast with a client's rod, even if they ask you to for demonstration purposes or otherwise. The assumption being, and I've seen it happen many times, that even if a trout hasn't made an appearance all day, as soon as the guide makes a cast, a fish will eat the fly. This can brighten some client's spirits, inject them with a renewed sense of confidence, and place you on a pedestal of Poseidon-like stature in their minds. Or it can piss the fuck out of them and you can kiss your tip goodbye.

I think when it all boils down, however, the real reason behind this old rule of thumb is most guides just don't want to show their clients how bad we actually are with a fly rod in our hands.