Day 8 Rest day

Day 8

Rest day

Nada miles 1

So much for rest that morning, I could hear pelicans bombing the water right outside our hotel room. Every couple minutes they were taking a fish from the river next to Hotel Serinidad. The sunrise was worth the wake up. A quick jet boil and we strolled out to the inlet, passing the military outpost near the airstrip. Interesting. J threw the flyline out and wasn't able to connect with anything. We all headed down to downtown Mulege to grab some pesos from the ATM, some breakfast (chiliequiles) and some more oil for oil change.

We headed down to Santispac, the colors ....wow.

Made a hammock buddy

The water was beautiful and perfect for swimming. The bar/restaurant there had beer, we took advantage of it. And then we proceeded to get burned as hell laying around in the sun all day. Everyone except for the ginger, Bombearo, who apparently thinks sunscreen is important? We talked to 3 people from Utah that had dingied in from a moored sailboat. They had flown down to Matzalan and bought boat, were sailing back north where they would take the boat out and trailer back to Utah.

J didn't bring the flyrod all this way for nuthin!  Look at this monster......a finespotted jawfish

We ripped the black trail back to Hotel Serinidad and had a marg and swim. Bill the local drinker informed us of a good place to eat that was running a chile rellano night. In! One of my only painful get offs would occur on the night ride back to the hotel, a sandy corner, darkness, shorts/sandles and too many rellanos = one gash to the shin.

Highlight 60 second video---use 1080p

[MEDIA=youtube]ms7OyUD9Im4[/MEDIA]

Makes you proud to be a Montanan

A great episode about Montana. Bourdain does it well just like he always does. He manages to interview/share food & drink with some of the great people of Montana. Not to mention shedding some light on the ever growing important topic of public land access.

Watch it, you'll be glad.

Bug hatch of epic proportions

Good god, this is a lot of bugs. Rock Creek's salmonfly hatch should be right around the corner. But at this point Rock Creek is flowing almost twice the normal flows, we've had a weird run off this spring. I would guess if the rain lets up, it will start to drop pretty quick.

A mayfly hatch along the Mississippi River was caught on Doppler radar out of NWS La Crosse on Saturday, May 29, 2010. The radar view below shows an image at 9:13 p.m. CDT.

The bugs are showing up as bright pink, purple, and white colors along the Mississippi River mainly south of La Crosse, WI. After the bugs hatch off the water and river areas, they are caught in the south-southeast winds while airborne for about 10-20 minutes.

Conflict of the seasons

Last Saturday proved to be too nice and a few of us took advantage of it. We ambled slow, very slowly down the Bitterroot. Crazy there was not a patch of snow or a piece of ice on the entire 5 hour float. But thats what you get when its 55 degrees in March. Not quite as warm as this 2008 trip

What season is it? Snapped these before leaving Missoula

Extreme MOP (Montana Otter People) Competition

X-posted from Flyfish Journal


It’s 5:30 a.m. here on the East Gallatin River about a mile from Manhattan, Montana, and Brad Colter is already in the water. Though the river is chilly with early-July run-off from the Bridger Range, Brad Colter is not wearing a wetsuit. In fact, Brad Colter is not allowed to wear anything. That’s one of the primary rules in the upcoming MOP competition. Brad files his teeth one last time, places his regulation MOP file by a beaver-chewed stump, then ducks under the deep water by a log jam.

A minute passes, then two, and just as I am about to head up to the Colter farmhouse to phone for help, Brad flops up on the opposite bank with a three-pound sucker in his jaws.

Brad is in training for the bi-annual MOP (Montana Otter People) competition to be held this August on the Smith River outside of White Sulfur Springs. While Brad holds the sucker to the grassy bank and strips its carcass with his teeth, he answers a few of my questions.

Keeler: How long have you been participating in the MOP competition?
Colter: Gack, hack, hack, spit, chew, gack.
Keeler: Brad?
Colter: Gobble, hawk, glorp, crunch, guzzle, spew, spurt. I’ll be right with you, spit, smear, wipe. Okay, what was the question?
Keeler: How long have you been doing this?
Colter: Doing what?
Keeler: Participating in the MOP competition.
Colter: This should be my fifth year, though officially it’s only my fourth. I was disqualified last year for biting an endangered west-slope cutthroat. The water was a little turbid and I couldn’t tell what she was till I had her in my teeth. I let her go but she left a blood trail and one of the officials spotted it.
Keeler: Who won?
Colter: Mildred Spunk. She ate four small whitefish, two medium suckers and a large brown trout.
Keeler: I notice you said, “ate” instead of “caught.”
Colter: Yes, catching is the easy part. Eating is where the skill comes in. You have to keep your teeth sharp, your stomach expanded and your digestive system in shape. In the WOP (that’s World Otter People) finals, a Japanese guy, Ken Nagano, ate ten large carp.
Keeler: Besides not wearing clothes and not eating endangered fish, what are some of the other rules for the MOP competition?
Colter: Well, we aren’t allowed to use our hands to catch fish, just our mouths, though on shore we can use our hands to hold them down while we tear off the flesh with our teeth.
Keeler: You mean you’re only allowed to swim up to a fish and bite it?
Colter: Pretty much.
Keeler: How is that possible?
Colter: Usually, I can do it by trapping them against a log jam or an undercut bank, though sometimes I’ll catch one sleeping, bite its tail and hold on.
Keeler: What prompted you to mimic otters in the first place?
Colter: I can’t say as I remember. Maybe boredom. Me and some of my friends used to get drunk and throw full beer cans from the sundeck of the Crystal Bar in Bozeman to see who could bean the most tourists, but that was too easy, and after a while we got tired of wasting good beer. Then one summer, maybe ten years ago, while I was jumping out from behind logjams to moon McKenzie boats, I watched an otter catch and eat a fish, and I thought, “Hey, I can do that.” After I tried it, it got to be kind of addictive. Then one evening while I was surfing the net, I typed in “barely legal,” and I found all these other otter people. Hurk! Hurk! Hurk! Buick!

At this point, I have to terminate the interview because Brad is blowing sucker chunks. It appears that Brad Colter still has some arduous training to do if he is to make a showing at the MOP competition this August.

Tortured feet and trout

As I write this, my blisters and toenail have finally started to heal from the hiking trip last weekend. A couple of buddies and I hiked into a drainage north of Yellowstone National Park. Our mission was to scout the area for the possibility of a backcountry elk hunt (during the rut), catch some fish and avoid being mauled by a grizzly. We hit the heavily traveled pack trail just a bit east of Jardine. The trail gained 1000ft and descended 2500ft over 12 miles. We took a nice lunch break on the pass and had the opportunity to watch a grizzly bear frolick through the meadow. It went something like - "Hey stop, whats that?" "I think its an elk butt" "Really?" "Nope, its a griz - shit". A shot of adrenaline hit our veins as we all checked our bear spray. Sixty yards was close enough. Five minutes later we bumped into another bear, this time it was a black bear only 25 yards off the trail, time to keep moving on.

The descent ambled through alpine flats, crossed streams, snaked through dark patches of timber and finally broke out into the open scorched area that had been burned in the fires of 1988. During the lunch break I noticed a few hotspots on my feet and liberally applied some moleskin. It seemed that both my street shoes and my socks had seen better days. I had a hole working in the heel of my sock and a chunk missing out the heel of my shoe. The downhill kept on pounding and the pitch also took a toll on my right big toe I would later find out.

We set up camp in a big meadow near the Hellroaring ranger station. With the creek nearby, dry firewood everywhere and 2 flasks of Crown we had no problem settling in for the night. The bells on the packers horses in a nearby camp clanged away under the starry night.

The next day we made a 8 mile loop further up into the basin to check out the fishing. Half way up there I again stopped to assess the damage to my heel. To my surprise I found a silver dollar sized piece of skin had chosen to part ways with being attached to my body. The next remedy involved what I should have done in the first place, duct tape. We hit the meadow in a high valley and stumbled onto another bear. This guy looked to be easily 300 pounds and was lumbering along next to the creek, as if looking for an easy fish. At first we thought he was a grizzly however after zooming in the photos I took, I think it might actually be a black bear. See what you think and let me know eh? After watching him wander off through the willows, we sat down to have some lunch. One eye on our sandwich and one eye over our backs.

A primetime fishing hole beside us cut the lunch short and we started to sample the goods. I think we pulled 30 fish out of a 75 foot stretch of river. They averaged 8-10" with a dozen or so at 16". All of them cutthroat with great spirited fights. The next quarter of a mile turned up excellent cut banks stacked with hungry cutties. We must have hooked 50 fish a piece with many more strikes and refusals. I had never experienced so may refusals, the fish would often times bump the fly once then hit again only spitting it out a second later. Patience was the key.

We followed the trail back to the trail and found that something larger was also using the same trail. Some bear tracks that measured up to my foot. Unfortunately we never did cross a single elk track or see any elk scat. We fished some great canyon sections back near camp and turned in for the night, dreaming of the 12 tortuous miles ahead.

The next morning I made one of the best decisions yet, I opted to hike out in my Chacos. With a piece of duct tape over the missing pieces of heel, it was money. It definitely proved that those sandals are a worthy tool besides just lounging once you get to camp. As it so often seems to happen, the rain began to fall on the hike out. But it was a perfect cool down to a 32 mile trip into paradise. The beers that put on ice at the trailhead......yeah they tasted okay.

7x tippet and #22 tricos

A couple people were in the shop, one man sat arms folded waiting on the porch looking as if he had been waiting a while. A lady stood behind the counter looking down at some papers. The proprieter and another man stood outside on the street, studying something in the bed of the truck.

I had talked to Steve earlier in the day and told him I would be stopping by. I milled around the shop casually looking at the antiques that adorned the small room.

Steve came inside from the street and finished his business with the owner of the pickup truck. A bright smile and a handshake greeted me, he introduced me to the woman as his cousin. Not wasting time we got right down to the details of why I had came. He laid out the time I needed to meet him the next morning and asked the lady to write up the directions. Next he shot into the requirements for the rendevous. The fishing mission was to be stealth, nothing but 7x tippet and #22 tricos. He spattered on about the required tackle as the man stepped in from the porch wondering when he would get his turn. Right now fishing was more important to Steve than selling another piece.

The next morning we sped south down the highway. Bursting out of the narrow Big Wood canyon we drained into the open irrigated valley bottom. The golden hillsides sat high above with cured grass and sage. The contrast was stark. Following the neat cursive directions we turned off on a dirt road and crossed a bridge over the meandering creek. A few anglers were next to their trucks pulling on their waders. The road edged along a newly swathed field of alfalfa as we neared the log cabin named on the paper. Above the cabin sat an old farmhouse with a panaramic view fit for a king.


The king sat on the front two steps of the house in fleece pants and a camo shirt. Fly boxes were scattered around with a few fly rods. We geared up and talked about the tactics. The fish would be smart and weary. We were going to have to fish down to them rather than attacking from the downstream side. Your position should be concealed if possible. And the presentation, well it had better be perfect.



We walked down the dirt road that led to the fishing access as we caught up on old times. A cool breeze rustled the willows that lined the sides of the creek. Flowing at the base of the Picabo Hills, this high-desert spring-fed creek attracts an abundance of wildlife. Silver Creek's globally unique aquatic ecosystem features one of the highest densities of stream insects in North America, which supports the world-class fishery.


Down at the creeks edge we sat and talked more
about the intricacies of the water. The fish were very smart as they got plenty of fishing pressure. To top it off the water was absolutely crystal clear. And further complicating things, the bugs the fish gorged on were frickin small. Today we would be fishing the end of the Trico's (mayfly) lifecycle, called the spinner. The trico's have hatched and they fall to the water, drifting and spinning along the water. The fish love the easy takings but are smart enough to pick out your imposter fly.


Steve was methodical in his fishing methods. He took out a notebook as we sat down in the grass. Next came the thermometer to take the temperature of the water. Fifty-five degrees, down ten degrees over the last 3 days. He surmised that the hatch would be starting a little later as a result of the subdued temps. In the meantime we watched and poked at the few fishermen that tried the waters in front of us. Steve explained that he employed more of a hunting technique when fishing. Choosing to fish only when he knew what the fish were doing (i.e. eating). This meant that we would sit for a while longer, awaiting the hatch.


The air slowly filled with small bugs hovering above the water. We screened the top water and picked up a few of the fallen tricos. The fishermen around us weren't having any luck. I watched as the one below us decided to move on, he turned his back and I watched at the fish began to top the water. Without hesitation I struck out for that hole.


The fish were beginning to slurp up tricos with a vengence as I pulled out my line. Casting the sixteen foot leader out across the corner I tired for the perfect drift. Again and again I put my fly out amongst the masses of real bugs that wandered on the water. I thought of it as a game of odds, sooner or later the fish's eyes would slip and they would hit mine. I missed a few strikes here and there. Finally hooking into a nice rainbow, he thrashed out of the water busting up the cloud of bustling bugs above the water. A nice 14" was more than a great reward, I figured that I would be skunked on this river for sure.


Driving back home we talked about the day and the frustrations. It had been a two fish day between the three of us. We did not "slay it" by any means. But with that said, it had also been one of my best days. The scenery and the potential was most impressive. The glassy smooth water and the finicky fish had been a real challenge. And the bottom line was that my cousin being one of the best fishermen I know had only caught one fish. I too had only caught one fish.. Tied up baby, until next time.

My quest to get sunburned

Hot Damn! It's a heat wave in Western Montana. We've had 3 glorious days of much needed warmth and sunshine. Today the temp got to 79! It doesn't take long to notice that people have been enjoying it, just look around at the sunburned faces. I noticed 2 different guys at a BBQ yesterday that had the tell tale signs of floating a river, racoon eyes.

Did I have sunburn envy? Maybe.....I thought about getting out on the river. T and I gazed up at the Bitterroots from our friends house in Stevi, missing that view that we too used to have. Not too long after that I got a picture text from my buddy, a new raft sitting his garage.

"4 hr Broot tomorrow?"

"Hell yes, I'm in"

And so my quest for sun began. Being that I really haven't done anything "outside" for 2 months, I was jacked. We got out of town on a leisurely pace and headed for the Root. I dropped J off at Bell Crossing, then I took the truck and trailer to the Stevi take out. I then rode my bike 7 miles back up to the put in.

Alas, the sun was strong, but the fishing was lacking. We got Skunked, with a capital S. We missed 2 fish and probably saw 20 risers. We both kept waiting for the bugs to turn on. We saw a few skwalas, but not a lot. We ended up trying everything, buggers, streamers, all the dries....nothing.

But I did get my sunburn, so who cares?