Montana Grizzly Bear Attack

This week two campers were mauled and a third was killed by a grizzly bear just outside Yellowstone Park.  According to reports the campers were in three separate tents, had done everything right (such as how they handled food supplies) and yet each was dragged from their tents and badly attacked. The location was at the Soda Butte campground which is short distance from Cooke City, MT.  Jon and I are planning to spend the night in Cooke City so this really grabbed my attention.

                            

Here's an ABC news report on the event:  Bear Attack

In a separate event, noted naturalist and TV personality Jack Hanna also had a close encounter with a grizzly sow and two 150 pound cubs this week: Jack Hanna Encounter

Jack Hanna attributes his success in preventing an outright attack to the use of pepper spray, although it took three shots to do the job.  Mr. Hanna reported that this bear came straight at him and eventually got within 10 feet, weathering the first two applications of spray.  Most experts strongly recommend bear spray over the use of firearms.

Jon and I are fully aware of the risk of traveling in bear country and we will be doing so on several days.  While the odds of a bear attack such as the one that just took place in Montana are slight, it is still something that we will plan for.  Our plan is to purchase bear spray in Cody as soon as we get there and we will carry it whenever we are in bear country.  We think that a bear encounter a possibility in Cody and on our trip into Slough Creek.

Sync'd up with Ted

This afternoon the phone rang and it was Ted.  Ted has been a friend for a number of years and we have done a fair amount of local and southeastern fly fishing together.  That's him above throwing a big line on the Chattooga during the Delayed Harvest and, to the right, with a guide on the Tuckaseegee River in western North Carolina. As I recall, he killed them this day...and I didn't.  Oh well.

Loyal followers will recall that my Georgia friend Ted figures importantly in our trip.  Several years ago, he convinced me to give the fishing in the Cody, WY area a try.  Not thinking clearly, I planned to be in Cody just as the annual spring run off was kicking off and much of the fishable water in Cody was blown out.  While the boys at the Northfork Angler (that would be Guy-2nd from left and Chip- far right in the picture above) did their best to put me on fish, the trip (at least that segment of it) was a bust.  But Ted, who has guided in the Cody area for several summers, kept telling me that the fish were there and that I owed it to myself to try again.  And that's just what we plan to do...we'll be in Cody on day 4 and 5 of our trip and the fishing should be great.

So, we conferred about our plans and he reviewed the variety of rivers that we'd have available.  He described some epic fishing conquests and really had my juices flowing.  Ted will arrive in Cody a day or so after Jon and I arrive in Ft. Smith and the plan is to join forces the following Friday and Saturday.  I can't wait.

Montana Memories

When I am asked about my travels to the west, Montana in particular, I am flooded with memories of my many trips and of the incredible sights I have experienced.  This upcoming trip with Jon is a chance for me to revisit some of the sights I have experienced in previous trips, to forge some great new experiences and to (hopefully) get my son started with his love affair with the west.

I started going to Montana around 1992 on the advice of Georgia outfitter Ronnie Hall.  Ronnie had guided me several times on the Hiwassee River in Tennessee and kept telling me that I needed to try the fishing n Montana.  He invited me to come along with a group that would be based in West Yellowstone, MT and would primarily fish the Madison River.  The experience was fantastic and I was really "hooked" on the entire experience...the weather, scenery, quality of fishing...it was the real deal.

I remember driving back to Bozeman after our first trip thinking....I have to come back again.  And I did...in fact, that first year I went out west three times, the next year twice and the year after that I went twice.  I was blessed with a family and job that would permit such extravagance and I took advantage of it.  In fact, my wife Sherry agreed to honeymoon twice in Montana and I even talked her into rowing my drift boat for a while on the Missouri River.

Although I did manage to get in some fishing on these honeymoon trips, we did a lot of sightseeing as well, including a full day of driving through Yellowstone Park.

So, with just a couple of weeks to go before we depart for Montana, I am beginning to relive some of the experiences of prior trips and getting jazzed about seeing the sights again soon.

Bighorn River Flows

Over the years I have observed that tailwater fisheries (that's what we call river sections that flow "below" or after a dam) can be absolute fish factories.  The combination of (relatively) consistent water flows (so we generally avoid things like droughts and floods) and year round cool water conspire to create aquatic environments that are everything trout need to flourish.  The result can be a superb fishery-often presenting an angler with year round fishing opportunities.  Many times a tailwater creates a very viable trout habitat out of what would otherwise be a marginal/seasonal trout fishery (suited to "put and take" trout management) or more likely, a warm water fishery (with apologies to my bass fishing brethren).  And so many devoted trout fishermen flock to tailwaters because of the consistently high quality fly fishing that they offer.


The Bighorn River in Montana is just such a place.  In fact, many say that the Bighorn River is THE top tailwater in the US (with apologies to the Missouri, the San Juan, the Green River, etc.).  There is little room for any disagreement though that is is one of the best in the country.

In the picture above, you can see the mid morning 2003 Memorial Day drift boat flotilla beginning its procession down the Bighorn River...just below the Yellowtail Dam and the Afterbay.  Fact is, the Bighorn River is not a very well kept secret....at all.

Unlike a freestone river (in which the water flows can vary widely and are generally are a "force majeure"...a function of rain fall, snow packs, temperatures..all out of the control of man) the water flow in a tailwater is a precisely controlled, man made event...often left to the judgement of some sort of "water minister" who is in control of the dam's outflow.  And so the needs of the ecosystem below the dam (trout, aquatic plant life, insects, birds, crustaceans, etc... and oh by the way, the trout fisherman) are forced to compete with the needs of flood control, irrigation, power generation, and the boaters, home owners and fishermen on the reservoir that sits above the dam, etc.  Often times what is good for one stakeholder is not so good for another.  Whew!  Pity the guy controlling the flows...he's not likely to please all of these competing stakeholders.  However, it often seems that the needs of the tailwater ecosystem (and the trout fisherman) come in dead last.  At least that's the way it seems to me.

So, it was with great interest and fearful trepidation that back in May I began consulting the USGS website to see what kind of water flows were coming out of the dam above the Bighorn River.  As it turns out, there were, from a historical perspective,  monster flows coming out...nearly 10,000 CFS (cubic feet per second).  To put this in perspective, the river's "normal" flows (when I say "normal", I am referring to what I have personally experienced on this river over the 10-15 years that I have been visiting it) range between 1500-3000cfs.  So for the past 6 weeks the river has had 3-6 times the normal amount of water in it as (what I consider to be) normal.  Think of it this way....what was an easy-to-wade, knee deep run at 2,000 cfs was a raging, chest deep torrent at 10,000 cfs....powerful enough to knock you off your feet and carry you down stream.

Flows of this magnitude on the Bighorn mean that much of the "wade fishing" was impossible (because the added flows create a river that is much deeper than usual and often too dangerous to wade) and most of the fishing would have to take place from a boat.  While many anglers enjoy boat fishing, it is not something I particularly enjoy.  The fly fishing style I enjoy most is sight casting to fish...either to rising fish with dry flies or casting very small nymphs to fish that I have spotted feeding in shallow runs.  And I may just prefer sight casting with nymphs over dry fly fishing.  I know...it's heresy!

Noted Bighorn River guide Dennis Fisher (that's him above/ left) introduced me to this nymphing technique several years ago and I fell in love with it.  We would simply use his drift boat as a means of transportation...taking us from run to run.  Once out of the boat, he and I would slowly walk along a shallow run, carefully searching for a fish and once spotted, I would target that fish with a weighted nymph.  No need for strike indicators...just watch the fish turn its head, ingest my fly and "fish on"!!!   Land that one and go find another.  What a blast.  And this is the experience that I wanted Jon to have.

So, you can imagine my concern with these water flows of 10,000 cfs.  It meant that my favorite form of fly fishing on my favorite river was, in large measure, off the menu.  In all fairness, big flows like this are a good thing for a river if done for a limited time...the flows can flush out silt, debris and excess vegetation, clensing the river and actually improving the habitat.  It's just that this not how I'd like to see the river when it's my turn to fish it.  Yeah, I know....it's all about ME.

Well, I am delighted to report that this week the water ministers dropped the flows to a rather acceptable 5,200 cfs and the Bighorn Fly Shop (where we'll stay) expects that those flows will be further reduced by the time we get there.  Boo-yah!!!!

The Plan

On the morning of August 1, 2010 my 20 year old son and I will board a Frontier Airline plane in Atlanta and head west, first to Denver and then on to Billings, MT. This is a trip that I've thought about for a while and decided to finally bite the bullet and do it. Picture on left is Jon with guide Andy Brackett and a "pellet pig" at River North section of Soque River.

A couple of years ago Jon asked me to teach him to cast a fly rod and, as I expected, he took to it very quickly. In short order he became a beautiful caster (the boy is very athletic and this was not a surprise) and after a few trips to the Chattooga River

in northeast Georgia...Jon was "hooked" on fly fishing and on his way to becoming an accomplished fly fisherman. The beautiful male Brookie shown here was one of his Chattooga trophies.

This picture below shows Jon with a nice cast on the Delayed Harvest section of the Chattooga River...our favorite home water.

I often told him about fishing on western rivers (I've been fishing in the west for 20 years or so) and he was itching to see it for himself. Understanding that I probably wont live forever, I thought that this summer was an ideal time for the two of us to go.

The plan is to spend eight days fishing...three days on the fabulous Bighorn River, a couple days in Cody, Wy with our friend Ted (who has guided there), a horseback trip into Yellowstone Park to fish for Cutt's on Slough Creek and ending up in Livingston, MT for a couple of days doing whatever makes sense.

So, in about 30 days, we're outta here. Stay tuned.......