Fly Fishing Montana 2020

Another Montana trip is done, I have been home a week and ready to go back again. Getting to visit with my son and enjoy Montana outdoors opportunities is hard to beat. This year's trip was a little different than years past. COVID-19 restrictions were at the forefront of my mind, not for fear of the disease but because of restrictions and quarantines in certain areas. Thankfully it all went well and other than some very turbulent and bumpy flights it was a breeze going through the new airline procedure and TSA checks.
Joe and I took a much more relaxed attitude this year. We have some very solid areas that we really enjoy fishing and we concentrated on those areas instead of spending a lot of time driving around Montana looking for new streams. With that said, we found three new streams that were absolutely fantastic that I will be fishing again the first opportunity I get.

I will tell one story about this trip that could have ended very badly. We planned to hike into a stream to fish that was in a steep canyon. As you can see from the picture the trail in a lot of places was very narrow and virtually on a cliff face. We hiked about 4 miles back and only found one place to get down with a hard scramble. Joe did catch this nice brown on his second cast.

We decided not to fish up the stream because we would have to walk back down it to get out. Tired from the trek in, I was pretty much just looking at the ground right in front of my feet and putting one foot ahead of the other. We were walking past an area that was weedy and overgrown and as I passed some weeds I heard a particular buzzing noise that if you have ever heard you tend to remember. I immediately looked back and Joe was doing his best ninja impersonation walking on top of 6-foot tall choke cherries and brush without even making them bend, I have never actually seen a human fly but he was doing a pretty good imitation. There was about a 2-foot long rattlesnake that I had disturbed when I walked by and had actually struck at Joe. Of course, if it would have bitten him it would have been very bad, in a steep canyon a long way from our vehicle, but if we would have been on a narrow section of the trail it could have ended very badly as well. Luckily neither happened and I shooed the snake into the brush with a stick, Joe got his heart rate under control and we continued on to the truck.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, we caught lots of fish, cooked some good food, and had a really good visit. I will let the pics and videos speak for themselves.

My Absolute favorite berries, thimbleberries.