The Underground’s Montana Fly Fishing Road Trip Wrapup

Original Post:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TroutUndergroundFlyFishBlog/~3/338324877/

I’m still knocking Montana dust off my fly fishing gear, and it’s already time to pack it up for a quick visit to Maine.

First, always bring duct tape. Always.

Sometimes a road trip to a famous place acquires a surreal patina; you anticipate it like a kid anticipates Christmas, and while you’re fishing, you’re trying to experience everything fully, measuring your experience against what happens at home, and when you’re done, the life you’ve built for yourself is just waiting there, pretty much like you left it.

The transition from one to the next requires a little recalibration, especially when the place you fished is fly fishing’s Disneyland (only with wolves and 100 year-old freshwater mussels), and home is no slouch on the fly fishing front either.

In truth, Missoula’s a town like a lot of other college/ag towns, though when you exit the freeway into town and your windshield is so smeared with bugs from the evening Clark Fork caddis hatch that you can’t read the street signs, you know at least some of the hype about the place was true.

Below are a few pictures that simply didn’t fit anywhere else.

That’s not to say they’re beautiful or scenic like most of the photographs I’ve already posted, but they’re representative of something. Enjoy.

John Gierach wrote repeatedly about the giant lake caddis. Now I’ve seen it.

Club Moderne in Butte, MT
No, we didn’t go in; we admired this Butte, MT bar from a distance.

A westslope cutthroat trout
We got tired of dropping trout we were trying to photograph, so…

Fly fishing a small Montana meadow stream
Waiter, lunch rocks for two…

A fly box jammed with streamers
This is what a madman’s streamer box looks like.

fly fishing a tiny Montana meadow stream
Sure, I already used this one, but liked it enough to run it again.

This one too. That stream was unforgettable.

I appreciate all your comments on my various Montana Road Trip posts. I’m glad I could share it with you, and hope that - while the summer’s still young - everyone sneaks out and fishes somewhere beautiful.

Which is my queue for one final image:

Montana Sunset