Big Hole River 267 cfs Beaverhead River 567 cfs
To start with Wally and I had a pretty good morning on Friday. There wasn’t many spruce moths around but the fish still hit those type patterns. We were off the river around one and it had pretty much died by then any way.
Got a surprise call from Len Anderson on Saturday. Len was a former member of the Blue Angels and was part of that group Art and I guided a few years ago on the Missouri a couple days after they did their show in Helena. They were performing their air show this weekend in Bozeman. They had problems with one of the jets so they contacted Len back in Pensacola and asked him to jump into a spare F18 Hornet they just happened to have sitting around and fly it to Bozeman for the show. Len jumped at the chance to get back to Montana and being the bright young man he is with lots of forethought he stuffed his 5 piece 5 wt. rod behind the seat of the jet. He was at the shop early this morning and was eager to fish the Big Hole for the first time. The river did not let him down. It started a little slow and he missed a few fish and was actually worried about getting skunked. I didn’t say much but just smiled to myself and thought it’ll happen, and happen it did. For awhile there were so many fish rising he was getting dizzy trying to cast to them all. When we were in the boulders and pocket water he was going crazy trying to hit every spot. After high noon it slowed way down again and we were off the river shortly after that.
I see on the USGS site they added another guaging station on the lower river called the Big Hole below Hamilton ditch near Twin Bridges. This is the near the end of the Big Hole and only about a mile from it’s confluence with the Beaverhead to form the Jefferson River. It’s about time they started to keep an eye on that portion of river. The flow and water temp. down there this afternoon was terrible.