Montana, day 1. There's dumb trout here, too

Sunrise over Colorado

I finally arrived in Bozeman yesterday morning. After 22 hours of flying and waiting in airports and a 2 day layover in Texas that turned into a 3 day layover thanks to a missed flight. After I landed, I picked up my rental car, and went to go grocery shopping at the Bozeman Co-op, and picked up some camping supplies, a cooler, and a Montana fishing license.

The essentials

Then it was off to Dillon. I stopped at a fly shop in Twin Bridges to grab a few flies and find out if the Upper Ruby was fishable (it is, apparently) and managed to get a few hours of fishing in at Poindexter Slough. The first thing I noticed about fishing in Montana is holy shit, is it windy. And as soon as the wind dies down it's buggy. I'd never fished in wind like this before, but fortunately there were lulla, and afer a while it died down a bit. I was pretty impressed with my Helios 2 5 weight and its ability to cut through the wind, but at 9 feet it was probably a little too long for this river. Annoyingly, I didn't have any floatant, and kept forgetting to buy some, so I went with a chernobyl ant. Second cast in and I missed a strike. I made my way slowly upriver, scaring a few deer and pissing off a muskrat until I ended up at a nice tailout where the action stayed pretty constant. I'd end up missing quite a few more strikes, but I landed two browns, the biggest of which was 13 inches or so. It was nice to get the skunk off the trip so early, and I made my way back to the car with an aching back, scratched up legs, muddy feet, an assortment of insect bites, and a big stupid grin on my face because I just caught my first trout in Montana.

Back at the campground I treated myself to a luxurious dinner of elbow macaroni, canned sauce, and tuna. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow despite the 4th of July fireworks lighting up my tent every so often. Tomorrow, I'm heading to the Upper Ruby.