Montana, day 6. Splitting bamboo, and redemption on the Ruby

After a breakfast of fresh eggs and bear (or maybe caribou) sausage, I spent the day milling bamboo strips, and marking and splitting some culms. After that, I headed over to RL Winston to check out the museum along with the new guy at Sweetgrass. It was interesting to see equipment we'd just used that morning here under glass at the museum. Seeing photos of Glenn and Tom Morgan in their early days just drove home how lucky I am to be able spend a week here, and on a more somber note,a stark reminder that this was the end of an era.

In the evening I headed back to the Ruby with a wooly bugger. Even though I hadn't caught anything the night before, it's such a gorgeous, varied river that I had to go back. Plenty of fish were rising but I needed a confidence booster on this river, which is why I decided on a streamer. Swinging them through tailouts and around bends got plenty of interest, and at the end of the night as I made my way back through tall grass, hoping not to startle a moose, I'd caught 4 browns, the biggest being 15 inches, and missed at least twice that many strikes. A delicous dinner of venison stir fry and a few cold beers awaited me upon my return.