Posts from — June 2008

Unless its an obvious hatch, or just a lot of obvious bugs cruising around I usually just have a seat and retie a fly or tippet and almost always the bugs reveal themselves. I will find them climbing on my legs, or just flying down low where I wasn’t noticing them, or I see them back lit against a dark background that I couldn’t see while standing. They appear in lots of different ways but they seem to pop out of the woodwork if you get into their zone and try some different viewpoints.

Even big insects like this Golden Stone often go unnoticed unless you look hard for them. They aren’t always flying. This Stone fly was about as interested in flying as I was and I would not have noticed him if I had not stopped and he happened to find his way onto my leg.

With flows in most rivers still pretty high it never hurts to look into the smaller drainages that clear out fast and start slowing down long before the bigger rivers. This Rainbow, at 17 inches, came out of one of Montana’s smaller drainages this last weekend. The fish fell for a #8 BH Gold Hares Ear I was dredging a deep hole with. Bugs were moving, most notable were big Golden Stones.

One of the best stand ups and commentators on life as we know it, thanks for the fun George.

Governor Brian Schweitzer has put a six-month moratorium on energy leases on state lands along the Rocky Mountain Front. Hats off to the Governor for listening to the people and allowing time to find an alternative to wasting our public lands for the benefit of a few energy companies.

Ben Lamb from the Montana Wildlife Federation writes, “Developing some 800 acres will do nothing to reduce the price of oil, because it’s natural gas, not oil, that may or may not be located near the Front. Anyone who says different is pandering to the fears of a stressed population, and is making hay when the rest of Montana suffers for the benefit of an industry that is already running roughshod over the American public”.