Montana Fly Fishing, river flows, reports, weather, stock photography, fly tying and so forth…

This is a Soft Hackle Pattern I have been using in some local Montana rivers. Nothing special. Sometimes I dub a body, maybe some copper wire over it etc. When Caddis are around, tans, light brown, olive brown etc. Black seems to work well late evening near dark.

The biot body is something new I tried and the fish seem to really like it so I am tying up a few so I don’t run out- like I did on my last outing.

Hook:Tiemco 3761 (or whatever you like)

Thread: Olive

Body: Biot

Hackle (legs): Olive Partridge

Ok, I hate to put a chill on summer but the kids found this and it is to funny…

This is one of my favorite patterns, its a no brainer to fish for the most part and fish love it. It’s a very old pattern but effective pattern. You can use all kinds of stuff for the body and thorax, change the hackle colors etc. to imitate various insects. Tried and true- doesn’t light the river up like Disco light ball to catch fish.

Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks has published its proposed changes for the 2009 fishing regulations. At the bottom of the page is a mailing address and also an email address to submit your comments. All comments must be submitted by Sept. 12th.

Personally, I am getting really weary of all the rhetoric about the “endangered” Bull Trout. Creston Hatchery near Kalispell produces thousands of the damn things yet none are going into streams? Unless I missed the apple falling from the tree (or it missed me), in the case of fish, you stock a species and eventually they do or do not take. So, whats the flipping hold up?

Anyone that knows a bit about Bull Trout knows that they are the Char version of a Pike, in their feeding habits that is. They will eat everything. So, lets say we get the Bull Trout going again, what happens to the rest of the fish in the pool. Oh, they are an “indicator” species too. Basically, if they aren’t making it the whole damn watershed is a mess. But all their freshwater counterparts are thriving, Cutthroat, Rainbows, Cuttbows, Browns and Lake Trout to name a few. All of them but the Bull Trout.

In B.C. you can actively fish for, when I say actively, I mean pursue in the purest fishing sense, a Bull Trout. No big deal except that B.C. holds the headwaters of the Flathead river and Flathead lake where if you get caught catching a Bull Trout on the U.S. side you can be ticketed for “targeting” Bull Trout if your particular method or device doesn’t fit MTFWP protocol. Say a big streamer that could be used for a lot of things besides a Bull Trout.

In the meantime, all of those guys in B.C. are whooping it up on the headwaters catching fish that I could get busted for “targeting” or, I have to consider that he may be last of his kind possibly making the last voyage upstream. I guess if I want to “freely” fish for Bull Trout I’ll have to get a passport and do it in another country.

It doesn’t look like B.C. has an endangered Bull Trout problem to me, eh? I’d say the real landscape has a hell of lot less to do with Bull Trout than the political one, eh?.