What a beautiful day to be outdoors. It’s the weekend and not a cloud in the sky. High for today mid-seventies. “Yeah, so why did I lounge in bed for so long this morning before deciding to get up? So much for being that early riser I always brag about. No, seriously, why didn’t I get up earlier?”
All week I had been looking forward to this weekend. The temps are rising, no rain in the forecast, and everything is in bloom. Seed heads from various flora are adrift, wistfully floating through the air looking for just the right place to land, so they may soon begin to take root. I have to say, there is something calming about watching them cruise the air.
I finally dragged myself out of the door sometime past nine this morning. I honestly had no idea what stretch of river I was going to hit. It’s such a beautiful day, I figured I’d just let it be what it was and see what spoke to me. “Hey, I know. I’ll go to that place I drove by two weeks ago.” And so it was, I drove about six miles south, just beyond West Fork Rd. I pulled into the put-in site and saw a truck with a trailer sitting there. No doubt someone who was floating the river in search of a catch of a lifetime.
After a brief walkabout, I walked back to my vehicle for my gear. This was definitely going to be a wading situation. I donned my waders, strapped my wading boots on, grabbed my rod, grabbed my chest rig and headed out.
Making my way down to the river, the first thing I was greeted with was a raft with a guide and two fishermen. What a beautiful backdrop to this picture. It would be the first raft of many that would float by as I fished.
After they passed, I threw my lure out; a Rapala countdown 7. I worked a few seams of slower moving water meeting faster moving water… Nothing. On my last cast with the Rapala, I pitched it, but not before I dragged the water behind me with the lure thereby loading up the rod tip even more, so when I went forward on the cast, let’s just say I didn’t get a chance to release the line before the lure went zooming through the air. Yep, there went a perfectly good ten-dollar lure. What’s worse, it was the exact lure I wrote about previously that had fallen off my chest rig and I drove back to retrieve the next morning before work. That damn lure was determined to stay in the bitterroot and not go home with me.
I tied on a spinner and cast it into a seam I had been working. FISH ON! “Wow that fish crushed it. I worked the fish closer to me, where I was able to scoop it with my net; another brown but a tad smaller than the one I caught last week.
After a few more casts, I headed out. It was time for breakfast; a nice juicy ribeye. After breakfast and writing this article, It’s time to get back out on the water. “Oh, yes, sir, there be some fish wait’n on me.”
