Mother's Day Caddis

Every year in SW Montana, the Mother's Day Caddis Hatch marks the end of spring/winter and the beginning of good fishing (minus the tourists). Of course, it usually doesn't happen ON Mother's Day...but this year it did! Or at least the day before, which is when C-Dog (Chris) and I decided to do a combo-fish adventure on the Lower Madison: wade fish it Friday night after work, and then on Saturday do a crazy float in the kayaks from Greycliff all the way to Three Forks (12.5 miles).

Friday night was good fishing and there were many caddisflies about. I had several strikes but missed them all. Chris caught 3 trout!


This is a classic view of the Lower Madison from where I was fishing:




And here is Chris downstream, catching:

So the next day we loaded up the kayaks and drove out to the put in after leaving Chris' car down in Three Forks:

We rigged up the kayaks and began our epic float (at 1pm). The main problem with the float was that there were so many places to stop and fish that by 4pm we had only gone like 2 miles! Not good. But how could you not stop?


Eventually we had to high tail it down to Three Forks, so we actually started paddling. We just made it to the take out at I-90 at 7:15pm. Chris had to drive back to Greycliff to get the Canyonero so we could rack the kayaks. We didn't get home till 10pm! But, while I was waiting I got this awesome pic of weather moving in over the Bridgers:





All in all, an epic day! Although, in accordance with a disturbing trend Chris caught all the fish.

Spring Kayaking

No, not the crazy whitewater-type of kayaking. This was early May when Ghetto-C (Chris) and I decided to take our new (ok, used) touring kayaks out for a spin on Cliff Lake to catch some early season trout.

The down side was we got to Cliff Lake and it was still semi-frozen over. Fortunately Wade Lake is only 1/4 mile over and was wide open so we put in there.

Here is the new kayak rigged and ready to put out at Wade Lake on its maiden voyage:

Cliff and Wade Lakes are really cool lakes in SW Montana. They are pretty decent size but not huge, and are fully surrounded by National Forest land so there are no Dave Letterman-style "summer homes" dotting the shore. In fact, they are kind of remote and out of the way. Nonetheless the fishing is good, and they feature many bays and coves where the water becomes shallow and crazy tropical-colored. It's almost like flats fishing as you hang tiny chironomid patterns below an indicator on these flats and wait for the spooky fish to strike.

And strike they did! After a couple of strikes and fish landed (including a 15" rainbow I caught) we took a break for lunch. Here I am digging out a beer, you can see the crazy water color in the background:

It was rather cool (50 degrees) and becoming kind of breezy and cloudy, so after a few more hours of circling the entire lake and Chris catching more trout, we decided to head back to shore. Here Chris paddles across the middle of Wade Lake, the dock is on the far shore almost directly behind him:

All that was left to do was to get the kayaks on the Canyonero and start the drive home. Good times!