Wetfly01
Member
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2011
- Messages
- 227
Just got back from Montana and man what a great trip. We spent seven days fishing the West Fork of the Bitterroot and seven day fishing Rock Creek. Just a brief rundown. First both streams are as slippery as all get out and a wading staff is an absolute must. The West Fork was running a little on the low side for this time of the year,but it was perfect for us. Weather was in the 50's in the am and mid 80's in the afternoons. Water temp was in the mid to high 50's.There was very little fly activity a few BWO's and Mahogany Duns. The stream is very comparable in size to the lower end of Penn's Creek. The West Fork gave up some beautiful fish, we landed some big cutthroats and browns and a few bull trout.
On day eight we headed over to Rock Creek by way of the Skalkaho Highway. Believe me I wouldn't call this a highway,more like a logging road. But the scenery was awesome. This route brought us in on the top end of Rock Creek and gave us a good chance to survey the stream from top to bottom. Rock Creek too was running a little low, but again it looked good to us. We were able to wade into all the good runs and pretty much cross where we wanted to. Weather was in the mid 30's in the am and afternoons were in the 70's. Water temp hovered in the mid 50's. Stream size was again about the size of Penn's. This place was just loaded with lots of cuttbows and rainbows and cutthroats and few browns thrown in. The rainbows fought like mini steelheads and the cutthroats were just gorgeous.
And yes, all of the fish were taken wet flies,(NO dryflies allowed). We used all of our patterns that we use here in Pennsylvania. It was an AWESOME trip,one that I'll remember for a long time. I would recommend these two streams highly on the list to fish if your planing a trip to the area. There very wadeable and there's good access to the streams.
It took me a whole year to plan this trip,and a lot of people gave me some good information. Including some guys from this forum. Brian McGeehan, DaveS, Bikerfish, Chaz, CLSports, Acristickid, Clarmy and a few others. Thank you guys for making this a very successful trip.
