Various state and federal conservation agencies provide landowners with consultation and incentives for improving spring creeks. Bergquist estimates that about one hundred Montana creeks have been, or are in the process of being, “improved.” They are dredged to remove silt and create trout-holding holes. They are narrowed and bent and twisted to create gravelly riffles and quick-moving runs. Rocks and logs add eddies and pools. The banks are fenced and planted with willows to protect them from cattle.
Most improved creeks are privately owned. Some can be fished if you know the landowner. Such a creek flows through the property of the late Datus Proper in Belgrade. Datus labored for years with heavy equipment to make it a lovely, productive—and challenging—trout stream. It has an official name, but Datus called it “Humility Creek.” I can vouch for the fact that he named it aptly.
Recognizing the value of good trout water with restricted access, some ranchers lease the fishing rights to their creeks to outfitters. Lately, Montana entrepreneurs have begun building housing developments around spring creeks, much like Florida communities are laid out around golf courses. A stretch of Baker Creek in Bozeman, for example, has been improved under the supervision of the legendary Montana angler and outfitter Bud Lilly. Buy a house lot in the development and you can fish this pretty little creek whenever you want.
There are just a few fishable public spring creeks in Montana. Two of the best ones—Poindexter Slough in Dillon and Big Spring Creek in Lewiston—hold decent populations of trout and feature good mayfly hatches. But overfishing and overcrowding are significant negatives on all public trout waters, and especially on intimate spring creeks.
For decades, the Nelson, O’Hair, and DePuy ranching families in Paradise Valley have offered anglers first-come-first-serve, restricted-access, year-round, pay-to-fish angling on their marvelous creeks. For about a hundred bucks per rod, you are guaranteed an uncrowded day of high-quality angling for large, challenging trout amid glorious surroundings. I have always considered it a bargain.
In recent years, two other Montana ranch families have improved their creeks and adopted similar formulas. A few summers ago, Bob Bergquist introduced me to the creeks on the McCoy ranch in Dillon and the Milesnick ranch in Belgrade. They were lovable.
In the early 1980s when Poncho and Bev McCoy began ranching cattle on their two thousand acres in the Beaverhead Valley near Dillon, the two spring creeks that meandered through their property had been neglected and degraded by years of use and abuse. They were shallow and silty and barren of cover, and few trout lived in them. So Poncho, a former Olympic skier and an enthusiastic fly fisherman, went to work. He dug ponds, he dredged holes, he narrowed channels, he added boulders, he cut what he calls “squiggles” into the creek beds, and he converted rather sterile water into prime trout habitat.
In 1996 the McCoys opened one of their creeks and several ponds to public fee fishing. They opened the other creek to anglers in 2001. Today, their 3 miles of spring creeks and their ten small ponds are full of large, healthy, insect-eating, self-sustaining brown, rainbow, and brook trout.
I explored the McCoy creeks with Bergquist and a few friends for several days toward the end of June a few years ago. We rented the comfortable guesthouse right there on the ranch and fished ten or twelve hours a day.
Except for one blustery morning when I threw Woolly Buggers into a pond (and nailed several big rainbows), I had no reason to cast anything but dry flies. Sharing a one-and-a-half-mile beat of delicious spring creek with just one or two other anglers, I was able to find and stalk rising fish all day long.
Midges hatched in the mornings and evenings, and Pale Morning Duns came off sporadically in the daylight hours. These relatively lightly fished trout were not overly selective. If I covered them with a drag-free drift and a reasonable imitation, they usually ate. Black foam beetles worked all day long. On the ponds, the fish crashed adult damselfly imitations.
Trout that live in shallow water flowing through open flatland survive by remaining alert for predators, including two-legged ones waving sticks. Careless wading and sloppy casting spooked them every time. I wore drab clothing and spent a lot of time on my hands and knees.
The trout, predominantly rainbows, averaged around 16 inches. We caught many in the 18- to 19-inch range.
Truly monstrous brown trout inhabit the McCoy creeks. I spent the better part of one afternoon stalking what appeared to be a large fish that I’d spotted cruising a flat and sipping an occasional insect from the surface. He finally opened his mouth and sucked in the Comparadun that I’d cast 12 feet ahead of his anticipated path. He had a snout like a northern pike and measured 25 inches.
That fish was no fluke. The chances of catching a giant trout on a small fly at McCoy’s are legitimate. The week after I left, Bergquist told me one of his clients took a 27-incher on a beetle from the same flat where I caught my big one. An album in the guesthouse holds dozens of photos of anglers grinning behind the 30-inchers they’re holding up for the camera.
Poncho and Bev McCoy are committed to maintaining the quality of their fishery. They divide the creeks and ponds into two “beats” and restrict each beat to two or three anglers. Fishermen are urged to use barbless hooks, land fish quickly, handle them gently, and return them unharmed to the water. The McCoys close their ranch to fishing from October 1 to March 31 to protect spawning trout. During these months, Poncho continues to dredge, narrow, and add boulders and squiggles to his creeks. It can only get better.
A similar success story has played out in Belgrade, just a ten-minute drive from the Bozeman airport. There, on 1,400 acres of prime Gallatin Valley ranch land, the Milesnick family has been raising cattle since the 1930s. Two lovely spring creeks—Benhart and Thompson—meander through the property for 3 miles before they empty into the East Gallatin River. Over the years, savvy local anglers caught an occasional big fish from the creeks, but decades of overgrazing had left them mostly silty, wide, and shallow, and trout populations were sparse.
In the mid 1990s, Tom Milesnick, recognizing the fish-holding potential of his creeks, set about to restore them. He dug pools, narrowed channels, created riffles, points, cutbanks and bends, planted willows… and the trout moved in. Simultaneously, the Milesnicks developed an innovative grazing system that restricted and controlled their cattle’s access to the water and kept the creek banks stable and streamside vegetation lush.
A few years ago, both to limit the fishing pressure and to finance their restoration work, the Milesnicks opened their waters to the general public on a fee-paying basis. “Challenging” was the word I kept hearing.
A few summers ago I accepted the Milesnick challenge.
The Milesnick creeks, I soon learned, aren’t for everybody. In these intimate, smooth-flowing waters, the fish are as wild and spooky as any I’ve ever cast to. They demand long, fine tippets, drag-free drifts, careful casting, patience and stealth—and a good sense of humor. If you don’t think of it as “challenging,” “frustrating” might be your word of choice.
One afternoon when I was taking a break in the fishermen’s shelter, Tom Milesnick stopped by. He asked how I was doing. I told him that his fish were giving me a good education.
A smile spread across his leathery face. “Couple fellas who came this morning just drove away,” he said. “They were pretty mad at my trout.”
Besides the two spring creeks, the Milesnick spread offers 5 miles of private access to the freestone East Gallatin River, where challenged or frustrated anglers can rebuild their egos with more cooperative trout.
I swear that in two days on the Milesnick spring creeks I became a better trout fisherman. I learned to go slower, look harder, creep more quietly, and strategize my approach to every fish. The mostly 16-to 17-inch rainbows—plus one memorable 20-inch brown—told me I’d done everything right when they lifted their heads and confidently sucked in my fly. Every hooked fish felt like a triumph.
The way I look at it, that is the
ultimate in trout fishing.
PART III
WARM WATER
For the life of me, I cannot give bass their due and equate them with trout. I come closer to full appreciation whenever I can take bass on a fly rod, and I think there is good reason to prefer fly fishing for bass above all other methods. Explosive surface strikes add greatly to the thrills, and bass hooked on bugs or flies can give much better accounts of themselves than those punished and encumbered by the multiple hooks of plugs and spoon.
—Harold F. Blaisdell, The Philosophical Fisherman
I really think that the largest bass will come to the largest bugs, especially at dusk, at night, and particularly before there’s any light on the water in the very early morning.
—Nick Lyons, “The Bass Fly Revolution,” Field & Stream
Large-mouth bass hang around stumps and lily pads, passing the time of day. Small-mouth bass prefer rocky ledges. Ask them why and they hem and haw. Paradoxically, small-mouth bass fishermen tell bigger lies than large-mouth bass fishermen. Incidentally, the flavor of a large-mouth bass is vastly improved by popping it into the garbage can and going out for dinner.
—Ed Zern, To Hell with Fishing
Bass-Bug Humbug
“It is with some degree of trepidation that I approach the subject of artificial flies [for bass],” wrote James A. Henshall in his Book of the Black Bass, “for I am afraid that I hold some very heretical notions on the subject. But of one fact I am positively convinced, and that is, that there is a good deal of humbug on this matter.”
Henshall published his classic book in 1881, and the humbug has been proliferating ever since—especially about fishing for bass on the surface with the fly rod.
Thumb through a fly-fishing catalog or wander the aisles in your local fly shop and you’ll be astounded by the number and variety of bass bugs. There are poppers, chuggers, sliders, and divers made from deer hair, balsa, cork, and foam in myriad sizes, shapes, colors, and designs. Many are impressively lifelike representations of actual bass prey (fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects, mammals, worms, and even baby birds), and they come with imitative appendages such as wings, legs, arms, tails, gills, fins, antennae, whiskers, and eyes. Many offer additional options such as propellers, rattlers, lips, and weed guards.
These bugs are designed to catch fishermen, not bass.
The unwary bass bugger might feel compelled to buy several of everything in a full range of sizes and colors on the theory that you never know what the bass might want, and you better be prepared to imitate it. Many books and countless magazine articles have been written about the challenge of fooling selective bass and the importance of tying on the “right” bug.
Humbug.
The truth is, both largemouths and smallmouths will come to the surface to eat any old bass bug just about anytime, anywhere. If they don’t, it means they’re either not there or they’re in no mood to eat, and you might as well go home.
Trout, as we know, can be infuriatingly selective (although I have caught a lot of big ones on bass bugs that looked like nothing in nature).
Bass are full-time predators. They’re opportunists. All they want is something—anything—that looks alive and easy to capture and nourishing, and that’s the only thing a bass bug needs to resemble.
To be sure, some bugs are decidedly better than others. But what they imitate is the least of it. Tie on whatever you want, cast it to the right places, and rest assured, if there are hungry bass nearby, they’ll eat it.
If you want to buy or make a good bass bug, don’t fret about what it looks like. There are more important considerations, such as:
• Aerodynamics. Besides catching bass, the great fun of bass-bug fishing is identifying and casting to all those delicious targets that line a bassy shoreline—the pockets among beds of lily pads, the half-submerged trees, the dark holes under overhanging bushes, the shadows alongside boulders and docks. A badly designed bug (air-resistant wings and tails and other appendages, general bulkiness) quickly makes your casting arm ache and sucks all the fun out of it. Choose a light, streamlined bug that you can cast comfortably with a medium-weight (5- to 7-weight) rod. If you can’t find such a bug, you can improve the aerodynamics of a bulky bug with scissors.
• The burble. The sound of prey moving on the water’s surface, more than its shape or color, is what convinces bass to strike. You should be able to impart a variety of lifelike noises to a bug. Give it a sharp tug to make it go ploop. A twitch makes it burble, and with an erratic retrieve it chugs, glugs, and gurgles. You can create the widest variety of seductive noises with deer hair bugs.
• The flutter. Effective bass bugs are never entirely motionless. Even at rest they shiver, shudder, quiver, and flutter. A sparse, hairy tail and a few rubber legs improve any design.
• The plop. Actual bass prey fall upon the water with a muffled splat or plop. If your bug lands soundlessly, nearby bass won’t hear it. If it crashes to the surface, they’ll flee. Closed-cell foam and deer hair bugs make the best plop.
• Floatability. Like typical bass prey, good bugs float in, not on, the surface. But they should float all day. It’s hard to impart lifelike motion and noise to a bug that rides too high on the water, and it’s frustrating to have to change bugs because the one you’ve tied on has started to sink. Poorly designed hard-bodied bugs (cork and balsa) float too high. Loosely packed or insufficient deer hair soon becomes waterlogged and sinks.
• Hookability. The gape of the hook should be wide relative to the size of the bug or else you’ll miss a lot of strikes. Keep your hook points needle sharp. Mash down the barbs.
• Size. Under normal conditions, the size of the bug is not crucial. I’ve caught 5-pounders on bugs meant for bluegills, and 12-inchers on bugs the size of sparrows. Something on a size-2 hook for largemouths and a little smaller (size 1, say) for smallmouths is about right. Nick Lyons writes evocatively about the way big bulky bugs attract big bulky bass at twilight, and they surely do, although Art Scheck argues that those same bass would probably gobble panfish bugs that you can cast comfortably on a 4-weight trout rod. I think they’re both right and take the middle ground. On flat, shallow water, oversized bugs might scare bass. On choppy water, though, the commotion of a big bug helps to attract them.
• Shape. Bass guru Will Ryan chooses stubby bugs for shoreline fishing and sleek, tapered bugs for offshore reefs and shoals. He theorizes that bass expect to find wounded and disoriented baitfish offshore and terrestrial creatures near the banks, so he picks bugs whose shape suggests, but needn’t imitate, the predominant bass prey. This is a good theory, and it works for Will if for no other reason than it gives him confidence in whatever bug he ties on. When it comes to shape, though, the important criterion is still how well the bug casts.
• Appendages. Keep them sparse and soft for good castability and quivery motion on the water. Most commercial bugs are severely over-dressed. Eyes and ears serve no function except to attract fishermen, since bass can’t see the top of a bug from beneath it.
• Color. Frogs are green, baitfish are silvery, moths are white, mice are gray. All of these colors make good bass bugs. So do purple and chartreuse and pink and blue. From a bass’s viewpoint— looking up at the belly of a floating bug—it’s just a blurry silhouette. A spot of red on the bug’s “throat” might suggest flared gills and trigger a bass’s predatory impulse, and a pale belly resembles the undersides of most bass prey. Otherwise, because it doesn’t matter to the fish, the best bass-bug color is whatever you can see best on the water. I like yellow and white.
• Durability. Bass are toothless creatures. A good bug should survive the chomps of a dozen or more fish. The material it’s made from is less important than how well it’s made. The cork, foam, or balsa bodies of poorly made bugs can come loose and slide up and down the hook shank or even break off. Badly spun deer hair bodies will fray, twist, become waterlogged, and fall out. If you make your bugs yourself, you can attend
to the details that make the difference. If you buy them, you can’t be sure.
• Weedlessness. Bass, especially largemouths, lurk in and among lily pads, reeds, and other aquatic vegetation. A bug that slithers around, through, and over weeds and half-submerged tree branches and snags allows you to cast to the places where the big ones live. Weed guards are generally made from monofilament or wire. Bugs tied on keel hooks theoretically ride with the hook bend up. I’ve never owned a completely weed-proof bass bug. The annoying rule of thumb seems to be: The better they prevent snagging weeds, the worse they hook bass. I usually avoid weed guards entirely and take my chances unless casting among dense weeds is my only choice. Then I use bugs with monofilament loops tied along the bend of the hook and just behind the eye. This design is somewhat weedless and hooks bass pretty well. It’s the best compromise I’ve found so far.
• Materials. Spun deer hair, closed-cell foam, or hard (cork, balsa, plastic)—each has its advantages. I prefer deer hair. It makes delicious plops, ploops, and burbles. I imagine it feels like something alive in the mouth of a bass, it floats low in the water, and, when well made, it endures a day’s worth of chewing and chomping. I happen to enjoy spinning and trimming deer hair, which is not an inconsiderable factor. Closed-cell foam is hands-down the easiest material to work with. I can make half a dozen functional foam bass bugs in the time it takes me to make one good deer hair bug. If you like cabinet making—carving, sanding, gluing, and painting—rather than fly tying, by all means make your bugs from cork or balsa.
Each material has its small advantages and disadvantages, but all are minor compared to what the angler does with his bug— casting it close to shadowy shoreline targets on a soft summer’s evening, imparting enticing sounds and movements to it, and strip-striking hard when the water implodes and a big bass sucks it in.
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