The Beaverhead is a big-fish factory, producing an astonishing tally of 400 toads (two-to four-pound trout) per mile and another 100 over five pounds, not to mention the more than occasional eight-pound-plus mesomorph. If you want to rack up a body count, this is the place to do it. There are days on the Beaverhead when you can hook so many trout it takes on overtones of wantonness and debauchery, a type of fishing frenzy the local guides call "whoring".
Equally as loopy and meandering, the Ruby is a downsized reflection of the Beaverhead. On the other hand, the slower-flowing, far more constricted Ruby is a stream clearly more agreeable to foot traffic than boating. Forming an intimate corridor of sedges, willows, and cottonwoods, the Ruby slinks and kinks across an extensive alfalfa-field plain. In late summer when the hoppers are on, there's no place like the Ruby. A half-mile of stream is enough to keep a methodical angler busy all day. And when the Blue-winged Olives pop, scores of trout suddenly appear in confines of water you'd swear only moments before were as fishless as a freshly waxed bowling alley. < previous - next >