With Bob, we floated the maiden rock canyon stretch of the Big Hole, a winding seven miles that took eight hours to fish at a fairly leisurely pace.  Now, we all experience times when water conditions are perfect and we’ve got the perfect match for a hatch, yet the fish won’t cooperate with even the best casts.  It’s a curse Meriweather Lewis wrote about when he was in the area: “We see a great abundance of fish in the stream, some of which we take to be trout but they will not bite any bate (sic) we can offer them.”
That’s the kind of fishing we experienced on the Big Hole.  It was made more difficult by low water resulting from “de-watering” and the proximity of three other drift boats fishing in the same areas we were.  De-watering, in case you were wondering, is a euphemism used by the government and ranchers for taking water from where God put it (in the rivers for fish and other aquatic life) and diverting it into fields for crops and livestock.  As Bob said, this will go on until some stiff-spined judge has the courage to stand up to the ranching industry. Despite the low water and the presence of other anglers, we still take quite a few fishing success out here tends to be a bit different.  Bob had two clients out the following day, Andy and Joan Pflueger (Andy’s grandfather founded the Pflueger Rod and Reel company) of Newport, California, who had a more typical day.  Andy caught quite a few large fish, including two, twenty-inchers. < previous - next >