Dear redneck..........

red neck fishing retreat available now...

              Don't get me wrong some of my favorite people are rednecks.  Let's see, there is Jesse AKA the dog, drives a diesel F-350 and works in a gun manufacturing plant. There is my wife's "new old cousins" whom she "found" on ancestry.com, that live in North Carolina. Also her cousins back in New York.  Not to mention many folks I hung out with crab fishing in Alaska.  I get along with all these people, especially Jesse who I have known and fished with for years, (see blog post numero uno for more info on the dog).

the log in question is middle right, (notice the Pooper sitting on the hill)

So when one day when I was fishing the Thompson I pulled into a campsite to fish one of my favorite holes (the "upper camp hole" I call it). Something caught my eye, and written in sharpie on a dead tree/log was the following;

Some sage advice from some unknown author

I searched the internet for rednecks and it mostly said that rednecks were basically "poor white people from the south with prejudiced attitudes. oh yeah, and lots of pictures of mullets and mud bogging. I do know one of my favorite songs is Jerry Jeff Walkers' up against the wall redneck mother, but I think he was from Texas so it makes sense to me.

notice the "rod buddy" rod holder, my best present ever!

Though all this redneck stuff sounds like a slam on people that drive pickemuptrucks and have more ears than teeth, I think the joke is on us, because it seems that redneck is becoming cool and profitable. Just look at the mass of redneck stuff available to the American consumer for instance cabelas is all about outfitting everybody in camo everything. There are even some folks getting rich on redneck, how about Duck Dynasty.

Even the most Redneck of us all has to love the Camp Hole

While I think this is great; I remember people have been getting rich off all sorts whacko ideas and fads for a long time, like hula hoops, pet rocks, and the clapper. Maybe with a little more cash they will cease to be redneck. However, for the most part I think it is wise to remember the words of some unknown graffiti scribbler on the Thompson River........ "just stay home and try not to have sex"

I didn't photoshop the "clean up" part out, as, it also sounded like good advice.

Hermit out!

The Montana Fishing Hermit Goes East

the resplendent bride and groom

I titled this post The Montana fishing hermit goes east, but in all fairness it should have been something more like "The world announces the splendidly new Dawn and Dan Crouse".  Since our reason for for going east was my brother in laws wedding,  However, my wife is pretty smart and knows if she throws me a bone in the from of fishing possibilities it's easier to get me on-board. I only know of two readers of my blog, at least two that will call me on not posting, one of them is my father in law John (see below) the other is Ron Johnson back home in Montana.  So I promised John a good post from his home state, once I got back to Montana. The reason it took so long was I wanted to do something different. I decided on a Newsletter, and while it only took a day or so to finish it has taken a couple of weeks to figure out how to put a publisher file into blogger. I think I finally have it you just have to click on this link to see the fruits of my labors. I hope...

Montana fishing hermit newsletter #1

lovely wife Julie, brother Dave, her mom Sue, dad John, sister Lizzie, brother Scott, yours truly

So I did my research on NY fly fishing and found out that Roscoe NY is the self-proclaimed Trouttown USA, and that it was the birthplace of American flyfishing.  One would think my kind of place, except every thing I read said these rivers were "highly technical fisheries". In my experience this meant slow moving streams, 7x tippet, fish that have seen every fly known to man, and fishing arm in arm with your neighbor.

think these East Branch of the Delaware fish knew I was there?

The Beaverkill was a happy surprise I found cold water lots of current and not nearly as many people as I might have expected.

yay! Fishing the beaverkill near Roscoe NY

old bridge over the Beaverkill

In case you didn't click on my fancy link I figured out how to do, one of the best things about fishing the Beaverkill is you don't really have to start fishing until 7 or 8 in the evening, when the hatches come off, which gave us plenty of time for our second favorite activity. Beer drinking! 

whoopin it up in Trouttown.

 If you want to see how my fishing went or about my pilgrimage to the Orvis headquarters in Vemont you need to check out   trouttown fishing 

yours truly enjoying a fine "Trouttown brown" ale, while he waits for the bugs to fly

The best Fishin' Dawg ever

I remember after a spring weekend, before Julie had come up for the summer, somebody asked what I did on my days off?  

fishing the Laramie river in Wyoming

That's easy, I went fishing of course. Where? in the water. did you go alone? no, with Maggie.  Who is Maggie?  She is my friend.   Oh, she's your dog!  Shhh. she'll hear you. and yes, Maggie is our dog.  you have probably seen her in most of these posts (black dog, white paw, usually has a stick nearby), next to maybe beer we take more pictures of her than anything. 

Sticks are Maggies' bag!

While I will admit, I do enjoy answering questions in a way that tends to confuse some people (I think it comes from my years of serving drinks to Canadian golfers), I truly don't feel as if I am fishing alone when I'm with Maggie, AKA the Pooper.

We have had so many adventures together I could fill up a good deal more than space than I have here. One of my favorites was: while fishing the South Fork of the Flathead, I was wading in the middle of the river, and all of a sudden I hear a big commotion coming up behind me. I turn around and see a big ole moose heading my way, with Maggie in hot pursuit. The moose sees me and decides he would be better off on the other side, so he turns 90 degrees and starts across the river, thinking he could shake her from his heels. Not so fast, Maggie without missing a step launches into the river in hot pursuit, and would have kept going except I yelled and told her "leave that darn moose alone".  Only Maggie knows what she would have done with him when she caught him.

Maggie directs the way down the South Fork of the Flathead

Our faithful hound unflinchingly guards our dearest possession.......... The Beer!

When Maggie was new to the fishing game, we went on a road trip to go fish the Upper Sacramento River, In California. I remember when I showed up my friend Ben eyed Maggie,  and said,  "there's two kind of fishing dogs, what kind are you?"

Happy as a clam in "her" seat

romping on the North Platte....... look out for the steaming bear poop!

 Over the years she has proven over and over she's the good kind of fishing dog.  Give her a seat of her own in the raft and she will be content all day.  From swimming through the whitewater on the Blackfoot, to cowering during a biblical sized thunderstorm on the Big Hole she has definitely  proven over and over on the rivers of Montana (and just about any other western state you can name) that she is the GOOD kind of fishin dawg. 

From the forests........

                           to the mountains............

to the great deserts...................

and from sea to shining sea........

There may never be a finer fishing dog than the Pooper!

I always have bear hugs for the pooper.

"Friends for life"   Camping with Maggie and Annie 

"fishing" on the Thompson

where's Maggie?

The end

                                                                      

The second weekend (don't you wish you could have it all?)

        I'm sure most anyone who fancies themselves a fly-fisherman has seen "A river runs through it"  The river than ran through that movie they called the "Big Blackfoot", I guess so as to not be confused with the Little Blackfoot, even though I heard it was mostly filmed in British Columbia.  One would think with all the pub the Blackfoot would be overrun with sage-wielding dry fly purists, and movie critics alike.  That's what my fishing friend Jim and I figured would be happening, so in order to avoid that, and the "tuber-hatch" downstream, we opted for a lesser known float to do an overnight trip on the Biggest Blackfoot.  

get out of our way if you see us coming!

       More on Jim later (Julie calls him my "rich boyfriend")  suffice to say he is usually game for whatever hair-brained idea I come up with.  Most times we catch fish (Missouri day 1), sometimes we just enjoy the scenery (the Smith river sure is pretty), sometimes we get stuck in a blizzard (Missouri day 2), but it all works out in the end (MNF at the bar at Clearwater junction). So floating his monstrous pontoon raft through uncharted (by us) waters was par for the course. 

still for sale, not the cow the store

           One advantage of floating the Blackfoot is as far as drives go it is one of the nicest in Montana, highway 83 through the Seely/swan and then to Ovando. Once we get to Ovando we check with the fly-shop to see if they knew anything about this float (they didn't), then call Leroy for a shuttle, they were awesome, even parked the truck overnight in their yard so it didn't have to stay for 2 days at the take-out. time to go to cedar bridge.

you sure all this is gonna fit?

We loaded the already heavy raft with about 500 pounds of gear (beer is heavy, even bud light, which Jim prefers)  We have done the first section, Cedar Meadow to Potter bridge before. It's about 3 miles on the road but 6 on the river. Fishing was slow but, Jim did hook a nice fish nymphing and while he was reeling him in another fish ate his second fly! Now he has two fish on. He did manage to land the smaller one of about 17 inches.  Don't get me wrong,  I have seen doubles before but never two fish that big.

The Blackfoot is awesome!

As we float past Potter bridge, I am just hoping we don't have to portage our big old boat too far.  Once you get out of around the corner from Potter bridge there are a few good holes and one of the most picturesque farms you will ever see. then it's into a canyon section that is one shallow riffle with big rocks to dodge, unfortunately it was getting towards evening and it was hard to see the rocks just under the surface so we spent quite a bit of time out of the boat pushing and pulling.  This section was also not the best fishing ever. Glad I did it, don't know if we'll back. 

You sure thats a fish , I can barely see it.

Finally we saw a couple of fisherman ahead, usually not a great sight, but this time a sure sign we were getting near River Junction. Here, the Blackfoot picks up the North Fork of the Blackfoot, and it will be easier to float with almost twice as much water.  Woot Woot we made it! Kinda feel like Lewis and a Clark....... kinda. We set up camp just below the junction, ate some tasty camping food, then tried to catch one of the fish that were rising all around our boat. Didn't have what they wanted, however. Oh well I'll just have to drink one more Double Haul IPA and turn in, could be worse.

Fish on!

 

         Day 2  We are out with all the guides,  the first boat passes our camp at 8 am.  Almost makes me wish we were back in the unknown section dodging rocks......almost. There is a super cool canyon section of the river between river junction and Scotty Brown bridge. I was rowing, Jim was nymphing (he loves to nymph, and will tell you that fish eat 90 percent of their food underwater anytime you ask), when all of a sudden I see a ginormous bug splash into the river, Salmon fly!  He struggles on the surface for a few seconds. then, chomp! Gets eaten! That's all I needed to see. We rig one of the rods with a big bug. First cast... fish. then another. for about the next two hours it's on!

we caught a few like this!

The Blackfoot is one of my favorite rivers in Montana to fish, because it flows through an area while not remote is definitely rural.  As my friend (and world famous folk musician John Dunnigan says, "through pastures heavy in hay" in his song about swimming, he means fishing, holes) This stretch is super fun to fish, because the river bed is basically bedrock. Over the years cracks have developed in the rock, and anytime you float your fly over these cracks the fish will come up and eat it. We land a bunch of nice cutties, then we are out of the canyon and its over as fast as it started.

After that we had to switch to small mayflies and of course the nymphing rod in order to catch a few more fish, if we wanted to stay out until evening it would probably get good again, but our beer supply is running low. as in no more, so it's time to call it a day and the end of my awesome four day, double weekend.

Whitefish range Montana

       You know, sometimes I get stuck in a fishing rut, and go to the same places over and over.  Now, when the starting point is Montana, almost any place you choose is way above the average river in anywhere USA.  The advantage of going to the same places often is one becomes familiar with the river, hatches, and watering holes of the familiar zone. 

sure is purdy up there in Montana!

 Well this is a story of my balancing act between two loves.  First of course, is my beautiful wife Julie, and the other is second best thing in the whole wide world.......... you got it fly fishing. 4 days off... Montana... summer... What to do? Gotta keep the missus happy..... but fishing would be cool, What to do....?  I know I can do both!

         

I call it the Montana double weekend, not to be confused with another of my favorite Montana doubles.

The folks at kettle house do it right! 

         Back to the rut thing I started with, it seems most of our camping weekends are spent on the Thompson river. this is because it is one of my favorite places on the planet, and Julie doesn't hate it because it is beautiful and there are good places to hike and run. (not to mention, but my fishing friend Jim just bought a cabin on the

Thompson, but that's for another time).  But this time we pack up the family truckster and head north instead of southwest.

On the divide

The big loop, up grave creek over the divide, down trail creek (yakinikak), to the North Fork

       First weekend an overnight into the Whitefish Range.  Camping at Tuchuck campground, up the North Fork of the Flathead, then 20 miles up trail creek road. 5 miles as the crow flies to Canada, this was the staging ground for many a mountain bike adventure in my younger days. A sort of young-life crisis of mine. When I tore my meniscus in my knee skiing, the doctor put the scope in my knee, and told me I had the knees of a 50 year old. And to make them "last as long as you can" So what was my answer to this news? well after the percodans ran out I decided I wanted to ride my bike (or sometimes carry it) to the top of every peak in the Whitefish Range. with people like Chris "tele" Miller, Crazy Joe (always the favorite for the "first blood award"), and Jon Pyle.  At least three of these rides were accessed from Tuchuck campground.  These included, Tuchuck Mtn, Review Mtn, and Mt Thompson Seton. I do have lots of pictures of these rides, but it was pre-digital days, so they won't be in this post.

since no one else was there we really spread out at Tuchuck Campground.

      
     Talk about isolated we saw no more than 3 cars once we left the semi-main road, and not one other person at the campground.  Since this is usually a fishing blog, I will say that of course I always pack some sort of rod, my big fishing moment came on day 1 when I caught a bull trout on a size 18 elk hair caddis in Grave Creek, unfortunately he was  under six inches. Still counted though.  

Fishing Grave Creek with Maggie.  

headwaters

  
 Generally tiny creeks = tiny fish

        At the campground Trail creek was closed to fishing, presumably to protect the Bull Trout. But, all I saw was cutties that time of the summer. I normally stop using waders in June, but I wished I would have packed them as trail creek couldn't have been more than 45 degrees.

who would want to fish here anyway?

         The next day we headed back to the North Fork, and decided to take a side trip to Canada (only about 5 miles out of our way), to the now defunct North Fork border crossing.  Which has been closed for a long time. I remember reading an article in the local news paper titled something like; "the loneliest job in America" or something like that. This article said some days zero people would cross and a busy day was six or seven.  All in All it is still very cool at the end of the road. My favorite is when you stand on the border you can look in either direction and see where they have cut down all the trees, maybe a 50 foot wide swath all along the border.

"Road don't go nowhere"

    

Don't even think about sneakin' into canada they have infrared sensors. Notice the swath in background

        As far as a "no-fishing weekend" maybe not quite.  But certainly nice to go explore the beauty of Montana off the beaten path and hopefully keep harmony in the family.  Oh yeah, we also had to observe another long standing tradition when adventuring in the Whitefish range. That is to stop at the Polebridge Mercantile for a wonderful fresh baked pocket sandwich and a beer, (we chose the Tamarack Hat Trick Hop, mmmmmm beer). 

Maggie, saving her energy for the next adventure.

stay tuned next time part two of my double weekend a seldom done float on the Blackfoot river.

Hermit out