Late May can be the slowest of seasons. Case in point: I was on The Blackfoot River the other day, but I didn’t bring my fly rod.
Despite being fly rod free, I finally did a thing. For the first time, I attended a gig at the KettleHouse Amphitheater. Les Claypool, Primus frontman, performed with that band, and two of his side projects, Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade and The Claypool Lennon Delirium.
It was outdoors and within casting distance of the Big Blackfoot and my daughter entered the Amphitheater wearing a Johnny Cash T-shirt, then sported a new Primus hoodie as we left. From this evidence, I can safely conclude I’ve done something right in the fathering department.
If there were a Mount Rushmore for country musicians, Cash would certainly have a spot, as would Claypool on the equivalent memorial for bass players.
May isn’t the best of times to be within casting distance of a Montana river, or anywhere in the Northern Rockies. May is the time of snow melt, and while high, flushing flows are essential for the health of trout rivers, they are lousy conditions to fish. I did catch the North Fork of the Shoshone River in Wyoming during an unexpected and brief period of dropping flows. There was a bit of a freeze up when I was in Cody last week, and that sent the river gauge in the right direction, for trout fishing at least.
The declining flows helped, but only a little. The fish were still holed up in the deepest runs and you pretty much had to bump them on the nose with your fly, but I did dredge up one nice cutthroat and was pleased getting well up the Shoshone on a lovely spring day.
I realize it’s a cliché to say it doesn’t snow like it used to, but that’s like saying the Sahara Desert doesn’t have much surface water when you apply it to the bleak conditions in Wyoming and Colorado. Wyoming broke all the records this year, in a bad way. At the end of March, the Shoshone River Basin had the second lowest snowpack ever. And a friend told me it was 80 degrees there on Memorial Day, so with that warmer weather the river gauge is headed back up, but not for long. Soon, what’s left of frozen river in that basin will have been liberated to work its way to Bighorn Lake.
Between sets at KettleHouse, I got a good look at the Blackfoot, and it wasn’t bad. Too high to fish, but the color wasn’t off. It’s about normal for this time of year, as is the Shoshone, this week. Last week, when I fished it, the Shoshone was about 1,000 cfs below normal on that cold-snap-induced drop.
Our river options are limited this time of year in the Rockies. If I was back home on the Plains, I’d be in the middle of the best carp fishing of the year. It’s post spawn, the water has warmed, and in late May and early June, carp there are about as willing to eat a fly as they are anytime of the year. Bass are on as well. The top water bite is a hoot if you don’t mind catching a baker’s dozen or two of 10-inch largemouth for every 2 to 3 pounder that slams your surface popper. I don’t mind.
There are lakes to target during high water and there’s northwestern Montana’s springtime old reliable, the Thompson River. We skipped the Memorial Day weekend crowds, but if the weather is decent, I’ll make my way west of town to revisit one of my all-time favorite small-stream fisheries this weekend.
In the meantime, I’ll make do watching YouTubers catching 30-inch brown trout in Patagonia and reveling in the impressive musical taste of my offspring.
That’ll do for the slow season.