Sunday, September 16, 2012

Bolero, Brown Trout, and a Couple of Careless Carp.

I love alliteration...

What's your idea of a perfect weekend?  Mine would consist of playing great music, and catching beautiful fish.  Turns out I had just such a weekend.  There's not to many places I can think of that a person can pursue both a career in music and still be minutes away from world class trout (and Carp) fishing.  Welcome to Montana.

This weekend I got the invite to play Maurice Ravel's Bolero with the Helena Symphony, a wonderful piece of music, and during my downtime I squeezed in some fishing, of course!

Helena Symphony, Getting Dialed In.
After a Saturday morning rehearsal I made my way out to Canyon Ferry Reservoir on the Missouri River to stalk some big Carp on the flats and (hopefully) catch a few.  Between the refusals, spooked fish, missed hookup opportunities, and tangled leaders, I managed to still stick a few.  Always a crazy as all get out good time.  Most of the fish hadn't got the memo that I had on the "Killer Fly for Canyon Ferry," but hey that's carp fishing, not for the faint of heart, or the sane......  I love it though, hmmm does that mean something?  My friends keep giving me strange looks when I get all excited, describing the adrenaline pumping action of fishing for carp with a fly rod.

Ol' Rubberlips.

With a look of perpetual bewilderment (The fish that is).
Saturday nights performance went off without a hitch and Sunday I looked forward to a day of fishing on what was one of Gary LaFontaine's favorite small streams.  I had driven by this meandering ribbon of water many times over the years and had never stopped to fish until now, boy have I been missing out.  What a beautiful place, and here fall is already several weeks ahead of the Bitterroot Valley.  Another cool things about Western Montana, if you want to fast forward into fall, just head east!  Anyway, this meant pre-spawn colored up browns ready to get after some streamers, and by streamers I mean a black wooly bugger.  After all, why should life be more complicated than it already is?

En Paradiso

What's Brown and Red and Gold All Over?

Please Sir May I Have Another?

Beautiful

Adios amigos.

Tell everyone you know, fall is here.

2 comments:

  1. The new look on the blog is looking sweet! Alec said you had some intrest in fishing this weekend. Hopefully we can meet up and get on the water.

    chris

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  2. Yes. Alec and I are planning on a float from Stevi to Florence on Sunday for some Trico, Pike-o action, and to stalk some sneaky side channels I know of for (hopefully), a toad brown or two. Did Alec talk to you about this? It would be great if you wanted to come! Later

    Bob

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