Christmas on the Bighorn

Bighorn Brown

Less than an hour east from where Custer and Sitting Bull collided lies the sleepy town of Ft. Smith, Montana, home to the Yellowtail Dam, a few fly shops and the legendary Bighorn River. Constructed in 1961 primarily for flood control and to enable irrigation to reach the semi-arid farmland of the Bighorn Basin, the dam resulted in what many consider the most prolific trout fishery in the lower 48 states.

The truth is, actually, that the fertility of the Bighorn and its adjoining farmland extends far beyond the fishery, as a trip to Fort Smith and it’s downstream cousin St. Xavier will reveal. I spent two days there over the holidays, the only one fool enough – according to most of the members of my family – to float the river in the dead of winter.

Bighorn River - Should Have Been Here Yesterday

Bighorn Brown

I Shut the lid on the Dell Intel inside for a few days. Once again, I found myself in the Red Headed Step Child’s F-150 – this time heading east. The day was perfect: warm and calm, but three and a half hours had left me with a sore neck and left butt cheek that had dozed off about 150 miles back on I-90. We pulled into Hale Harris’s Bighorn Trout Shop. We said hello. Hale’s face said it all, but he reaffirmed it by asking us,

“Have you guy’s ever heard the term, should of been here yesterday?”

Bastard. Of course I heard that one. But I like to be the one to say it… Was that the sympathetic way of saying it? Or was that Hale just being creative. Either way his message was no joke. They were ramping up the flows out of the dam from 3000 cfs to 7000 cfs over the following two days. What a crock. What were the chances? Under ordinary circumstances, The Bighorn River should be one of the finest trout fishing streams on the planet, but this guy was telling us otherwise. Alright, we’ll see about that…

The drift started out well. New water, drifting, casting moving some fish. Most of the guides were pulled over nymphing the various riffles and shelf drops. We floated on by. Jed hooked a couple fine fish before he took over on the sticks. The water was clear providing a windexed window to the bottom and the hordes of trout lazily spooking off the bow. We drifted along a shallow, graveled bank where I began an all out streamer assault. Immediately the shadows lit up, came alive. The browns were everywhere in there, jetting out with gumption from their holds but then throwing it out the window when the time came to fully commit. I rubbed some river salad on the bug to cover any bad aromas, but still only managed to sting a few. It was a wonderful few minutes of fishing – to be able to witness these fish shooting out of their holds like bottle rockets.

After a couple of hours and a few fish later, the river turned into a real mess. It was like all the vegetation in the river had been put in a blender and whipped up into a frothy goo. Like a crouton in the heart of a giant salad, we continued on down the additional 8 miles to the take-out.

Yup, “Should have been here yesterday.”