Finding Great Spots To Fish In Montana

Almost every conversation I have about fly fishing, fly selection or rod selection ends with “where is the best place to catch fish?”  My answer is usually a bit of a smart aleck answer, ‘in the water’!  In reality, you are not going to get anyone to tell you their ‘top secret’ spots.  Sure, you will get people to give you some decent spots, potentially even good spots from time to time. But you typically don’t get the great spots. But, you can do some work on your own to find those great spots.

I am fortunate to live in Montana for several reasons. One is that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has a great web page to get information from and is where I always start looking for new spots. MFISH, their fish finder section, is awesome to get you pointed in the right direction. You can find MFISH under the fishing tab on the Montana FWP web page or just Google ‘Montana MFISH’. MFISH allows you to search for bodies of water, areas and species in any combination you want. I can search for all tributaries that are part of the North Fork of The Flathead River that have native cutthroats or just rivers that have native cutthroats in Flathead County or just all rivers along the Flathead River.  If a good small streams flows into another good stream, you probably have a great spot to investigate. MFISH allows you to download the information to an Excel spreadsheet to sort as well.

To get started I typically select a ‘Hydrologic Unit Code’.  I pick the unit I want and usually leave the ‘Species’ blank. The next page allows you to pick what you want to see.  The top button is ‘Fish Distribution’ and gives you rankings by the FWP for how many fish are in that body of water. I download that to Excel.

Once I have my list downloaded I delete all the bodies of water that the fish are not considered ‘Abundant’ or ‘Common’, and delete all the fish species I have no interest in, like suckers.  I then turn to Google Earth. Over the last several winters I have spent several hours finding river confluences that have good fishing per Montana FWP, with Google Earth. Some look promising and I make a list of those I want to scout out. Google Earth is great because I can see bends and structure in rivers as well as depth, the darker the blue the deeper the water, and structure in lakes. This gives me a great idea where to start fishing.

The other great thing about Google Earth is that I can see trails, road side pull offs as well as old forest service roads. A pull off gives you an idea of where people pull off the road to park.  They are stopping for a reason.  Some might be because of great hikes. But a quick look at where the trail goes might give you information as to what the pull off is for.

Now the good part. You put in the time studying, now grab your forest service map go drive the road.  I pick five to ten spots to stop at and investigate on a trip. Some require short hikes some have no hikes at all. Sometimes I find pull offs that I did not see on Google Earth.  The first thing I do is roll down the window and listen for water. Then I look for a trail leading away from the pull off. A simple comparison to your forest service map gives you an idea of where the river is and how far away. I have found a lot of new spots purely by accident by just pulling off to the shoulder and listening and looking.

The work I put into finding spots in the winter with MFISH and Google Earth has lead me to some really good fishing spots. Trust me, those are not spots that I disclose to other people.

Fly Selection vs Fly Presentation

Fly Selection vs Fly Presentation

One of the questions I get asked constantly is what is the best fly to use to catch fish?  My answer is simple, stick to the basics and focus on presentation. See, when I started fly fishing, every single article written talked about matching the hatch and how important having the perfect fly was. Every shop I went into told me I had to have ‘x’ fly to catch fish.  I ended up with hundreds of different flies in my boxes. Today, the concept of the perfect fly seems to be overshadowed by presentation. Let’s face it, if you cannot cast accurately and present a drag free drift, your fly is irrelevant.    

15 plus years ago I was talking to a fly shop owner in Breckenridge, Colorado.  He said, “Andy, you see all these flies here? Well, there are two types of flies here, those that catch fish and those that catch fishermen.”  He went on to tell me if I learned to hit a pie plate from 30 or 35 feet I would catch twice as many fish with a crappy fly as a poorly cast, perfect match the hatch ‘fly of the day’.  For several years after that advice I still bought the ‘fly of the day’ that the local shop was telling people was the only thing working in that particular area that time of year. Hey, I get it, they make money selling flies and the more they sell the more they make! But after a while I started to figure it out.  I had a box of flies that caught me!!! That same fly shop owner had told me that a dozen different trout flies is all I needed.  His theory was anglers should spend less time thinking about what is the perfect fly and more time focusing on presenting the fly correctly. About 7 or 8 years ago I purged my fly box to about a dozen different flies. I started breaking down the water into small parts and fishing the water right in front of me. I started focusing on casting accuracy, presentation and most importantly, the right drift. I started catching more and more fish. I usually spend several minutes studying the current to make sure that my cast puts the fly in the best place to give it the best drift possible.

Now, I get there is technical water.  I have fished it.  NO, not the Madison or Missouri.  My home water where I learned to fish and spent 12 years fishing was the Blue River, below the dam in Silverthorne, Colorado. The Blue River is 60 miles from Denver and might be one of the most heavily pressured trout waters in the West. The Blue River had anglers standing ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with another half dozen sitting on the side lines waiting for a spot to open up. If you got 25 yards of free water ahead of you on a weekend, you felt lucky.  If you fished a size 14 dry, it was a big dry and 5x tippet was way too big! These fish saw a lot of flies!  If that river was not tough enough, I would go to the Frying Pan below the dam or the South Platte below Antero or the Arkansas for the Mother’s Day hatch. I get heavily pressured, technical water where fly selection is important.  I also get that if I miss a seam by a foot I missed the fish. If my drift was not perfect, I missed the fish. If I splashed a cast, I missed the fish and probably spooked the pool. A lot of factors go into catching fish and in my opinion, presentation is the most important part of fly fishing.  If you want to catch fish and catch fish consistently, stay away from the fly of the day.  Focus on reading water, finding fish and, most importantly, presenting that fly in the most realistic way possible.

That is why they call it fishing, not catching!

Today was a tough day of fishing! The weatherman got it write again! From the time I left the driveway to the time I got home, rain dropped fell on my windshield. But everyone knows that a bad day fishing is still better than a good day working!
The fact is, most of us common folks cannot pick our days off.  Unfortunately, most of us work a set schedule and when our days off come up we cannot just change the weather to fit our needs. So, when I loaded up the car to go out and fish, I knew the day would be tough.  The good news was, I still live in some beautiful country so no matter how bad the fishing, the scenery is still awesome!

I loaded up the arsenal, basically preparing for everything or anything.  I grabbed three different rods, waders, wading boots, backpack, sandals, you name it I threw it in the back.  Why?  Well, I knew fishing would be tough because of the weather. I planned to explore a few new spots as well as hitting a spot I have fished several times before.  So, off I went to my first stop, the Canyon Creek culvert on the North Fork of the Flathead River. This is a stretch of river I have floated through several times and have wade fished many times as well.  Typically, this is a pretty good fishing spot. Any time you have two rivers joining together that is usually a good spot to fish. Plus, above where the rivers come together is a deep pool that holds fish and several riffles that hold fish.  Overall, a short stretch of water, you can usually catch fish in.  As I parked on the side of the road, the rain picked up. Of course it did, it was my day off!!! After about an hour of casting I changed flies, which I rarely do.  I was casting and casting until my arm was about to fall off when a fish came up and took my strike indicator. I instantly cut the nymph I was fishing off and tied on a dry fly hoping he would come back up and take the dry fly.  And finally, FISH ON!!! Today, the fish knew it was raining and were not interested in most of what I threw to them.
At that point I went to plan B. A new stretch of water I saw on Google Earth and it looked promising.  I threw my gear in the back and started driving up the road.  On the map, there is a road that goes off of the North Fork Road that looks like it crosses several promising looking streams.  So I went exploring up this remote road.  My 'exploration trips' are basically all the same. I pick a section of road or river and figure out where I can or cannot access it and if it is worth fishing again.  A lot of driving, scouting and a little fishing. But these exploration trips sometimes pay off.  Usually every third trip produces new water. Almost all the water I fish I have found in this same way.  

Unfortunately, today was a bad day all the way around.  One fish for about three or four hours of fishing.  And to top it all off, the road I thought would lead me to good fishing did not.  The road looks like it is passable on Google Earth, but it is not.  This is part of the game when you go exploring in the Forest Service.  But this will not deter my exploring new waters.  I can assure you that the next raining day I will be out exploring for new areas.  After all, the area I fished today, I found doing the same thing. So many fish, so little time!