Mid-winter fly fishing on the Missouri River

Fly fishing on the Mo, Jan. 6, in a fleece jacket? You bet. On Wednesday of that week, I received an e-mail from my nephew Frank stating he'd already reserved a boat and a motel room for two days. Would I be interested in meeting him on the Missouri River, near Craig?

"What time do we meet at the dam?" was my reply.

The temperature was 12 degrees at 10 a.m. when I pulled into the parking lot below Holter Dam, but as soon as the sun rose above the dam, the air warmed enough not to need gloves. My packing for the trip had been hurried and quite disorganized.

Matter of fact, Frank caught three rainbow trout and a mountain whitefish before I'd pulled up my fleece pants, struggled into cold waders and found a reel with floating line to match a fly rod.

Not bad. Four fish before even crawling into the boat.

The first day we floated to Craig, mostly fishing two-fly rigs, San Juan Worm and Ray Charles flies, below a bobber-er, a "strike indicator."

We stopped several times to cast and did pick up a few rainbows on barbell-eyed streamers. We learned quickly that the fish were concentrated in slow, deep holes, eddies and "toilet bowls." Dragging flies through the shallow, usual summer and fall, hot spots produced no fish.

We spent Saturday floating from the dam to the Wolf Creek Bridge, catching most of our fish in the upper half of the float. We saw a few "heads," trout sipping midge dry flies off the surface. Only once or twice were we burdened with fly lines freezing in the rod guides.

Many of the fish we caught showed damaged or missing fins. George Liknes, Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region 4 fisheries manager in Great Falls, told me they were "most likely hatchery fish planted in upstream reservoirs." I'll relay more of Liknes' comments in a future column.

Blue skies, calm winds, good driving over Rogers Pass, and hungry Missouri River trout - beats the heck out of ice fishing.