Flyfishing in the wind in Montana.

 I met Thomas Laird  at Cabella’s about 2 years ago as he was looking through flies and fly tying supplies. He was talking to the sales guy like he knew everything there was to know, and I don’t mean that he was bragging, he was just knowledgeable. So I called him from time to time to have him relate some of his fishing and hunting stories. Turns out not long ago he was up in Montana on a fishing trip. “I was up in Montana 2 weeks ago on some of the feeder streams into Park Canyon reservoir. The fishing was good but the wind was high so it made it kind of tough. What does that mean? Are you flyfishing? Yes. Flyfishing a lot of small streams and you are in the red brush. Some areas you are in the open and others not so much. So what you are doing is what I call hunt fishing. You have to get close to the water because you do not have a choice, use a small light weight fly rod, somewhere like a number 4, 7 foot or 7 1/2 feet, then a big bushy fly because the fish in their don’t do a hatch, they do what ever hits the water. Sometimes the bigger the better. The wind was blowing 25 mph with  gusts up to 40 which makes flyfishing something of a random act. With that in mind if you do get an errant cast and you whack the water, then they get spooked because it’s not real deep creeks. So they are gone. One mistake and they are out of there. But the nice thing about that is you walk 20 feet and there is another hole.