Winter Fishing at Poindexter Slough

After a long absence, I am once again going to keep you updated on my fly fishing and photography adventures. I have been pretty busy getting the outdoor adventure photography business up and running. Between developing a logo, creating postcards and brochures and pitching my business model to fly shop owners and outfitters I managed an eleven day trip to New York City and last Saturday I was able to sneak away for an amazing day of fishing.

My friend, Chris Williams, and I drove from Missoula to Dillon, MT which is about 170 miles or 2.5 hours. The weather was beautiful. It was in the mid-forties and sunny. We had decided to test our skill at Poindexter Slough which is a public spring creek right on the outskirts of Dillon. It is open to fishing year round and is a tributary of the Beaverhead River. Later in the year, successfully fooling the wary brown trout that dominate the slough may require small (read size 20-22) flies and light tippets such as 6x, however, I have fished it several times in February for the last two years and have had great success with streamers and heavy tippets. What a blast! On previous trips our most succesful flies have been John Barr's slumpbusters in olive size 4 and 6. That changed on Saturday. Although we picked up a couple of nice browns on slumpbusters, the venerable woolly bugger
brought the most fish to hand including the fish of the day caught by Chris Williams, a rare 20"
rainbow trout. We used larger buggers in rust, black with brown hackle and a tiger stripe pattern.

We hit the water at about 12:30 . Of course since I had not fished since October and had hooking trout on the brain, I decided not to bring my camera. I was going to focus on the fishing and that part of the plan worked out as I landed 10 browns and lost a couple more. The smallest fish was 14" with the majority in the 17-18" range. The browns were still a little on the skinny side not having yet fattened up since their fall spawn. When Chris hooked and landed his rainbow trout that changed everything. I was kicking myself for not bringing my camera and continued to fret over it the rest of the day. Luckily Chris had his cell phone and we were able to salvage a picture of the chunky 20 incher. The photo at the top of the post does not do the beautiful fish justice. Chris managed to land 5 other fish including a 20" brown. All this in about four and a half hours of fishing. I'll be heading back over there tomorrow with another friend and will try to post some better photos.

If your interested in wiping the "rust" off your gear and cast, get out to Poindexter Slough in February. The fishing cannot be beat. After arriving in Dillon, stop off at Tim Tollet's Frontier Anglers. They have a nice fly shop that is stocked to the rafters with great fly fishing equipment. They are also very friendly and will point you in the right direction to get to Poindexter Slough.