Alas, the Kootenai River beckons drift-boat anglers
"Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers."
- Herbert Hoover
There is a longing for me to be near water.
I have a desire to know water intimately. As a child, I often sneaked outside after a storm to stomp and to float popsicle sticks in puddles.
I advanced to backyard swimming pools, then spent nearly four years of my childhood in the Caribbean, snorkeling and scuba diving, spear-fishing all the while.
Surely, water is as much a part of my consciousness as clover is to the whitetails that feast on its sweetness near my home.
Here in Northwest Montana, anglers measure time by the flow of the mighty Kootenai, this area's lifeblood.
And now, it is time to reacquaint ourselves with this great river.
On Monday, the Kootenai was flowing at 30,000 cubic feet per second, and I am thinking it's just about time.
Waiting, patiently - for about 25 kcfs.
Soon, the fishing gods, I thought, (with the blessing of the Army Corps) will once again allow us to temporarily savor all she has to offer.
Knowing this, fly fishing guide Dave Blackburn, owner of Kootenai Angler, and I discussed the river.
I explained to Dave, I was chomping at the bit to get out and wet a fly line as I rode her length.
Certainly, I expected Blackburn to say something such as he, too, was waiting.
Nope, not Dave.
He's already been there. He's one of the Early Birds.
Recently, Dave and client John Joseph from Colchester, Conn., put in at the lagoon just below the roar of water over the spillway below Libby Dam.
Dave had done a couple of half-days producing fish at even higher flows of 44 kcfs the week before, but he had not done a full day since the water started spilling more than a month ago.
The trip began with a few interested fish just below the put-in. As time progressed, several corners produced steady nymph action with hits and hook-ups at all likely current seams and back eddies.
Entering into the stretch Dave calls the "home pool" just below the mouth of the Fisher River, there were continual hook-ups of the deep-drifted nymphs.
One hook-up produced a nice, 19-inch, 3-pound rainbow which came out of the water a total of eight times, Dave said, before succumbing to the net.
Key to all this, of course, is the insect hatch, and at 2 p.m. there were noticeable rises to the beginning of a Pale Morning Dun hatch.
Dave said he switched to dries at that point and quickly boated more than a dozen more fish in the first riffle to the drop-off area.
Personally, I would have gone with hoppers, as they're all over my yard, and, so, Dave, admitted he, too had success with a hopper/beetle pattern, on this day "producing 10 or more fish along a slow-moving deep run of a mile or so."
All riffle and back-eddy areas, Dave said, featured rising fish that were seen during the increasing PMD emergence.
Just above the takeout at Osprey Landing, a flurry of caddis began their egg-laying as the sun dropped behind the mountains.
Dave said he usually makes a practice not to count fish or rises during the course of the day, but he made an exception this day.
At take-out, John had raised 101 fish and had boated just less than half of them with many long-distance releases in the mix. Dave estimated 20 or more were taken on nymphs with the rest taken on dries.
Then there is the comment from John, the angler from Connecticut: "In 58 years of fishing, I have never seen anything like it. It was spectacular. Days like this you need to put in a jar and savor them."
Truer words have never been spoken, John.
Like all of us, Dave has been waiting for the river to come down, the spills to be lessened so those of us who prefer drift-boating can drop the oars for a bit and grab our fly rods.
"In 30 years of plying the Kootenai, it was the best high-water day I had seen on the Kootenai," Dave said.
It can only be attributed to the tenacity and resilience of the Columbia Interior Redband strain of rainbow, he said.
"They have tried to kill this fishery over the years with unfriendly flow changes, catastrophic spills and mismanagement using flawed and broken computer modeling."
"I hope they can get it right one of these days so the fishery can actually flourish and thrive. I think I'll keep on rowing in the meantime," Dave said.
In that meantime, anglers, come on in. The water, and the fishing, is something to savor!
Alan Lewis Gerstenecker is editor of The Western News, which is part of the Hagadone News Network.