We’re in Big Sky Country!  Today was preceded by a 780 mile drive from Woodland, Washington on the 4^th of July.  Fortunately we arrived at our Bozeman KOA campsite at 7:30PM the night before so we both got a full night sleep.  We met our guide Tim Schwarze of Greater Yellowstone Flyfishers in Bozeman at 8AM.  We first learned that we needed to change our river of choice for the day.  We had spoken 8 months ago about the possibility of needing to fish the Madison versus the Yellowstone because of possible high waters this time of year on the Yellowstone.  Fortunately, 5 years ago I floated both rivers back to back and wasn’t at all bothered by the change – in fact, I knew we would have a better chance of catching a big brown on the Madison – especially the lower Madison this time of year.

We arrived at our boat launch spot around 9:30AM and set out under deep blue skies.  In fact, this day marked our 26^th straight State without any rain to hamper our journey.  Tim rigged us up with a large indicator fly and small #18 dropper nymph.

It took about 30 minutes to get our first fish – the notorious Montana Bonefish – or whitefish.  Tim was hoping we could avoid this fish as it is often considered a trash fish by many.  I for one just enjoy catching fish so when Taylor landed him I was happy we had one in the boat.

The day was marked by some nice fish.  Taylor, again, caught the big one of the day – a 19 1/2” Rainbow.  I caught a respectable 19” brown.  Between us we caught 18 fish for our four hour float – not bad – we were happy. 

I nearly fell out of the boat on one big brown hookup.  The trout charged the boat as they usually do, taking all of the tension out of the line.  I quickly found out you can’t strip fast enough sometimes and it doesn’t help to walk backwards out of the boat.  Too bad we didn’t catch the moment on video though – it was a good laugh.

On the way out of Bozeman on our way down to Island Park, Idaho we had two moose sightings.  Somewhat rare I think – we’ve only ever seen Moose in Maine.

We arrived in Island Park around 7PM and had a relaxing evening.  Tomorrow is an afternoon float on the famous Henry’s Fork of the Snake River so we have time to do some laundry and Taylor is really looking forward to sleeping in for the first time in nearly 4 weeks.