Fly Fishing on the Madison

On Friday afternoon, I took off to go fly fishing on the Madison River in Montana. This trip is the 2nd trip of my Fly Fishing Class. I arrived around 9pm and quickly set up camp because a big storm was on it's way.


When I awoke on Saturday morning and climbed out of my tent. I was in the middle of a blizzard. The snow was coming down hard, fast and Horizontally. I thought to myself this is going to make for some interesting fishing.

After getting up I tried to find a good sheltered spot to heat some water for Oatmeal and Hot Chocolate. The best place was next to my car. I blocked the wind pretty good so I could get some water heated.

The storm finally passed about 9am, and I headed down to the river. I'll be honest, I didn't have much luck and didn't get many bites until around noon. I started the morning fishing a mean gene with a hares ear dropper. I got a couple of hits with that combination, but it wasn't until I screened the river around noon and found a huge brownstone fly about 2 inches long that I found the best combination. A big Brown Stone Fly and a Irish Spring Dropper. I got some big hits with this combination, but I just couldn't land one in the net.

The river gives you lots of time for solitude and it is very easy to think of analogies to life and the gospel. Especially when you spent the 4 hr drive to Montana listening to conference. One analogy that kept coming back to me was the use of an attractor to entice the fish to take your fly. You see fish don't want to exert energy to go and get a meal. They tend to pick a spot and wait for the current to send bugs down river. However, occasionally they do see something that appears to make a move worthwhile, and when they do and if you can set your hook in time, BAM, you have them.
Madison Ave, is constantly trying to entice us with advertising, they make worldly items seem awesome. We go in for a bite, and then they have us hooked.

I had another experience out on the river that let me know that Heavenly Father is watching out for me. I was fishing when I had the distinct prompting to put my sunglasses on. I put them on and remembered the advice in class that you alway wear glasses in case a hook hits you. Soon after I had this prompting, A huge gust of wind caught my cast wrapping my line around my head, the fly bounced off my sunglasses and landed on my check. I was blessed. The tender mercies of the Lord are alive and well in my life.

Fly Fishing at Chesterfield Reservoir .

Yesterday morning, I left the house at 5:45 to meet my fly fishing class and go fishing at Chesterfield Res. in Southern Idaho. Since I was running a little late, I was not able to hook up with the class to car pool. So I headed north towards Idaho. I knew that the Reservoir was just north of Lava Hot Springs. We had our Youth Conference at Lava last summer, so I thought I knew where I was going. After driving for about 2 hours, I thought I've got to be getting pretty close to the turn off, However, I saw a sign that turned my stomach. That sign said I-84. Somewhere, I had gotten off I-15 and had merged onto I-84. On top of that, I had to drive about 10 more miles, before I found a place to turn around. I dug out my map, and realized that I had to drve back to Tremonton to get back onto I-15. Tremonton was over 60 Miles away!

I worked my way back to Tremonton, got back onto I-15 and headed north once again to Chesterfield. SO my 2 1/2 hr trip turned into a 4 hour ordeal.

When I arrived at the lake, I blew up my new float tube and christened it for its maiden voyage. I rigged up my rod with a captain america bug and set out into the lake. I had not been out for too long, when we began to notice a pretty nasty storm brewing on the horizon. Soon the wind kicked up, and it began to snow, but it was all good. About this time, I switched to a red crystal killer pattern with a mighty mite dropper.

After paddling around, I suddenly heard a big boom of Thunder, and everyone over the walkie-talkies, began saying how we might want to get off the lake. I thought this was a pretty good idea since I was holding a 9 foot lightening rod in my hand. I was out in the middle of the lake and had to do some pretty good kicking to get back to shore.

I didn't catch any fish, but it was a fun day. After we got off the lake, we learned that the reservoir, had experienced a pretty harsh winter and over 80% of the fish had been killed and that the state was going to re-stock the lake on Monday with over 22,000 fish. We just missed out!