NPO Semi-Live GUEST BLOG: Pennsylvania Drifters Test the West
Pennsylvania Drifters Ready to Test the West
By Brad Isles
June 26-As hunters, fishermen, outdoorsmen we are inevitably attracted to place.
We all have favorite hunting grounds, be it the mountains of Pennsylvania’s northern tier, a favored tract of State Game Lands or local corn field. Same with familiar hiking trails, birding areas or bass ponds.
I am drawn west. To the big skies and arid mountain ranges of southwest Montana.
Don’t get me wrong... I love Pennsylvania and all that she has to offer. We have remarkable opportunities here – from border to border across the Commonwealth – to satisfy every call of the wild.
But, as John Gierach writes in his new book, A Fly Rod of Your Own, “It’s important to find people and places far from home that you love. If nothing else, it makes the world seem big and friendly instead of small and mean.”
The Treasure State certainly fits that description. For the third consecutive year, I’ll be fortunate enough to spend the first week of July at Upper Canyon Outfitters in southwestern Montana, about 90 minutes from Ennis in the heart of the Ruby Valley. It’s a working fishing, hunting and horse-riding outfitter and ranch originally homesteaded over a century ago. The Ruby River flows 30 yards from our cabin. The nearest paved road is 12 miles away.It is glorious.
I fell into this opportunity with a group of like-minded gentlemen who had been going to UCO for a few years prior to me joining in. We have since become great friends. We work separately in similar creative fields – a writer, a designer and a web guy, plus an outlier who is an athletic trainer by trade and a fishing guide by chance. This year, we have a first-timer making the trip.
We fish hard all day and often into the evenings. Then retire to our cabin to narrate our many catches. And also the releases – some of which aren’t intentional.To sum it up: We drift.
I will be providing a few dispatches of our activities over the next week. If you want to follow along on Instagram, you can find me at @bradisles.
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Travel delays don’t hinder Drifters’ enthusiasm
By Brad IslesJuly 3-
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| The Drifters heading toward the water in the Upper Ruby Valley (Nick Cobler picture) |
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| Rainbow trout taken on Hyalite Creek. |
Sometimes the unexpected makes a trip a little more exciting. Heading west on Thursday, we had a nearly three-hour delay leaving Pittsburgh International Airport, which would’ve made our connection at O’Hare a little interesting had that flight also not been delayed more than an hour. Then, upon boarding in Chicago, we sat on the plane for another hour before the pilot informed us a minor mechanical issue would cause us to deplane and we would have to wait for another plane to be rerouted. We ultimately landed in Bozeman at 1:34 a.m.
But, we were in Bozeman. Finally.
After a few hours of sleep we made a quick stop for breakfast and visited one of the local fly shops to purchase our licenses and glean some intel on the local waters. Many were still running high due to snow runoff but we quickly formulated a plan to hit both new and familiar public access areas.
Neither disappointed.
Our first stop was Hyalite Creek in the Gallatin National Forest and the five of us connected frequently on nice-sized rainbows. We made a mental note to make another stop in the area in the future. We followed that with a stop a bit west at Spanish Creek, which is also in the Gallatin National Forest and a location we have fished previously. A number of brookies and cutthroats cooperated and the trip was off to a great start.
I’m not one to gauge a day’s fishing by the number of fish caught or their size. Neither are the other guys in the group. It takes away the pressure and puts the focus on our experiences. We are in Montana. We’re going to catch fish. Some will be big. Some will be small. It doesn’t much matter.
We moved on toward Ennis, our destination for Friday night. Before checking into the Silvertip Motel we hit the famed Madison River as it courses through Bear Trap Canyon in the Lee Metcalf Wilderness on the edge of town. The Madison was running at about 2,500 cubic feet per second, which proved to be quite turbulent and virtually unwadeable so we changed tactics and targeted nice-sized rainbow and brown trout close to the banks and were not disappointed.
It was a long and prosperous first day drifting on new water and old. Despite being drained from Thursday’s travel and a long time on the water, we headed into town for dinner and spent the evening enjoying the local flavor at the Longbranch Saloon – a Drifter favorite. This time, being up past midnight was by choice and infinitely more pleasurable. There is nothing like a western town letting itself loose on a holiday weekend. We wanted to make the most of it – fatigued or not.
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| The upper Ruby River (Nick Cobler picture) |
Our ultimate destination beckoned Saturday and we left Ennis for Upper Canyon Outfitters and the Ruby Valley Saturday morning. We passed through the preserved old west outposts of Virginia and Nevada cities en route to UCO, which sits at the convergence of the Snowcrest, Gravelly and Greenhorn mountain ranges, 12 miles from the nearest paved road.
A secluded section of the Ruby beckoned first, however, and any fisher knows it’s impossible to resist the draw of willing trout eager to placate a group of weary travelers.
Brad Isles is president of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association. He is a website and social media manager by profession and diverts to freelance content creation and digital media strategy from his four-acre farmette in western Pennsylvania. If you want to follow along on Instagram, you can find him at @bradisles. He can be reached at heybrad@bradisles.com.
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Variety is the name of the game in the Ruby Valley
By Brad IslesJuly 5th-
One of the best things about fishing the Ruby Valley is the range of options that are available. Want big, bruising browns? Want smaller, elegant brookies? Want solid, hungry rainbows? All are available within the Ruby’s diverse waters.
Among our favorite stops is Vigilante Station, and it didn’t disappoint on Sunday. We all got into nice-sized browns and I had one of my best afternoons ever thanks to a number of 14- to 18-inch browns that came to net, along with a few that were pushing 20. There were some smaller ones in the 6- to 12-inch range thrown in as well, showing off the river’s health. The other Drifters also had banner days. Almost all of the fish caught were on double-nymph rigs we’ve come to adopt as our go-to setups.Monday was quite different on a couple of different levels. We were guided again, but this time on a section of the Ruby reached by private access.
Reaching fishable water in Montana can be tricky at times due to the state’s laws. It’s obviously illegal to trespass on private property. But if a river runs through your property and someone wants to fish it, they can do so by entering via a bridge or another public place, and then by remaining below the high-water mark.
Fishing with registered guides may give you special access to the water, but it comes at a cost. Plus, more than once we’ve been fishing with guides only to have others who are not accompanied walk by us on the bank. While that can be frustrating and could lead to some heated exchanges, if done legally, there are no repercussions.The section of the Ruby we hit on Monday featured smaller rainbows with occasional cutthroats and even grayling brought to net via nymphing and also targeting rising fish. In fact, I’ve been after a grayling since coming to UCO two years ago and finally connected. It was a beautiful 12-incher and was even tagged behind the left cheek with a micro-identifier used by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to assist the species’ reintroduction efforts across the southwest part of the state. I also managed to net a few cutties with their bright orange slashes below the jaws, and several rainbows.
Tuesday it was back to a public stretch of water below the Ruby River Reservoir. This tailwater provides incredible scenery and an environment for the fish to grow long in length and fat on the non-stop surge of nutrients. Large rainbows and browns dominate this section of the river, and Nick also caught a cutbow, which is a cross between a cutthroat and rainbow. It was his seventh variety of fish landed during the trip: brown, rainbow, brook, cutthroat, grayling, cutbow and whitefish making up his “Montana slam.”
After our day on the water, we drove into historic Virginia City to celebrate Independence Day at the Bale of Hay Saloon – Montana’s oldest watering hole. Virginia City is a well-preserved ghost town harkening back to the 1860s when gold was discovered nearby and quickly developed into a thriving boomtown inhabited by prospectors and fortune seekers. There is still much to see and do during the summer months.Following the fireworks, it was back to UCO to get a few hours of sleep before big days on Wednesday and Thursday – our final two days.
Brad Isles is president of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association. He is a website and social media manager by profession and diverts to freelance content creation and digital media strategy from his four-acre farmette in western Pennsylvania. If you want to follow along on Instagram, you can find him at @bradisles. He can be reached at heybrad@bradisles.com.
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The last cutt is the deepest
By Brad Isles
July 11th-
With two days of fishing left we divided into two groups in order to drift to waters we’ve been on previously and to prospect new areas. On Wednesday, Matt and I accompanied Frank to a section of the Lower Ruby, far below the dam near Alder, the nearest town to Upper Canyon Outfitters. Todd and Nick went the opposite direction, to the Upper Ruby, in search of wild and remote locations. We all caught fish but not with the frequency we had been experiencing. As the day progressed, the skies darkened and a massive thunderstorm rolled in across the Gravelly Range. It chased us from the river early and we figured the incoming low pressure system put the fish down.
On Thursday we switched. Todd, Nick and Frank headed back to the Alder area while Matt and I explored the valley. The results were much better.
Matt and I first hit a narrow stretch of the Ruby 15 miles and an hour upriver from UCO. It was a section that oxbowed through a high-mountain meadow where sweet-smelling sagebrush and willows held the banks tight. We had bear spray at the ready after hearing of increasing grizzly activity in the area over the previous few weeks.
We leapfrogged from pool to pool fooling six-inch cutthroats on big stimulator patterns a third of their size as well as tiny nymphs. It was much like the wild brook trout fishing we do in Pennsylvania’s north woods.
After a few hours we moved a bit down river to the confluence of the Ruby and its west and east forks. Nearby is a seasonal cow camp used during the summer’s cattle roundup. None of the Drifters had ever explored the west fork, so Matt and I forged new ground for the early part of the afternoon. Action was frequent and similar to what we had experienced in the morning.With just a couple of hours remaining before we had to be back for dinner at the ranch, we deliberated our options to close out the week. I landed upon a nice stretch of the Ruby I had fished with Frank during my first trip and it was halfway back to UCO.
The timing couldn’t have been better as Matt quickly pulled in seven trout, a mix of rainbows and cutthroats, along with a few whitefish. That success continued as we covered as much water as possible before our day ended. I spotted a nice, deep run against the far bank of an oxbow. A silverish flash followed my trailing fly on the first cast. For some reason this caught me off guard and I wasn’t ready for the subtle bump it made at its perceived quarry.
On alert, I made several more casts before Matt came over and we decided to start making our back to the truck. Another silver flash zipped in for a vicious strike. My 9-foot, 4-weight fly rod bounced in exerted energy. The fish fought mightily before coming to net and I was astounded by the stunning cutthroat within its frame.
Of the dozens and dozens of fish I caught over the past week, from the 20-plus inch rainbows and browns, to the ridiculous number of 14-18-inchers of the same, to the delicate Upper Ruby cutthroats, and even my very first grayling, this will be the one I most remember.
Perhaps that’s because it was my final fish from the final cast of the trip. But that 14 inches of thick, speckle-sided, rosy-cheeked and orange-throated specimen of darting fervor is ingrained in my memory. The way it slashed through its dark green home pool in search of refuge. The way it grappled with my line until finally succumbing. That pure strain, Westslope cut. That is what I will recall.Best yet, it was caught in a national forest, with public access. Anyone else could have caught the same fish. But it was me. And next year I will visit his home waters and do my best to entice him once again.
Brad Isles is president of the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association. He is a website and social media manager by profession and diverts to freelance content creation and digital media strategy from his four-acre farmette in western Pennsylvania. If you want to follow along on Instagram, you can find him at @bradisles. He can be reached at heybrad@bradisles.com.
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