moose on the loose

Though the wind was howling and it was late in the day, when my buddy Ryan called and said he got out of work early and was ready to fish, I was out the door in 5 minutes.

Without much time, we decided to fish close to town, down by the airport behind Gardiner's recycling depot. We had gone out on Saturday and the warm weather meant there some fish rising, but today the wind and cold weather meant there would be no hatches so it was nymphing day no doubt.

While I was still tying on my flies, Ryan was on the water and quickly caught his first trout of the season


As Ryan settled in, I headed downstream and started fishing. I came to a big rock that I had to get around, and as soon as I got around it, I got the fright of my life as a moose that had been sleeping behind the rock, jumped up. Luckily the moose was as scared as I was and we both ran in separate directions.


I don't know if he was still waking up or he figured we were the ones that should leave since he was there first, the moose didn't go far


and even stuck around to see Ryan catch another rainbow (he's the brown spot in the trees in the back left corner)


Leaving the moose behind, we fished a good way down the river. Finally, before we called it a night, I hooked into a nice rainbow


All and all, it turned out to be a nice couple hours on the river.

first trout of 2011

Got my first trout of 2011 today. Actually got three, this decent rainbow and then two smaller guys - another rainbow and a cutt-bow.

This is my third time out on the Yellowstone River, but the first time I have lasted more than an hour and half, because it has been too cold or too windy. I got my first fish - a whitefish - of the year last week and caught a bunch of whitefish on Saturday, but on both days the wind was gusting to 20- to 30-mph which made fishing a bit of a pain.

Today's temps got into the 40s and the wind was under control so even though the water is still cold and the fish weren't rising, I was still able to get in a good 3 hours of fishing. It won't last, as we are supposed to get snow for the next 3 day, but it was good to break the ice so to speak.