Here’s A Fish Story You’ll Want To Hear

Listen to fishing guide and fly tier Chuck Stranahan for a half-hour and you’ll want to call in sick, load your car with rods, reels, flies and neoprene waders and head for the Bitterroot River.

The Bitterroot, he told Inland Empire Fly Fishing Club members a few days ago, is one of the few North American rivers where you can catch 16- to 20-inch trout on dry flies one after another.

In addition, he said:

The river south of Missoula has a better Green Drake hatch than Idaho’s fabled Henry’s Fork.

It has one of the best pre-runoff stonefly hatches in the Northwest.

It’s an ideal river for beginners because the brown, rainbow and cutthroat trout will take attractor patterns readily.

It’s easy to wade, relatively easy to float and still isn’t as crowded as most of America’s widely publicized trout streams.

“The Bitterroot is big enough to be interesting and small enough to be fishable,” he said. “It’s a river where a fly fisher can take big fish on dry flies most of the season.”

Of course, before you commit yourself to spending a few days on the river, you’ve got to take into consideration that Stranahan, who operates the Riverbend Flyfishing shop at Hamilton, might be slightly prejudiced. After all, he makes a living guiding fishermen on the Bitterroot, as well as other streams in the Missoula region.

But he’s a convincing fellow and he convinced about 60 fly fishers that if they dream of hooking 20 to 30 good-sized trout a day, they should fish the Bitterroot.

And veteran Spokane fly fishers Clay Findlay and Del Coppock, who know him, believe he knows the Bitterroot and is a top fly fisherman and tier.

Right now, Stranahan told the fly fishers, big Bitterroot trout are hitting good imitations of the Skwala stonefly and they’ll likely gorge themselves on the Skwala until the end of the month.

Stranahan has created his own version of the Skwala, but many fly fishers do well on No. 8 3x long olive bullet head stoneflies and olive-bodied Stimulators.

Deliver a good imitation a foot or so above a Skwala-feeding trout, Stranahan said, and you’ll be rewarded, more often than not, with a strike. But, he emphasized, the fly must be delivered without drag and float, life-like, to the trout’s feeding position. If the fly drags, you won’t get the trout to open its mouth.

The runoff hasn’t started yet, he said.

“We’ve been getting some release from low-level snow and the river is up a few inches. When the runoff does start, the main river will be blown out. It will run over its banks and big trees will float down.

“Unlike many rivers, the Bitterroot doesn’t have a long, gradual runoff. It has an enormous runoff and then settles down to a normal flood plain river.”

The big salmonflies - the legendary Pteronarcys californica - hatch during the runoff in June and the main Bitterroot usually is too high and muddy for fly fishers to take advantage of the hatch.

When the main stem is rolling high and muddy, Stranahan, that’s the time to fish the West Fork. The salmonflies also hatch on the West Fork.

“The West Fork doesn’t have as much runoff as the main river, which gathers in 12 streams from the west side of the Bitterroot range, in addition to what comes in from the West Fork,” he said. “Most of the trout in the West Fork will be 14 to 17 inches long.”

He said there’s about 25 miles of good fishing water along the West Fork and 15 to 20 miles along the East Fork.

When the river recedes, usually in mid- to late June, anglers can expect thundershowers. June is the wettest month in the Bitterroot Valley.

“It’s the thundershowers that create ideal conditions for the Green Drake and Brown Drake hatches,” he said. “After the showers, you’ll start seeing ripples on the water. Before long thousands of trout will be rising.

“The Bitterroot’s Green Drake hatch is the envy of some Henry’s Fork guides.”

Stranahan also said that the Bitterroot has excellent hatches of Baetis, Pale Morning Dun, Ameletus and Gray Drake mayflies; golden stone and brown and black stoneflies, and several caddisfly species. Grasshoppers bring out big trout during the summer months.

Numerous tributary streams, as well a few lakes in the drainage, are filled with trout, he said.

The most effective way to fish the main stem, he said, is to float the river. However, it’s possible to do well by wading up and down from the numerous bridges that cross the river.

Stranahan’s favorite time to fish the river: mid- to late September and October. That’s the time when locals are off elk hunting and tourists are back on their jobs and dreaming of next year.