Lloyd Sund and I jumped into his Chevy to head down to the Madison and christen his new Deville from Ro Drift Boats in Bozeman. A used guide trade in, Lloyd was visually and verbally thrilled to have an experienced boat. My old man used to say that to me when he gave me “used” golf balls. “Jed, they’re not used, they’re experienced” he would to say…somehow it made me feel better about the scratches. We were going to pick up our good friend and fellow MRO employee, Chris King down at his cabin by the Slide. Before we did we had to first stop off at Bear Country Bakery to get a couple Baja breakfast burritos with sweet chili sauce. If you’ve never had one of these wraps of cullinary goodness, you’re missing out. It’s the perfect way to start off the day when fishing is on the agenda and will stave off hunger until well after noon. That and a hot cup of black coffee. No, I’m not one for cream and sugar, I must admit. I’ve always thought that it meant you didn’t really like the taste of coffee. It was a slight bummer that Danny at Bear Country was just about to brew a new pot, and I had to wait an extra 8 minutes or so. With the modern marvels of hand-held electronics, Lloyd was able to remark via text that I was in fact, “the slowest man alive” and he was leaving me to head down to the river already. Finally on the road after grabbing a case of beer and a bag of ice and we’re rolling to the smoothe rhythms of Gypsy Foot, a groovy sounding band from Lloyd’s home state of North Dakota. They’re kind of like a mix of Phish and Bob Marley with a little bit of Buddy Guy and there was no shortage of volume as we pulled into Chris’ driveway. As is typical, Chris was wearing his Chaco sandals when we arrived as if he was trying to will away the 58 degree overcast skies. Luckily, living & working in West Yellowstone during the winter thickens your blood and toughens your skin and 58 can feel downright tropical at times. We got down to Lyons Bridge around 10:30 and quickly readied the vessel and even remembered to put the boat plugs in. We all rigged up some chunky streamers and shoved off. Chris, being the token southpaw, got up front and quickly impressed with a nice brown. As expected, the first several miles of the float were “Arnold Palmer”. Half and half of course, as the West Fork had started blowing out a handful of days ago. Oops, someone forgot to buy a net for his new boat, but we still managed to land several nice fish. Not so much action right on the banks, surprisingly.
We concentrated mainly on the slack water behind big rocks as they seemed to consistently produce the most grabs. As we floated by the Palisades take out, it was nice to see the new improvements they continue to make on Madison River’s access points. The river by this point was fairly cloudy from bank to bank, but still had decent visibility on the starboard side bank. You know those moments in fishing when things just turn on all of a sudden? About half a mile after Palisades it did, and we got a lot of nice grabs back to back to back for a good mile. Black & olive streamers, black & red ones, all black….hmm, I see a pattern here. It got pretty windy, which is no surprise for the Madison valley, but you always feel warmer when you’re catching fish. All in all it was an enjoyable day, and as we pulled out at Ruby Creek campground Chris and I remarked to Lloyd that he might want to replace his Playskool canoe paddle as a backup oar, well…you had to be there.
Peace out, brook trouts