Yeah, yesterday was a good day! I’ve been itching to get my boat in the water to check things out before guiding begins and it just so happened that our website designer was going to be in the area fishing with a friend. The valley had a fresh coat of snow and the sun was shining when I met David Thompson and Bryan Ulring at the Wis River Club. These boys don’t get out to fish as much as they’d like and they wore their excitement on their faces. David founded and runs Brickhouse Creative, the company currently designing our new website, and Bryan manages the J bar L Ranch near Twin Bridges. This was a rare day off and they were determined to enjoy every minute, and I was happy to be a part of it.
The put-in was jammed with ice and 10:00 am proved too early to launch. We all agreed we should have had a bloody at the Club and let things warm up. We were in no hurry and extremely glad to be back on the river. A quick inventory of the cooler contents revealed stores of jerky from Bryan’s ranch, bags of meats, cheeses, and chips, and a case of local beer. Life was good. We cracked a beer around 11:00 and once that fish call echoed through the crisp morning, it was on! In fact, each time we popped open a double hopped golden lager a big brown would chomp our fly:
smiles all around
We caught hundreds of inches of fish, froze our fingers off, tried to drown the guide, told great stories and shared a lot of laughs! A big thank you to my hearty companions for braving the weather, bringing the grub, and kicking off the 2011 season in style. Keep an eye out next week for David’s photos and video from the day on our new website. In the meantime, I highly recommend getting out on the river with some big ugly bugs!
[...] Fishing: Good, on nymphs and streamers in the morning. Skwala’s and small dries in the slower water when the water warms up [...]
What a life.. This is what the guys does for work and for pleasure.. Makes you a great employee and a great salesman. Your job is better than a lot of people’s vacations! Enjoy the river Wade. But bring some bug spray, the black flies will be out soon!
Haha thanks for the kind words Dan, you’ve got to get back out here soon. I thought of you and Scott on Saturday, one of those big browns in the pics up there was caught in the same spot where Scott ‘snagged’ his brownie while we barked and yelled about his spilled beer! that was a great trip.
[...] to the mid 40′s when we dropped the boat in on Saturday. In an attempt to recreate my luck from late May, we let the beer flow like wine in hopes that the fish would instinctively flock like the women of [...]