Another Excellent Day of Fishing on the Madison River

Wednesday August 26, 2015    Day 29,    Baker’s Hole  3^rd night

Another excellent day of fishing on the Madison River!

Didn’t bother with a fire this morning.  Tried to get some work done at the picnic table to get day 2 at Two Medicine completed.  Still not done.  Gave up.

Made a big sandwich in the middle of the morning for breakfast/lunch and headed into West Yellowstone for more flies, gas, and ice, then to the Madison where I was yesterday.  Parked on the bluff again and took the half hour hike across the sagebrush flat to my spot. 

Started fishing at 13:15 and by 13:18 I caught a 15” rainbow on a #16 Adams parachute.  About an hour later, caught a 15” brown on the same fly. 

My 30 minute walk to my spot.

My spot.

Looking downstream from my spot.

The 15" rainbow.  He was released unharmed.

 There is some more good water upstream so I continued upstream to a gravel bar and started working down from there.  This was fast water over submerged boulders and was a good place to nymph.  Caught a 10” brown that jumped numerous times.  This is more typical of a rainbow trout, but he didn’t know that.  I later caught a 15” mountain whitefish, not to be confused with Great Lakes whitefish.  These fish are bottom feeders and are frequently caught when nymphing.  They are really good fighters, but fly fisherman prefer to catch trout.  Hooked at least four more fish on nymphs, but did not land them. 

I got back to the truck at 16:00. 

Truck sitting on top of bluff.

On the way back, I walked past a post with a platform for osprey to make a nest.  There were three juveniles in the nest, but one was outside, sitting on the platform while his mom flied overhead, circling around making Osprey noises at me to get away.  I got some pictures.

Osprey nest.

Baby Osprey calling for his mama.

 

Was back at the campsite at 17:00.  Took Marsha to Bullwinkle’s for dinner.  We were there last year and had a nice meal of bison meatloaf.  We remembered it to be a nice place.  But this year seemed different.  It seemed like we were hurried to turn the table over and the food wasn’t as good.  But the prices were rather high because of where we were.  We were disappointed.