Madison Trout on the Swing

by Jake McGlothlin on February 2, 2015

in Fish Stories

One of my favorite things about targeting trout on the swing is that some days just one fish can bring a huge smile to your face.  In a lot of situations, swinging flies on a Spey rod is a very effective way to catch trout.  But there are days when things get a little slow.  Such was the case last week on the Upper Madison.

Ken Stock and I have been trying to get out fishing for a couple of weeks and things finally fell into place so we could.  We piled in his truck with his new boat behind it and headed out on another beautiful sunny day.  This warm and sunny stretch Southwest Montana is in is really pretty odd for January…  A week or so of warmer temps is normal, but not this warm or for this long.  Almost makes a man feel a little anxious about the water situation next year, but there is still a lot of winter ahead of us.  Days in the mid 40s with sun in January are just a tease.

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Ken’s friend Daniel met us at the boat launch, and we hit the river.  I’ve been on a real Spey kick lately, and Ken had a new rod a friend had let him borrow to play around with.  There are some damn good swinging runs in the stretch we floated.  But the day started off with the classic worm and egg under a bobber technique.  The purists reading this might cringe, but hey, it’s winter fishing and it’s hard to go wrong with that.

Stopping in the first run yielded a couple fish on the bobber rig, and one solid tug on the swing.  Just that one grab is enough to keep you swinging for hours.  If one fish will bump one fly one time others might too, right?  We eventually moved downriver, catching a few more fish here and there.  By this point I was pretty happy with my five trout, but Ken insisted it usually fishes much better.

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The last stop before the ramp was a nice deep run perfect for swinging.  Ken showed us how it was done with a couple nice trout on the worm, and I plied the waters in vain with the Spey.  Just as the light was about to fade enough to force us to move Ken gave me a straight up steelhead tube fly.  Tube flies themselves are pretty damn rare in the trout world, and you can probably count the number of guys throwing steelhead patterns for trout on two hands.  Yet it was still worth a shot.

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First swing, nothing.  Second swing, nothing.  Third swing… Tap, tap, then a solid and steady pull on the line.  It worked.  The brown that ate it wasn’t particularly big or bulky, but catching him on the swing with that steelhead fly made him one of those fish I won’t forget for a while.  Ken was kind enough to give me the fly, so I’m sure I’ll be putting it to the test again soon.

Just that one fish was enough to keep the Spey fire burning bright for me.

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