I’m often asked by those who live in other locales what’s my absolute favorite season to fish back home in Montana.
While the renewing blush of spring’s green-up is always rejuvenating after a brooding, monochromatic winter, the fall season in the Northern Rockies very well might be my favorite time of the year.
Shortening days spawn waves of color flowing across the hills and mountains, the final season’s hay is cut and stacked, and the first cool mornings flush fleece from the closet and back into wader or boat bags.
River flows tend to be at their nadir for the year, before the fall rains and high country snow, though as pressure eases it just seems to be ‘more fishable’ than during high summer. Terrestrials fade as we transition to the fall hatches and there are those special windows we all look forward to, like the Hebgen runners easing back into the Madison.
There’s a gut-level earnestness about fall that begins to creep in, a biological nudge driven in part by knowing that a cold winter season is beckoning. It’s easily seen in the four-legged critters in the neighborhood – from the hyperphagic bears to rutting elk to grazing bison and cattle trying to pack on the pounds to weather the next six months.
Streamer flingers take advantage of the same innate drive in the fish we chase, though you’re likely to see almost as many two-handed rods chucking streamers as 8-weights this fall.
For a great number of our friends this season presents the biggest challenge in time management for the entire year, as there are fish to be caught, birds to hunt and archery season for big game has been open now for nearly a month. Not to mention other fall chores – wood to cut, meat to process, gardens to close out, and getting houses, land, and vehicles ready for winter.
Indeed there’s a lot to do, but a reasonably well organized fisher | hunter | outdoorsman can prosper during the fall.
Several years ago Jake and I fished the Firehole two days before the season closed, right below Fountain Flat Drive, on a chilly afternoon with temps right at freezing. The sun was shining through filtered through high clouds and a consistent hatch of tiny BWOs was dribbling off, enough to keep heads up sipping bugs out of the film.
We pestered fish for several hours that afternoon, finally connecting on flies we hand-trimmed with numb hands to match the bugs coming off; later warming over noodle soup hot from the bankside stove we agreed that getting our butts kicked by a pod of 12-inch rainbows and flies the size of a large grain of sand was a fitting end to the year’s YNP season.
I like the fall.
