Flyfishing in Mid-summer

It’s high summer—that brief period of the year with dependably warm days, lots of sunshine and, for the most part, cool nights so we can get our homes cooled off before the heat of the next day.

It’s the time of the year when my garden finally does some serious growing, with tomatoes and chile pepper plants responding to warm temperatures after surviving through our normally cold June weather. Now it’s a race to actually produce some fruit before the frosts of September.

It’s a wonderful time for fishing on area streams and rivers. These last couple weekends have seen hordes of people enjoying mid-summer floating and fishing on the Big Hole, though I suspect the numbers of floaters will be declining as river levels keep dropping. This past weekend my pontoon boat was hitting bottom going through riffles and next time I will likely be dragging the boat.

As for catching fish, as pleasant as it is to sleep in on some of these cool mornings and to enjoy a leisurely morning, my advice to fellow anglers is to get with the program and get out on the river before the sun gets too high in the sky.

On my last few outings on the Big Hole, it seemed like the most productive time to be on the water was from around 9:30 to 11 a.m. There are lots of Pale Morning Dun mayflies getting fish appetites going. These mayflies, PMDs for short, are at the heart of mid-summer fishing action. Whether still in the nymph stage of life, or an emerging adult, or finally, an egg-laying insect in its last stage of life, these aquatic insects feed a lot of trout and keep fly tiers and flyshops happy and busy.

Of course, being on the water at the right time and with the right fly doesn’t mean you’ll catch fish. Trout are frustrating that way. They don’t always understand that they are supposed to agree with our thoughts of which are the right flies. All I can say is that if fish seem to be feeding but are refusing your flies, put on something different, probably a smaller imitation. It might also be time to tie on a fresh tippet, and possibly a lighter one, at the end of your leader.

You might occasionally try a different tactic. The long, drag-free float of a dry fly is the ideal we’re supposed to achieve. On my last outing, I was working a run and getting some long floats, but not getting many rises. On one of those drifts I let the fly reach the end of a drift and just as the fly was about to drag across the current I gave the rod a jerk, pulling the fly underwater. Just then, a brown trout hit the fly. That trout’s feeding station was evidently at the bottom of the run where it was picking off insects sinking beneath the water’s surface. It was the best trout of the morning.

While we enjoy these warm and sunny midsummer days, the earlier sunsets are a warning that the season is progressing. While floating the Big Hole I spotted a family of Canada geese. There were a dozen juvenile goslings, now about three fourths grown and developing adult plumage, and escorted by a parent goose. After watching me wading the shallows and fishing, the adult goose decided to give the kids a flying lesson. One by one, the juvenile geese started flapping and taking to the air. A few crash-landed on the runway, but got back up and successfully took to the air on a second try.

In short, while these late July days are hot and sunny, these summer days are numbered and the next season is coming. Whether we’re ready or not, five weeks from today is the first day of September, along with new and renewed opportunities in the outdoors.

Still, let’s not rush the season. For now we’ll concentrate on putting on sunscreen and bug spray and trying to catch fish on little dry flies and celebrating being out there.

Southwest Montana - Beautiful but Buggy

It’s the beauty of the Big Hole that hits you first, this time of year. With late snows and June rains, the whole area is lush and green. Stream banks and riparian areas are a riot of colors: vivid reds, yellows, and purples, of wildflowers in bloom. The mountain peaks are still snow-capped, to better set off the green of the valleys.

If you’re looking for scenery, right now is a perfect time for a day outing along the Big Hole Valley. Be sure to get off on some mountain road to better see the wildflowers.

Still, if you leave your automobile, whether to take a walk or to wet a line in the river, don’t forget the insect repellant. The beauty of the Big Hole may strike you first, but the second thing will be the mosquitoes.

The Big Hole is a perennial producer of major mosquito hatches. That’s nothing new. Those irrigated hay meadows along the river are prime producers of mosquitoes. This year, however, we have a bumper crop of those annoying insects. It’s no surprise. When all those rains came in June there was standing water everywhere, and each puddle of water is a potential mosquito hatchery, and all it takes is a few days of warm weather for mosquito larvae to transform themselves into an adult, winged insect.

Naturally, it’s the female of the species that’s the troublemaker. Male mosquitoes are mild-mannered, inoffensive vegetarians, happy to sniff and sip from the wildflowers. Those female mosquitoes are the vicious bloodsuckers that torment all warm-blooded animals.

“Just ignore them,” is the advice a long-time reader once passed along. He recalled a long ago summer job when, then just a teenager, he worked at a northern Minnesota fishing camp and got that advice from his mentor, a weathered old Finlander. Probably not bad advice—if you’re able to stand it. My mosquito tolerance is fairly well developed from years of walking through boggy river bottoms in search of trout, or giving one of my Labrador retrievers some retrieving work in a wetland.  Nevertheless, there is a limit to tolerance.

There are, of course, bug repellants, and over the last 40 years, or so, DEET has been the chemical component in the more popular repellants. According to an on-line article on WebMD, repellants with 23.8 percent DEET are effective for about five hours.  Still, I remember our friend, Doug, who took my friend, Charley, and I under his wing in Michigan last year. He looked at our can of repellant with 25 percent DEET and chortled, “Haw, haw, haw. our mosquitoes think that’s candy!”

There are other repellants as well, with some of the old ones based on citronella, cedar, and peppermint, to name a few. Some people rely on Avon Skin So Soft. A few years ago at a conference I got some samples of a geranium-based repellant. It does work, though its effectiveness, in my mind, is measured in minutes rather than hours.

In the last few years some clothing companies have come out with apparel products that repel insects, though Santa Claus hasn’t brought any yet, so I can’t back up any claims.

Of course, another irritating part (pun intended) of the mosquito problem is that some people seem to attract skeeters more than others.  According to researchers, genetics account for 85 percent of susceptibility to mosquitoes. Also, people with high concentrations of steroids or cholesterol on their skin surface, and people who produce excess amounts of certain acids, such as uric acid attract mosquitoes, apparently because these substances trigger mosquitoes’ sense of smell.

People giving off large amounts of carbon dioxide also attract mosquitoes, so if you’ve been charging through the woods to get away from them, when you stop to catch your breath you’ve become a prime target.

If the mosquitoes are so bad right now, why don’t we just stay home? I’m glad you asked. In short, fishing right now is pretty darned good. Besides, ranchers are currently cutting hay, which means if we can survive a little longer, things will get better.

So, go fish.

Glacier National Park at 100

“He’s been to Glacier, but he still hasn’t seen it,” has been my wife’s standing joke about my first visit to Glacier National Park.

After 25 years, that joke is getting old.

We had a houseguest from the east coast over the 4th of July weekend, who suggested the trip to Glacier, so on July 4 we headed north.

It’s appropriate, this year, to visit America’s tenth national park and to celebrate its centennial. President William Howard Taft signed the law creating Glacier National Park on May 11, 1910. George Bird Grinnell, the editor of Forest & Stream magazine (predecessor to Field & Stream magazine) led a long campaign to make the area he dubbed, “The crown of the continent,” a national park.

The creation of the park was not without controversy. First, the creation effectively took the area of the park east of the continental divide from the Blackfeet Indian nation, and the area west of the divide from the Salish-Kootenai people. The creation of the park also meant that the area was no longer open to timber and mining development. While it may seem strange from the perspective of a century, the creation of the park was a bitter pill to swallow for many residents of the area.

On the other hand, the park became a major income generator for the Great Northern Railway. The company, through its Glacier National Park Company subsidiary, built hotels and chalets in the park to accommodate visitors. As the U.S. fell in love with the automobile, the park built the Going to the Sun Road, the only road that bisects the park, and since its completion in 1932, has been acclaimed as a great engineering achievement.

The Going to the Sun Road and the road’s summit at Logan Pass at 6646 feet has been at the center of my wife’s Glacier jokes. In that previous visit, when we were on an August vacation trip, storms swept across northern Montana.

We camped at Hungry Horse reservoir and drove to Browning to drive north to the St. Mary’s entrance. As we started gaining elevation we didn’t get far before clouds closed in. At Logan Pass there was about two feet of new snow on the ground and almost zero visibility until we were at the bottom of the mountain along the McDonald River. That trip, again, gave my wife joke material for 25 years.

So, would this trip be better? At an overnight stay at St. Mary’s, storm clouds gathered over the mountains and heavy rain fell during the night. As clouds moved on we saw a dusting of snow on top of the peaks. We also overheard other visitors, unprepared for mountain weather, muttering, “And this is supposed to be summer?

This time, however, the sun came out and while there were intermittent rain showers, we had bright sunshine for several short hikes to see waterfalls and scenic vistas. The lower elevations were full of wildflowers in full bloom.

Logan Pass, however, still keeps its secrets. Dense clouds hovered over the crest of Going to the Sun road with visibility barely more than a car’s length. At the Logan Pass visitor center, snowdrifts towered over the walkways—a strong indicator of the amount of work it takes to open the interior of the park every summer. Some visitors, however, took advantage of the snowfields, trekking up the walkways carrying skis for a July ski outing.

While there are still giant snowdrifts in early July, the other side of the story is that this centennial year is a good time to visit Glacier National Park, and to be able to catch glimpses of the few glaciers still surviving. In the mid-1800s, when the first white visitors came to the area, there were an estimated 150 active glaciers, a number that declined to about 100 when the park was formed. In this centennial year there are just 20 glaciers left and projections are that they will disappear in the next ten years.

Just remember, when you’re packing for a trip, don’t forget the polar fleece vests and windbreakers. Even though glaciers are melting, winter is never far away on the Crown of the Continent.

Supreme Court Rules on Second Amendment

“I’m glad the Supreme Court ruled to let us keep our guns.”

That was a comment from a friend and online reader of this column, regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the case McDonald v. Chicago.

I responded to him that I didn’t think the ruling had much to do with us and our shotguns.

Nevertheless, some people are cheering the Supreme Court decision, while others are trying to find some reason to think that there may still be some room for some common sense restrictions on firearms, particularly handguns.

The Chicago case is a follow-up to an earlier case, District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Court ruled, in 2008, that the Second Amendment secures for individuals the right to keep and bear arms, including handguns, for the purpose of self-defense. The ruling nullified D.C. laws that made possession of unregistered firearms a crime, and made registration of handguns illegal. A key point in that case is that the District of Columbia is under Federal jurisdiction.

The day after the Heller decision, petitioners, including one Otis McDonald, filed suit in Federal court challenging Chicago (and the suburb of Oak Park) handgun laws similar to the D.C. laws struck down in the Heller decision. The key contention in the suit is that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms should apply to states through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.

The Federal District Court (Northern District of Illinois) and Appeals Court ruled against McDonald on the basis that in previous cases the Supreme Court had not incorporated the Second Amendment against the states, and the question of whether the 14th Amendment applied was an issue that could be decided only by the Supreme Court.

The crux of the McDonald case revolves around balances of state and federal power and whether state and local governments can enact laws to address crime problems in large urban areas.

The Court ruled, last week, in an opinion by Justice Alito, that the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause incorporates the Second Amendment rights recognized in the Heller case. Justice Thomas wrote a separate opinion coming to the same conclusion under another provision of the 14th Amendment.

While the Court’s decision affirmed the Second Amendment’s right for individuals to keep and bear arms, the decision did not directly strike down the Chicago laws. Instead, it remanded the case back to the Seventh Circuit to resolve conflicts between certain Chicago gun restrictions and the Second Amendment.

While the McDonald decision affirmed individual Second Amendment rights, it did little to resolve issues as to what local jurisdictions can do to address the problems of gun violence. The opinion affirmed that certain firearms restrictions mentioned in the Heller case, such as those prohibiting possession of firearms by felons or mentally ill persons, or laws forbidding carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms, are all permissible.

Further, the Chicago Tribune reported that the City of Chicago’s top attorney, Mara Georges, believes that the McDonald ruling doesn’t mean that the City can’t restrict the number of handguns kept in the home, or keep a current ban on firearms dealers within Chicago’s city limits. The City plans to draft new regulations to require registration of handguns, plus require gun owners to undergo training and submit to a criminal background check and obtain liability insurance.

Andrew Cohen, a legal analyst for Politics Daily, comments, “The ruling all but assures a great deal of litigation over the scope of the McDonald ruling. We will now see a wave of lawsuits by gun rights advocates seeking to invalidate gun control measures across the country…At the same time, state lawmakers …are likely to struggle” over questions of whether restrictions fall under the scope of the Second Amendment or longstanding regulatory measures that Justice Alito expressly endorsed.

In summary, the court decisions did, in fact, affirm individual rights to keep and bear arms, but it still allows state and local governments to put in some regulations.

The bottom line is that we will continue to argue and litigate.

BP Oil Spill - the Montana Connection

While traveling across Montana this June, a common sight was of Montana rivers rushing towards the Missouri River, and on to the Gulf of Mexico. With the heavy rains of June, these rivers have been carrying a big load of sediment.

At the same time, coastal Louisiana, an area much in the news these days, keeps shrinking. Every 38 minutes an area the size of a football field disappears, washed away by waves and tides of the Gulf of Mexico.

And, at the same time, a million gallons of crude oil surges out of that BP deep-water oil well every day, the ongoing disaster story that dominates the news media.

Now, let’s connect the dots.

At one time, the sediment from the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin Rivers here in southwest Montana, along with the Marias, Milk, Yellowstone, Musselshell, Judith, Tongue and Powder Rivers, to name just a few, emptied into the Missouri River, starting a long journey to the Gulf of Mexico. Naturally, much of that sediment settled out along the way, forming sand bars, islands, replenishing riparian areas, but eventually washing downstream to the Mississippi River system and finally settling out on the coast of Louisiana, forming islands and wetlands.

That sediment doesn’t go far anymore. Most sediment on the main stem of the Missouri settles out in the string of dams on the upper Missouri. The sediment from the Yellowstone system settles out as the river merges with the Missouri at the Montana/North Dakota border and the next great impoundment, Lake Sakakawea.

Now, consider all the rivers of America’s heartland that used to dump sediment loads into the Mississippi which are now dammed and otherwise harnessed in the name of progress, whether that means hydroelectric generation, flood control, or irrigation.

The sediment that does get carried to the Mississippi gets rushed along by levees, dikes, and shipping channels. Much of that sediment, which previously spread out in a great river delta, forming and replenishing islands and wetlands, now ends up in deep water areas of the Gulf of Mexico.

As a result of all that progress, the coastal wetlands of Louisiana have lost much of their vitality and are prone to erosion, a situation dramatically demonstrated several years ago when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita battered the coast, and some islands and whole communities were literally washed away.

None of this is new. It’s a process that has been going on since the 1930s. It’s estimated that 2,300 square miles of coastal Louisiana marshlands have disappeared since then.

And now we have the BP oil well disaster.

If that oil well were centered in Butte, the contaminated area would extend west to the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho. To the south, it would extend to near Idaho Falls. To the north and east the spill would cover Great Falls, Lewistown, Bozeman and Big Timber.

From daily news reports, it seems increasingly clear that the BP corporate culture isn’t necessarily safety first. In addition, other observers have noted that other countries with offshore oil resources have more stringent environmental protections, including requiring that well drillers put down a relief well at the same time they establish a primary oil well. BP is currently trying to put a relief well in place, but it likely won’t be complete until August. Meanwhile, the well keeps gushing out a million gallons of oil a day, only a small part of which is recovered.

The loss of coastal wetlands and barrier islands means more oil is headed for the mainland, and oil damage to existing wetlands further weakens the already fragile system.

It’s only going to get worse. Tony Dolle, the Communications Director for Ducks Unlimited, who has spent most of the last two months in Louisiana as part of a DU task force, asks, “How are we going to tell 13 million ducks and geese they’d be better off not coming to Louisiana this winter?”

Like an old Cecil B. DeMille movie epic, the Gulf oil disaster has a cast of thousands and is years in the making.

On the web: www.ifitwasmyhome.com, www.du.org, www.vanishingparadise.org.