Missoula, Mont. – Until the chance conversation with a Denver-area angler, I had never even heard of a certain stonefly or given much consideration to fishing the Bitterroot River.
“You’ve got to fish the skwala hatch,” Kerry Gubits had said. “It drives trout crazy.”
What I subsequently discovered after tracking Gubits and his two sons to the banks of the Bitterroot is that this little-understood stonefly actually gets most into the heads of fishermen.
Perhaps as touched with cabin fever as northwest Montana trout are starved for a large bite of protein, anglers come from every direction for what increasingly is becoming an early-spring rite of dry-fly fishing. Whether the skwala, a large insect with a mind of its own, ever shows up seems almost beside the point.
When it comes to a starting point for any fishing season, the area around Missoula is better than most. Within the space of short miles, the Bitterroot, Clark’s Fork and Blackfoot rivers join Rock Creek to form one of the grandest tangles of trout streams on the continent.
Gubits goes there because his oldest son, Josh, attends the University of Montana and knows how to row a drift boat. Younger son Ben, who studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango, not far from the San Juan River, came along for the ride.
“I didn’t tell them where to go to college, but I’m not complaining,” Gubits said with a sly smile.
More than most rivers, the Bitterroot serves up a blend of delight and intrigue that might keep any angler entranced all season. Rich with trout and favored with ample public access, it has risen to No. 4 on Montana’s list of most-visited rivers.
Starting with the skwalas, this unusual stream attracts a summer-long flotilla of drift boats that speak volumes about its aesthetic appeal and the quality of the trout. But it also is being loved to death in a more ominous fashion, a turn that bodes ill both for the fishery and a way of life.
“We’re afraid of all the development along the tributary streams, which is where the trout spawn,” said Pat Saffel, fisheries manager with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Paralleling U.S. 93 for 75 miles south of Missoula, the Bitterroot has become a magnet for wealthy hobby ranchers and widespread growth. The wildlife agency at least temporarily has forestalled decline by purchasing water from an upstream reservoir to compensate for summer irrigation drawdown.
“It seems to be holding pretty steady. It contains some of the largest fish in the region,” Saffel said of a mix that includes West Slope cutthroat on the upper reaches above Hamilton and a solid mix of rainbows and browns below.
A couple of weeks ago, when an unexpected snowmelt rise dropped the water temperature to a chilly 40 degrees, the elusive skwalas stayed hunkered in their homes in the rocks.
That didn’t keep a 21-inch rainbow and a bookend pair of 20-inch browns from inhaling flies tied to mimic them.
As any among the growing army of enthusiasts will tell you, once you’ve seen a skwala, it’s hard to forget.
