Missoula, Mont. – A river runs through it – or at least close enough to establish this small city as the epicenter of Montana’s rich trout-fishing culture.
The Blackfoot River, source of Norman Maclean’s classic short novel whose movie version launched a fresh American awareness of the sport, is just 4 miles away.
But the river that indeed runs through Missoula is the really big one, a 360-mile-long waterway that carries a greater flow than any other in the state.
The Clark Fork – named by Merriweather Lewis for his adventuring partner William Clark – neatly splits the quaint brick structures of Missoula’s charming Old Town in much the same fashion the Seine partitions Paris, only with considerably more water and a lot more trout.
Locals with a couple of hours to kill can catch a few browns, or perhaps even a stray bull trout, within a few blocks of home. Or, with just a little more time, branch out to other waters that ring with angling lore.
Within the span of 20 miles, the Clark Fork gathers the Bitterroot and Blackfoot rivers, along with Rock Creek, as fine a collection of trout streams as exists in the lower 48 states.
Rushing north and west toward Idaho’s Lake Pend Orielle, it reaches grand proportions and, against considerable logic, the fishing improves with the expansion.
The most popular stretch is near the town of St. Regis and the confluence with the equally immense Flathead River.
“It’s a huge river that holds big fish and people seem to figure out how to catch them,” said Pat Saffel, fisheries manager with Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks. “The fish tend to pod up. Anglers know where the cold water is at the mouth of creeks and springs. These concentrations make it easier to fish.”
The lower river also attracts the most pressure, both from populations centers just across the border in Idaho and from tourists from the east. It’s also popular around the headwaters, near Warm Springs, where smaller browns are thick in the small stream and giant fish prowl the several settling ponds.
“There’s very low traffic in the mid-river area, which is the part I like best,” said Jason Lanier, a Missoula guide.
On a rainy day with clouds tangled in the treetops, Lanier had launched his raft a dozen miles upstream from the Milltown Dam site where a superfund cleanup operation to remove toxic sediment is nearing conclusion and above the location where the Blackfoot River joins the Clark Fork.
Unlike the more developed Bitterroot Valley, this is a wild setting where it diverges from the highway, a place where ghostly groves of spruce slip past on a wisp of mist.
“This is a technical, dry-fly kind of stream, but it also fishes well with giant bugs,” Lanier said, knotting on a foam pattern that, had it been alive, might have eaten our lunch.
The time was late March, well before the hordes arrive and considerably ahead of the good mayfly hatches that pop when runoff subsides in June.
Montana indeed may be Big Sky country and the home to especially large trout. But it’s also where anglers choose monstrous flies, offerings designed to get attention wherever they land.
“Trout remember the big bugs,” Lanier said, popping open a box of scary creatures with names like Big Nasty and Yellow Yummy.
And, for a time, they ate them. A mixture of rainbows and browns – none bragging size, but never small – streaked out from tangles of willow roots to grab an assortment of foam floaters and streamers.
At mid-afternoon, the tundra of cloud layers descended farther, spitting a mix of rain and snow and spreading a chill into the bones. William Clark’s river continued to run through it, but the fishermen ran for shore.
Clark Fork River at a glance
Location: The river follows Interstate 90 roughly from Butte to Missoula and St. Regis, then traces Montana Highway 200 to Idaho.
Accommodations: A variety of lodging and dining in Missoula or Butte; lesser variety in smaller towns along the river.
Contact: For guide service: Jason Lanier, Blue Heron Outfitter, 406-360-9991. Many fly shops are available in the area. in the Wednesday editions of The Denver Post.
Considering the fact its watershed contains three of the nation’s largest superfund sites, the Clark Fork River maintains a remarkable trout fishery. Even as cleanup continues at the Butte and Anaconda copper pits, the current focus rests on the removal of the Milltown Dam a few miles upstream from Missoula.
Built to provide hydropower to a century-old lumber mill, the dam also collected sediment washed down from the copper mines. Periodic floods flushed the deadly metals downstream, with resulting fish kills.
The cleanup involves removing millions of tons of sediment while the river is diverted through a bypass channel.
“There have been some short-term impacts. Last year fish died in our test cages all the way down to the confluence with the Bitterroot River (4 miles below Missoula). We probably will see more contaminated sediments moving through in the future,” said Pat Saffel, fisheries manager with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Until its anticipated completion in 2008, the project blocks trout movement into the Blackfoot and upper Clark Fork, as well as Rock Creek.
“Once this is resolved, I expect higher and more stable fish populations,” Saffel said.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
