Greetings Fellow Extravaganzers!
With the quickly upcoming events of E-13 (as in the Wonderful Ones will arrive on the scene exactly 60 days from next Monday, Tax Day!), I thought I would reach out to you and provide an overview of the rivers on which we will be during Extravaganza 2013, which are threefold: The Clark Fork of the Columbia River, the Bitterroot River, and the Big (“A River Runs Through It”) Blackfoot River, the proximate of each which gives rises to the situs of Missoula, Montana.
The Clark Fork of the Columbia River is the “freeway river” into which all others in the Missoula area flow. It is the major artery and collector of runoff waters with its headwaters over 60 miles east of Missoula, flowing from east to west as it winds its way up into Canada and then down the Columbia Gorge out and through its gaping and dangerous at Portland’s Fort Disappointment, so named by Lewis & Clark at the westward end of their journey when it failed to discover a true Northwest Passage.
For the past six years, the Clark Fork has been a barren fishing ground for us due to the rerouting of that river to remove the Milltown Dam at the mouth of the Big Blackfoot River—the largest environmental clean up site in the United States. Prior to its removal, for over a century the Milltown Dam provided a catch basin for the toxic runoff of arsenic and other poisonous chemicals that were used in the Anaconda leaching, smelting and processing of gold and silver. So bad were the cumulative spoils, that the water able around Bonner, MT at the mouth of the Big Blackfoot became contaminated and, after a half decade of study, wrangling and political squabbling, the decision was made to reroute the Clark Fork into a temporary channel, remove the Milltown Dam in its entirety and to re-mine the accumulated spoils and, appropriately, transport those toxic additions back to a sequester site near Anaconda.
The rerouting, removal and reinstatement process, while to-be-great in the long term, for the past five plus years has created environmental havoc to and with the river’s fish and bug life…simply stated, the fines that were generated from the relocation process smothered the plant life of the Clark Fork, which destroyed its plant life, which, in turn, eradicated its bug life and which, as you can imagine, migratorally relocated its fish life…the river became unfishable because the fish simply had left.
Speed forward (slowly) five years and, just this past year, the Clark Fork has begun to recover such that the handful of boats that we launched onto it during E-12 found wonderful pockets of now-returned mega rainbow trout which have begun to repopulate this wonderful fishery. Years ago, year after year, we would launch an average of 25% of our Extravaganza boats on the Clark Fork and, come E-13, I am pleased to announce that this wonderful high-bank major fishery is now back in our midst.
The Bitterroot River is the favorite fishing river of most of our guides (and the river where we have launched fully 85% of our E-boats over the last half of our Extravaganzas. Its 52 mile length extends from Missoula southward into the high reaches of the mountains that form the border between Idaho and Montana and, from its dammed Westfork headwaters, it flows steadily and surely northward (an unusual direction for such a major river) and provides the fish that you saw in the recent postings of early-season fishing by the Group One Brian “Moraine” and Josef “Fear The Beard” Shepard—a healthy population of rainbow trout, browns, cutthroats and cuttbows (a cross between the rainbows and the cutts).
Unlike the Clark Fork with its pre-cut route, the Bitterroot is a younger river that meanders with each year’s runoff. In fact, the current main channel of most of this low bank, graveled river charts itself where, several years ago, mere side channels existed. As such, buying property along this river is a real gamble, as you simply don’t know where Mother Nature is going to re-chart its future path. With over 1,500 native trout per mile, an average day’s float will place you over 12,000 trout (many, many in the 20”+ category), such that our nightly boat reports (conducted at cocktail hour each night when we all gather on our Rock Creek back porch, drinks in hand, to report the seen and experienced events of the day--my favorite part of each year’s Extravaganza, btw) oft tell of not only masterful fish specimens caught and released but also of eagle, osprey, peregrine hawk, beaver, otter and moose sightings comprising a true Montana bouillabaisse of spectacular outdoor experiences that, year after year, bring folks back to our doors and extravagant carryings-on!!
The final of our trilogy of to-be-fished rivers is The Big (“A River Runs Through It”) Blackfoot River, by far my favorite river of all that I have ever fished. The situs of Norman McLean’s now twenty year old classic book (made two decades ago into a Robert Redford directed Brad Pitt movie of the same parenthetical name), a day’s float on this majestic river, whether an hour’s drive upstream though its mini-grand canyon or lower along its many access points, is breathtaking. The Blackfoot is a truly a storied river where, year after year, the biggest Extravaganza fish are caught and released—witness Napa Supervisor Bill Dodd’s boat last year when, on the last day of E-12’s fishing, as later touted in the Napa Register, Bill landed a 31” bull trout; wife Mary landed a 23” and a 18” bull trout; and together they boated another dozen magnificent rainbows and browns.
The Blackfoot is a low-banked dirt shorn river such that, come the runoff, it is the last of the three rivers to “open up”—to wit: obtain the clarity needed for fish to see and receive our offerings. In 2008, we filmed the Extravaganza and, if you want to see what the Blackfoot looks like just as it is gaining its clarity and what landing a 31” fish is really like, toggle over to last year’s Blogsite www.montanaextravaganza2012.blogspot.com and look at our award-winning, YouTube-posted film and see then-rookie Jami Grassi land just such a fish when, by good fortune, we had, on hand, two boat-based film crew, two land-based film crews (including yours truly) along with an underwater camera that caught the release of this wonderful pectoral-blessed specimen.
Geographically, the Clark Fork flows from east to west; the Bitterroot flows from south to north; and the Blackfoot flows from north to south, all converging on Missoula, Montana, the proud fishing base for Extravaganza 2013 for which each of these magnificent rivers will flow.
Bueno, bueno, bueno!!
Best to all sensing the nearness of it all,
Rock Creek Ron
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