A Weekend With Corey and his Pops

Day 1- corey does some website stuff for different

shops and outfitters so he gets some perks with

that. as luck would have it he invited me to meet

up with him and his dad garret and stay the weekend

and fish with them and a guide. hell yea i was up for

the challenge. corey had bought a drift boat over

the winter and this was the first time it was getting

some river action. there was actually 3 boats that

were in our little group, corey and me in his boat,

garret and the guide in the guides boat and then

and then the other boat was another guide, a friend

of corey's, and 2 clients. i offered to take over for corey

on the sticks, since i had rowed once or twice, so that he

could fish as well but he just wanted to row and get a

good feel for the boat and mimic what the other guides

were doing. corey did a great job on the sticks but

unfortunately the fish were not cooperating. i missed

1 or 2 fish throwing different dry patterns before

the guide rowing garret gave me a small pmx pattern

that was producing for garret. i landed a beautiful

brown on the pattern and then the rest of the day

was spent landing a few dinks. garret landed a few nice

fish and the 2 clients in the other guide boat were not

doing so well. we stopped about mid-way for a shore side

lunch and surprisingly the guide with the clients fed all

of us, which to me was very unexpected. after lunch me

garret switched boats so that corey could row his dad.

as i said, the rest of the day for me consisted of dinks

but garret managed to net a couple more nice fish. as we

neared the take-out i was more then ready to be done.

i am not used to fishing off of a boat and when you don't

row, all you do i fish and my wrist was absolutely killing

me. it was a double digit float and all that constant casting

really did me in. you can't beat being guided for free though.

on the drive from the take-out back to the shop corey heard

something, looked out his side view mirror and says....what

the hell was that? he saw something bouncing down the road

wondering if something came off the boat or if he ran over

something. he pulled over and ran back to where he saw it and

then came back with one of my loop reels. i had left it on his

truck bumper and it came off at about 65mph and bounced

down the road like a basketball. guess i'll take it to work this

week and smoothed out all the high metal. it's got some nasty

scars now but is still round and reels just fine.

Day 2- we were supposed to fish with another

guide on saturday but he had some issues going

on and couldn't swing it so we ventured on our

choosing some smaller water and staying on foot.

we started lower on the ruby where i nailed a nice

brown on my 3rd cast. garret chose to fish close

to where we had parked and throw some sub-

surface stuff, coming up empty handed, while

me and corey fish our way up delivering meat

to the doorsteps of many trouts. me and corey

only landed a couple in that section but turned

a lot of heads. we all met back at the jeep for some

lunch then drove to the upper section. the fishing

was quite slow. i did land a really nice rainbow but

as i was holding my leader with one hand and

reaching for my camera with the other the 'bow'

starting flopping around and spit the hook before

i could snap any pics. i took my first whitie on a

streamer and had a big bastard explode on my

fly as it hit the water, had him on for a split second

and gone. about that time a nasty storm rolled in

and we made it back to the jeep just as the wind

and rains made their presence known.

Day 3- corey and garret decided they were going

to head home in the morning since the fishing was

less then stellar and i decided i would hit the ruby

for a few hours before my drive back to missoula.

i got to the pull out and i was fortunate to be the

first on the water. it was a no brainer for me as to

was i was going to throw at the fish. streamers of

course. i threw white, olive and a yellow pattern,

all moving fish with white being the least productive.

i switched area a couple of time, coming back to

almost where i had started. i only landed 3 fish but

i sure did move a ton of fish. 12:30, 12:45 and i was

on my way back home.