On Feb 13, 1:42 pm, salmobytes wrote:

Tom and Pete told me stories about fishing the Missouri below Tosten
dam in the late 1960s, when mayfly hatches were so thick the surface
of the river looked like it had the whirlies.

....snipped a lot.
I also told them about the day Ron Scott and I guided a two boat
four customer party down that way--from Tosten to Deepdale, just
above Canyon Ferry Dam, in the early 1080s.
We had slow fishing most of the day, except where Turkey Creek
comes on the West Side of the river a few miles downstream
of Radersburg. And then it was slow again, almost all the way
to Deepdale, where (right at the takeout) one of my guys caught an
extra-nice rainbow about 22" long. Later that evening--after letting
out Michigan-based clients go--Ron and I had a beer at the White
Beaver
Bar in Tosten. I bought beers for everybody at the bar, which was
a bargain, because there was only one other guy besides me and Tom.
I bragged about my 22" fish. The bar tender put both elbows on the
counter,
right in front of me, looked me in the eyes and said: "son, we had
a 14 pound brown in here just last week."

The White Beaver Bar burned down a few years later. It was a great
place.
That bar tender had a pet, maybe 400 pound pig that liked to drink
beer
out of a zink-plated watering trough he had right in the middle of the
bar.
That pig sold him a lot of beer. Guys would drink a half a bottle
down and
then pour the rest into the trough, just to watch that pig, who
wiggled
his porcine but when ever there was beer to slop down.



Still, as the old timers can tell you, the hatches are nothing like
they used to be.