Trip report- Rock Creek

I finally had, or made, an opportunity to wander up Rock Creek yesterday
evening. Left Missoula about 5:00pm and drove up to the area of the
microburst. The creek at that point is in a rather deep north/south canyon
so the mountains were already shadowing the river. There were some small
mayflies out, very few caddis, no shortage of mosquitoes. Really did not
see any fish actively rising.

Started out with a very blonde EHC which apparently was of no interest to
the local denizens. Tried a yellow humpy which I was reasonably sure would
be productive as I only had the one, and the banks were brushy. Sure enough
I managed a couple of takes and a couple of smallish browns before losing
the fly to the vegetation.

Next I tried a small yellow stimulator- no luck. By then it was starting to
get a bit dusky and there were caddis about, so I tied on a Harry Mason CDC
caddis and had several strikes, landed a couple more, including a 15" or so
Cut-bow. Thanks Harry- those CDC caddis have worked for me on the Madison,
Rock Creek and the Bitterroot!

My friend had been working a pool slightly upstream and around a bend from
me and had worked his way down to me by now and it was getting almost too
dark to tie on a fly without the forgotten headlamp, but I wanted to go up
and try the pool as Warren and I had done well there at the Rock Creek
clave.

Still using Harry's CDC caddis I was fishing pretty much in the dark- and
landed 3 browns and lost a fourth at my feet in the space of about 30
minutes. I was having fun- mostly catching them on the swing-until I made a
fatal mistake of netting the last fish. There was just enough barb on the
hook so I couldn't see to get the fly free of the net. Thus ended a good
evening on Rock Creek.

Except, wandering back to the care at about 10:15 I cut over to where I had
left my friend, sure enough I could here him rumbling about in the brush
trying to make his way out to the trail and head back to the car. I got to
witching about 25' of him when I noticed the large palm shaped antlers
silhouetted against the scree slope on the opposite side of the creek. Boy
did that cold beer taste good when I finally got back to the car.

jh