Yellowstone03

Christie and Ken left. Judy and I stayed and fished some more. Pebble Creek was still running about the color of coffee. A different afternoon storm blew out Slough for a few days, so that was out. We fished Soda Butte upstream of the confluence with Pebble. Soda Butte is getting pretty small at that point, so we didn't expect much in the way of fish size. We were very wrong. Back to fifteen inch fish and more. From up on the bank, I hooked one cutthroat from the tail of the opaque fast water rushing into a small pool. I set the hook. He dropped back into the pool below me to consider the situation. I could see him clearly as he hung there and shook his head a couple times. I wasn't applying any real pressure, I was just keeping the line tight until we each decided what to do next. When I saw this fish, I knew there was no way I would land him. I was looking down at an underwater locomotive. The head shakes convinced him this was a situation he needed to resolve, so he bolted back into the current, blew back up the stream, and snapped the line like it was nothing. I understand those little tiny hooks dissolve and fall out within just a few days, so we shouldn't have done him any damage. But watch out next year. I know right where I'm going to fish. I'll tie on tougher gear too. This would be a great fish to catch.

Judy and I moved to Indian Creek. We fished. More brookies. We were fishing at the pool at the confluence of the Gardiner and Obsidian when the noisy family from Wisconsin showed up. Judy moved on right away, fishing her way up the Gardiner. I was catching fish. I stayed a little longer. The Dad was annoying. He was doing lots of instructing. Mom was quiet. The two little kids were stuck with Dad. The teenager was different. He kept apart from the rest of them, and was quietly going about his business, trying to figure out how to catch a fish. They didn't know where to fish or what to fish with, so they were catching nothing. I got to chatting with the teenager. He had never seen anything like the place we were standing in. He was awestruck. But he wasn't catching any fish. He let me tie on a local fly for him, coach him a little, and give him my spot. I waited until he landed his first fish before I moved on upstream with Judy.

We left Indian Creek, bound for West Yellowstone, back to Grizzly. Judy, Annie, and I floated the Madison with Rick on Friday. We did well.

I now have electric stabilizing jacks. I was disappointed, when we first got Shamu, to find out that the leveling system consisted of manual stabilizing jacks. You have to go around to each one and raise or lower it with a hand crank. It is a slow proposition with a lot of cranking. It's tough on my back. Well I fixed that. I bought a very strong cordless electric drill, with a ten inch extension and a three quarter inch socket. I still have to go around to each stabilizer to raise and lower it, but it takes only a few moments at each one. No back strain. The drill is strong enough, that I can do a significant amount of leveling as well. A great solution.

Judy and I had one of those magic moments fishing. We had been focused on fish and water for hours, when we looked up to see the two thousand pound bull bison grazing peacefully, tail quietly flicking, a few yards from us on the other side of the stream. This is a stream that is all of eight feet wide at that point. We continued on our fishing way. He continued on his grazing way. I kept a close eye on that quietly flicking tail for any indication he was anything other than completely contented.

Except for that guy in Carbondale, I thought I was "solar man". Not so. The camp host at Pebble has us bested. We have two fifty-watt panels on our roof. We're good for water and electricity for about a week. By then we're getting pretty low. Ray, the camp host has two seventy-five watt panels on his roof. He has fifty percent more power than we do. He stays out for four months. If you're doing it, you may as well go big. I checked at Camping World later, and now they offer one hundred fifty watt panels. I haven't joined the big leagues yet.

We drove back and forth through the Park. We got caught in a big moose jam as traffic stopped to see him. We didn't get any bear jams. We got bison jams, elk jams, coyote jams, pronghorn jams, deer jams, and believe it or not, a great blue heron jam. A guy had a tripod set up on the side of the road with a long lens to capture a good shot of a heron standing in the water on the other side of a small lake. Six cars locked it up to stop to see what he was looking at.

We saw bald eagles and osprey flying by with fish. We saw a mixed herd of bison and pronghorn. We got to hear immature horned owls with raspy squeaking calls at night at Pebble. We saw Christie's trumpeter swans on the Madison inside the Park.

I have a favorite trail to run outside the Pebble Creek campground. It is a little too steep, but it is a great lonely trail that runs north into the Beartooth wilderness area. I run as much as I can, alternating between running and walking as I have to, until I start to get tired. About a mile and a half is all the farther in I get. Then I do the easy cruise back downhill to the campground. One day Judy and I were sitting on the bridge over Pebble creek and got to visiting with two kids who were just coming down off the trail. They had encountered an adult grizzly bear while they were hiking out, right on the trail, within two miles of the campground. The grizzly bear left the trail and they got to hike the rest of the way out, unmolested. I thought of myself running alone along that trail, nothing but shorts and shoes. Not even a can of pepper spray. I decided I'd rather run on the road the next day.

On the way home, we stopped at another desert lake park. We camped with the pelicans and pronghorns.

For two weeks, I got to fish every day. Some days we caught a lot of fish. Some days we barely caught any. But, again, thanks to Brian that one day, we never got skunked. Judy fished great. She started her flyfishing career later than I did, so she hasn't had nearly as much practice as I have. The whole time Judy was there, she fished even with me. She caught as many fish, and as big fish as I did. The big brook trout of the trip was nine inches. The big rainbow was seventeen. The big cutthroat was nineteen. The big brown trout was probably six inches. And one mountain whitefish. It was a good trip.

Except I didn't get enough fishing.