We did okay yesterday, but it was a hot one. Several of us had got a bit dehydrated and sun burned floating from 3-mile to Bighorn landing. Today got a bit more exciting on the same float. It was supposed to be in the 90's today, so we dragged our feet and didn't get on the water till about 10:00 am.
The dry fly action was going pretty good in few spots, mostly on BWO parachutes and cripples size 18. We saw another bull snake swimming across the river, a couple of muskrats, and then a prairie dog. The Prairie dog was swimming at me from the opposite bank and when I moved to grab my camera it was about 2 rod lengths away and realized he shouldn't land on me and continued on passed me to the bank.
Sometime around 3 or 4 pm, a front moved in very fast, the temperature dropped about 20 degrees and a thunderstorm blew in. The rain was hard and almost felt like hail. Feiker and I scrambled toward shore and when they started to blow off we scrambled to save them. Anderson was laughing and then he bolted off toward his drift boat as it started to sail away from the shore. If I had to guess I think the wind was probably around 30mph or better. Luckily, four of the five of us know Montana well enough that we had rain jackets packed. We learned that our cigars were storm proof as they kept going all through the down poor. So they are now a MUST for future trips.
All the other boats on the river were paddling by, but we were not trusting that 1) our kick boats would stay upright in the storm, 2) that our rods wouldn't attract lightning, 3) our aluminum oars wouldn't attract lightning, 4) that we would have any control of steering our boats. So what else were we to do but waited out with cigars and Leinenkugals. Everything passed and an hour later it was done.
After the storm cleared up, the hatch was done, so we pretty much just floated the remaining five miles of river to the landing hoping for rising fish. We didn't see enough to make us stop at any one spot.
Then at the end as we were coming up to the Bighorn landing. Bob threatened the other Bob that he was going to crush him, then after passing him he actually ran his boat into mine while laughing manically. I suggested that we need to pull his captains license, but since he doesn't have one it turned out to be an empty threat. :)
We got back to camp, had grilled steaks, hung our wet gear up and called it a day.
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| up river |
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| The Drive In |
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| Who let the dogs out |
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| Incoming thunder storm |
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| During storm |
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| Bent rods in storm |
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| After the storm |
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