I was forced (yeah, right) to attend a meeting in Missoula on Monday. Flatscaster told me he’d never take another picture of me with a red on the flat if I didn’t take his 4wt and get on some cold water trout. I obliged, and ended up arriving in Missoula Sunday afternoon.
No fly shops were open, so I was going to wait until Monday afternoon. Well, the meeting took longer than expected and by the time I got out of it and was able to call a fly shop to get situated, it was too late to go. There are terrible forest fires burning all around there right now, and the fly shop told me that the only river open to fishing was the Bitteroot. And he flat out told me that the fishing was horrible due to the water temps. I decided against going, because I would have ended up with less than 30 minutes before dark once I got to the river. Oh well, next time…
The soke from the fires was really bad, I never saw the sky in almost 3 days because of it. At times, ash would fall like snow flurries, and in the mornings there was a layer of ash on the cars.
I have decided that I really want to go back during a better part of the year, though.
Oh yeah, the airline managed to break the rod tube, made of schedule 40 PVC. Thank goodness the rod was unscathed.
Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky and I thought to myself, where the heck is the ceiling?