Bass, Salmon, Trout in Paradise!

Big Sky

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Work was driving me crazy and I seriously needed a break and some hard-core fishing R+R. So I took a few days off from work and hooked up with my old fishing buddy (Captain Ahab) over in Western Montana. We fished 5 lakes in 2.5 days. We caught fish in 4 of the 5. The one we didn't catch fish in is because we got blown off the lake only about 20 minutes into fishing. No big deal as we had a good trip over all. We caught smallies, largemouth bass, kokanee salmon, brooke trout, and I caught my first lake trout. The toughest part of the whole trip was pointing my car east and heading home. Even if the fishing had of been terrible the scenery and renewing an old friendship would have been worth it.

Like I said the scenery was pretty easy on the eyes. Being surrounded by this kind of scenery day after day just never gets old.
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My buddy Dave (Captain Ahad) caught the first fish of the trip. A pretty darn decent smallie.
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Shortly after I landed my first smallie of the trip. Not as big as Captain Ahabs, but I was happy to get one hooked and landed. It weren't a minnow though.
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Dave and I basically went back and fourth catching smallies and the occasional LM bass. The limit on the lake is 1 smallmouth over 12" and 4 under 12". It was actually harder to catch the under 12" bass. We did manage to each get our limit in about 3 hours. I lost count of how many we released tough.

One more smallie pic for good measure.
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After catching our limit of bass we decided to change lakes and went after lake trout. It was pretty slow fishing but I did manage to catch my first lake trout. It wasn't big by lake trout standards, but I was just happy to say I finally caught one.
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The next day we went after Kokanee salmon. They generally are not a very large fish and these proved to be no exception. They do rank though right at the top when it comes to table fare. We each caught a limit of these little silver devils. However, we actually had to work at it and it took all day.
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Dave with one of many we caught.
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Here is the last photo I took of the trip. After pulling the boat on the trailer I ran down to the bank and wanted to capture one last photo to remember the trip by. Next time work drives me nuts I will have some nice photos to look and great memories to day dream about.
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You are getting to be quite the fisherman.
 
Yes Troy I did. He's changed a little since the last time I saw him. That sure looks like some pretty country. A stress reliever for sure. Glad you had a good trip. Figured for sure that we'd get a pic with you and a bear sometime. But I know your kinda fond of your pole lately.
 
Actually I could have easily killed a smallish blonde/cinnamon a couple weeks ago, but he was just too small. I haven't been out much, and with my oldest son's wedding coming up this weekend down in Utah, I'm not going to get out. There is still this fall. :)
 
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