White Sulphur Springs and the Smith River

We love discovering new hot springs. So when Jack needed to fish the Smith River in Montana, we chose to fish a spot that was near White Sulphur Springs. Before we left Livingston, we stopped at the fly fishing museum there, which had been recommended to us by the couple, Sherry and Doug, we met at our last campsite. Sherry is on the board of the museum, and she gave us a tour of the place. Some amazing flies and antique fishing equipment there. We ended up joining the International Federation of Fly Fishers, which is an educational and conservational organization that sponsors the museum and a lot of other programs. (Jack is excited because as a member he will receive a great fly fishing magazine every month.)

The drive to White Sulphur was scenic, through valleys and ranches and sagebrush. We saw whitetail deer, mule deer, and a few antelope along the way. We also stopped to photograph a neat roadside statue of a mountain man, waving at us. These fur trappers and traders arrived in this area not long after Lewis and Clark passed through here. We had to wave back--felt like a farewell wave to bygone years of the West.

Thunder Jack

 A tiny town that we drove through had a sign on an old stone building saying "Bank" and "Bar"--interesting combo that we also had to photograph.

Cash a check, buy a beer.

In White Sulphur Springs, we booked a room at the old spa motel for two nights. It's a very good value, maybe the best we've ever found. The price (cheap) of the room allows you access to all the pools any time (they're open from 6 am until 11 pm). This is a beautiful hot spring with three separate pools. The temperature of the one right next to our room is 102 degrees F, about the same temperature as our hot tub back home. This pool has a waterfall, water jets in each corner and mood lighting for evening and night time soaks. On one wall is a large mural depicting Indians gathering and bathing in the hot springs long before the white man showed up. The temperature in the second pool, another large pool, is 96 degrees F. This pool is also surrounded by a large mural depicting all the wildlife that can be found in Montana. The artist who did these murals was pretty good. Beyond the second pool in a separate room is the third pool, whose temperature is 106 degrees F. This is a smaller pool and when you open the door to this pool, you are walking into a steam bath. We can only stay in this pool about 10 minutes. At night, blue-pink mood lighting is in the water and shimmers down a walkway leading to other guest rooms. When we awoke this morning around 7:30 am (July 31st), we headed for the 102 degree pool to get in the mood for Jack's fishing adventure on the upper Smith River.

View from the doorway of our room. This pool is 102 deg. F

This is the 96 deg. F pool,

The 106 deg F steam bath and pool.

 

The 102 pool again. Our room 16 is on the left.

Fishing the Smith River (by Jack)

Turns out that this is the third Smith River that I've fished in Top 100 Trout Streams in America. The first was the Smith River near Martinsville, Virginia where Carol grew up. This is a nice tailwater river and I fished it often when Carol and I would visit her Mom and Dad. The second Smith River is in Northern California above Eureka. This is a beautiful river but, as my fishing buddy Bud Hennessey and I discovered, it is a river where all the rainbow trout leave to spend their time in the Pacific Ocean and only return once a year as steelhead trout.

The Smith River in Montana is most famous for its guided float tours along an isolated 60 mile long canyon. There is a lottery that you must enter once a year to get a permit to float it, and then you must use a state approved guide to float the river. Wading access to the river is almost nonexistent. But there is one isolated spot upstream of Camp Baker (where lucky lottery fishermen put in with their guide to float and fish the canyon) that can be accessed and fished from the bank. Carol and I targeted that spot and got up early so I could grab a good spot on the river, which is about a 25 mile drive from White Sulphur, 15 of which is along a dirt road. No problem getting there with our RoadTrek equipped with the "aggressive" tires our mechanic in Covington, VA put on for us!

When we arrived I was surprised and pleased to see that I was the first (and only) fisherman on the stream. No trout were rising and, having learned my lesson, I immediately tied two very small (size 20) nymphs onto a 12-foot 7x leader. It wasn't long until I had my first strike. Unfortunately, that strike and the next three strikes led to the fish getting off. Long distance releases like this are OK, but you can't tell which nymph the trout hit on. Moving downstream I found a very deep hole and a long bend in the river near a towering cliff. I knew there had to be trout in there somewhere. I noticed one or two trout rise to take a nymph and noted it was around 11:00 am, the time when the mayfly called a Pale Morning Dun (PMD for short) sometimes starts coming off the river. I tied on an emerger pattern and the "Usual" pattern the guide I met on the Armstrong Spring Creek gave me. A long cast up against the cliff resulted in hooking a big jumping rainbow trout that was around 14-16 inches long. Another Top 100 river checked off my list.

A Pale Morning Dun is on the cover of my new IFFF Flyfisher magazine. All mayflies have 4 states: The egg, the nymph, the dun and the spinner. This picture shows a mature male PM. What appears as a red cap are the male's large eyes so he can find a female and grab her with his large front legs. The female lays her eggs in the water and then dies (becomes a spinner). The male dies also and some become spinners. The eggs hatch and the larva (nymphs) grow by eating moss and other stuff found on the stream bottom. A year later the nymph rises to the surface (becomes an emerger), dries its wings and flies off. This dun changes once more into the mature adult shown above. All this happens in one year. The male and female adults have no digestive system and no mouth. So they can't bite you. Their sole purpose in the day or two they live outside the water is reproduction. Wonderful and strange.

Here I am on the Smith River fishing with nymphs that look like the PMD nymph.

I fished a bit more downstream but, as it was getting hot and I saw no more trout rising, I quit fishing and went back to the RoadTrek. I had planned to fish a tributary stream called Sheep Creek with the hope that I could catch some brook trout for dinner. My Delorme topo map book is an old (1997) edition and even though it indicated a fishing access point on Sheep Creek, it doesn't seem to exist anymore. Carol and I decided to head back to the hot spring for soaking.