Cottonwood Camp here we come! It’s been a long winter in the mountains of Montana, and those of us on the West side of the state have certainly seen our fair share of it. With the first signs of the season’s thaw, a great crew of friends gather together on the Bighorn River in South Central Montana for our annual getaway.
We showed up on a Wednesday eve and planned to fish til Sunday morning, weather permitting. Our temperatures were great the first two days, allowing for purple sequined sparkle shirts and big straw hats, and also providing easy fishing conditions. The whole crew, seven of us total, found great easy fishing throughout the 3 to B stretch, even scoring Crow beach all to ourselves for a two hour throwdown.
As our trip drew down to the last couple days, the weather made a serious turn for the worse, with cold storms blowing in from the North. Frozen guides were inevitable, stalling your casts every few minutes or so and forcing you to clean the ice off the entire length of the rod. The fishing remained steady, so at least we stayed enthused through the punishment; and what the hell, we didn’t drive 400 miles to paint, as my brother John put it.
Our last day about froze us out, but we hung in there. Midday bonfires eased the 22 degree average we were putting up with; find your run, get a serious blaze on, and rotate between fishing and thawing. As long as the fish kept taking our bugs we’d stay, knowing that the other alternative was to keep on chugging down the river into the bitter North, unprotected in the boats. We finally beached at the Bighorn access one last time, and partied down one last evening at Cottonwood. An early start sent us rolling back to western Montana, 400 miles to go and one degree Fahrenheit on the windshield. Till next year my friends.
