Wind, primitive roads, missing signs and some darn fun fishing

By Mike Benbow / Special to The Herald

CUT BANK, Montana — I learned something a few years ago that was never intended to be a secret, but has turned out that way.

The secret is that some Indian reservations in the West have really good fishing and the only thing you need to do to join the fun is to buy a license.

In Washington state, the Colville Indian Reservation is probably the best example. The reservation’s 3,240-acre Omak Lake has some giant Lahontan cutthroat trout, but fewer than a handful of anglers fish the eight-mile lake on any given day.

In Montana, the Blackfeet Indian Reservation fills that niche. Located just east of Glacier National Park abutting the Canadian province of Alberta, the reservation is larger than the state of Delaware.

And it has some of the best uncrowded lake fishing in the country.

So I didn’t have to think about it much when a friend, Dick Snow of Marysville, proposed a road trip to Blackfeet Country earlier this month. While Montana — home of the popular film “A River Runs Through It” — is known more for its spectacular river fishing, its lakes shouldn’t be ignored. And the Blackfeet Nation lakes are high on the must-fish list.

After more than 12 hours on the highway, we got to our motel in the tiny town of Cut Bank, which is proud of the fact that it shows up on television weather reports several times every winter as the coldest spot in the nation.

Cold was not an issue during our week-long trip. It was sunny and warm nearly every day. What were issues were wind, primitive roads and missing signs, but more on that later.

After grabbing licenses ($80 for the year) in the reservation community of Browning, we had our waders, boots and flotation devices inspected to ensure that we weren’t importing any dangerous organisms that are invading many of the nation’s bodies of water. Then we headed for our first stop, Gun Dog Lake, a few miles from town in a forested canyon. That was our first experience with missing signs, but when we realized we were hopelessly lost, we ran into a ranch hand who guided us to the right side road. As we turned toward the lake, we noticed a torn sign with only the word “lake” remaining.

Once we got to the lake, we learned it was too windy for any serious fishing. Snow and the other members of our group, Gary Medema of Marysville and Rick Bowzer of Stanwood, gave it a try from shore and with a float tube and pontoon boats. But I just took a few photos.

Things got better the next day, partly because we hired a guide, David Parsons, to give us the lay of the land and partly because we fished the best lake: Mission.

Mission is the most popular lake on the reservation.

Also among the largest of the Blackfeet lakes, the 750-acre Mission has a large population of scuds (freshwater shrimp) and strong insect hatches that produce a large number of big fish. Most of the lake’s rainbow trout range from 3 to 8 pounds in size, and we didn’t catch anything smaller than that.

“It’s not very often that you can go on a fishing trip and say that you didn’t catch anything under three pounds,” Medema noted.

While we caught some big fish at Mission, we didn’t catch huge numbers of them. It took us a while to find the fish and a while more to figure out which fly they wanted. Searching patterns such as woolley buggers and leech patterns caught a few fish, but were not what they wanted.

We saw some mayfly nymphs hatching and a few small Chironomids, but not much else. Bowzer was the first to have some consistent luck with a fly called a Diawl Bach, which means little devil. The Diawl Bach is a traditional Welsh fly that looks a bit like a lot of different bugs — a midge pattern or maybe a scud or a mayfly nymph.

Whatever it looks like, the fish liked it.

Fishing wasn’t easy during our trip, but it was certainly pleasant.

Guide Parsons said fishing is spectacular just after the ice thaws at a lake.

“But you never know when that’s going to be,” he added. “It could be March or it could be May.”

So go when you can and look for which bugs are hatching to guide your selection of flies. For example, we saw some damselfly nymphs while we were there, but they hadn’t really started hatching in enough numbers to attract the fish. I think we were a week or so early,

The Blackfeet have a variety of lakes of different sizes and at different elevations.

Mission was the most fun and most consistent lake for us, but it always makes sense to check in at the reservation fisheries office for which lakes are fishing best during your trip and learn which ones are open.

Other advice: We took pontoon boats and float tubes, but more substantial boats would have been better, especially on the bigger lakes like Mission. Also, four-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicles are a must for the many primitive dirt roads, especially if it rains.