Today we decided it would be a lake day. Cliff and Wade lakes are just a short distance from the cabin so we decided to head on down and enjoy the blue waters of the lake, do some fishing and water craft maneuvering. Sadly, Frank had a couple of meetings so he couldn’t join us. However, being the super-diligent gilly, he set us all up with fishing gear. I can’t say how much I appreciate his generosity in giving us his time to help us beginners.

We packed up the gear and headed out. Let me first just comment on the amount of gear we took. Boat with two motors, 3 fishing rods, float tube, kayak, stand up paddle board, 3 lawn chairs, food, kindle, camera….holy cow it was a mountain of stuff, but Laura felt that we needed it all. Susanne lobbied to bring less, but failed. Oh yeah, and three dogs.

Needless to say, we didn’t all fit in the boat. So Laura SUP’d down to the beach we were going to hang at, Susanne walked with Sadie and I took the other two dogs and all the stuff in the boat. I carefully walked through the check list for launching the boat and then pushed it out into the water and drove the car and trailer to the parking lot. When I came back, Laura was pumping the bilge pump to get to the water out. I had forgotten to put the drain plug in. Doh!

We got to the beach and unloaded the mountain of stuff. Laura went out in the float tube and started fishing. She was on fire. Fish after fish. Susanne and I got set up and I took her out in the boat. It took us awhile to get sorted (please note the good use of Kiwi language) and start fishing. We weren’t having much luck. It is amazing how just the smallest differences in flies can make such a huge difference in the outcome. I can cast ok, but as you start to fish with people who know what they are doing, you realize how little you actually know.

Susanne had to go check on her email to make sure there were no disasters at work waiting for her, so I said I would just run her down to the end of the lake where she had some signal. We piled in the boat and headed out. Evidently, Sadie was distraught that we had left her and Laura had to put her on leash to keep her from swimming after us.

I enjoy tooling around on the boat. There is something pretty cool about it and I always enjoy it. I hope to get a boat when we make it to New Zealand.

We got to shore and Susanne headed up to download email. We were right next to the campground so I figured there was no chance of catching a fish, but I thought I could work on my casting. I just tossed it out there a few times and then BAM!!! I got a big rainbow on my line. It was a fighter and it took me awhile to get him in. Susanne came down and saw I had a fish on. I couldn’t believe it.

I started to reel in and get stuff back in the boat, but Susanne said “Aren’t we going to try to catch so more?” I think she is catching the fishing bug. I got her squared away and we both fished for awhile. Then BAM!!!!! I got another one. He jumped 3 times and fought like crazy. I managed to land him and Susanne got a good shot of it.

The one thing I really want to get better at is releasing the fish. I am slow and ended up stressing out the fish far more than I should.

We headed back out to pick up Laura, the dogs, and the pile of gear. She thought we had left her. She laughed hard when I told her about Susanne catching the fishing bug.

All in all it was a nice day in Montana!