Fall Blitz at Clark Canyon

Norm Zeigler

NORM ZEIGLER

Jerry Kustich shook his head and said: “Man-o-man, there are some beautiful fish in here.” Kustich, a bamboo-rod builder and co-owner of Sweetgrass Rods in Twin Bridges, Montana, had just released a 22½-inch brown trout into frothing waves. Kustich and I had been planning for several weeks to check out the autumn shore fishing on Clark Canyon Reservoir, the 4,800-acre impoundment at the headwaters of the Beaverhead River, in southern Montana. We had driven 20 miles south from Dillon on a sunny, breezy early October afternoon, but soon after we parked at the lakeshore the weather began turning less benign. Within half an hour we were wading under an overcast sky with a 20-mile-per-hour northwest wind churning the lake to whitecaps. The temperature was in the mid-40s.

Clark Canyon Reservoir is renowned for producing outsize trout. Planted rainbows and a robust, self-sustaining population of brown trout grow fast and fat on a variety of invertebrates and baitfish, including carp fry, suckers, burbot and whitefish. At the nearby Buffalo Grill, a regional landmark and watering hole with stunning lake panoramas, monster catches from the past line the walls.

The reservoir is formed by the confluence of two major inflows: Horse Prairie Creek and its tributaries, Bloody Dick Creek and Medicine Lodge Creek; and the Red Rock River, with its major tributary, Big Sheep Creek. The Clark Canyon Dam, built by the Bureau of Reclamation in 1964, holds back the water and its bottom-release sluices help promote the blue-ribbon trout fishing in the Beaverhead.

In the warm months the reservoir is mainly a deep-water boat fishery. Says Bill Kemph of Lilly & Kemph Outfitting in Twin Bridges, “In the summer the trout are in the river channels and spring channels.” The best action is on tiny midge nymphs—chironomids—fished under strike indicators at least 20 feet below the surface. Though there is occasional surface action on dry flies, “It’s so little that I don’t even bother with it,” Kemph says.

But beginning in late August, waning hours of daylight and the advent of the first chilly nights begin to cool the lake, getting the fish on the move and starting a different kind of fishing. As the water temperature drops, large numbers of big fish leave the depths and begin cruising the drop-offs and shallows that skirt the lake’s 17-mile shoreline.

Under the right weather conditions, fall shore fishing on Clark Canyon can be awesome. This fact was confirmed for Kustich and me 10 minutes after we began wading along the lake’s southern shoreline, casting weighted streamers. “Oop,” Kustich said, as his rod doubled over and began bouncing to the beat of a hefty fish. A couple of minutes later he slid a 19-inch rainbow into his hand.

Over the next several hours, Kustich and I endured spitting snow, cold rain and an increasingly severe wind-chill factor while wading a half-mile of shoreline and landing fish between 17½ and 22½ inches. The biggest was the thick-bodied, kype-jawed male brown that Kustich hooked up on a black-and-red Woolly Bugger. The fish’s power and stamina in the big, open water were impressive as Kustich battled it on an 11-foot, 7-weight rod.

The rainbows were brilliant, silver-sided fish with few spots. “Look at that fish…It’s like a steelhead,” Kustich remarked of one.

Though many of the trout were introduced by Montana’s Fish, Wildlife & Parks agency, Clark Canyon Reservoir’s hard-battling rainbows should not be disparaged. These are not tame, put-and-take, keeper-size fish raised in pens for easy harvest; they’re semi-wild trout that have grown up in the lake. The vast majority of the rainbows stocked in the last 10 years were between 1 and 4 inches long.

Beadhead Woolly Buggers were the flies of the day—black, black-and-red and brown—but I also landed a 19-inch rainbow on a dumbbell Schminnow. Kustich, who was casting a sinking line,