While staying a week at Ennis RV Village in 2008 for the Flyfishing Festival, we wandered the country in our Explorer, "Pearl", a lot and I caught and released plenty of fish from the Madison, Ruby, Jefferson, and Missouri rivers. After exploring Virginia City one day, I returned the next to follow a ranch road up a creek into the hills between there and the Ruby River and had a glorious day shared with dozens of mountain brook trout.
One day I wanted to check out the Headwaters, because I'd missed a planned visit during a trip in 2000 that had gone south (east to Billings actually) with a tow truck. On the way north from Ennis, rising fish caught my eye as we passed over the Jefferson on a long bridge. A large parking spot was on the other side so I swung in under some cottonwoods where Lee could read and stay shaded. I wandered down to the river and despite watching hundreds of rises I had no luck. I walked back over the bridge to where the water ran deeper. Ranch cattle wandered all around me, but I was now fixated on the literally hundreds of incessantly rising fish in front of me. A huge hatch of flies was on the water and making my single little fake stand out among them was not going to be easy. Cast after cast went unnoticed until I refined my technique as I usually have to on new water, and then the action started. The weight of the first fish was exciting on my old Orvis 6 weight rod. Imagine my heart sinking when my humongous trout in the creek turned into a mountain whitefish at the shore.
Hey what the heck, right? Though not as pretty or scrappy as trout, whitefish carry a lot more belly weight per inch, and challenge both arm and equipment, especially in the plus sizes. I probably caught and released, on purpose or by breakoff, a couple dozen whitefish from 12 inches to over 20 in the next hour. Goodness knows how many took a swipe at the dryfly and missed. This is not normal whitefish behavior as I commonly only pick them up while nymphing for trout on river bottoms. So that day will live on in a special place in my memory. What fun it was. The whiteface behind me probably could have cared less, but no doubt were enamored of the commotion whenever one of those 20 inchers came to hand.
Due to the unscheduled "delay", it was late in the day when we arrived at the Headwaters park, but it was spectacular as sunset neared. Yet I had time to explore the Corps of Discovery sites upstream at the Gallatin River, and even snagged some genuine trout a little further up on the Missouri proper. I sometimes wonder which of the 6 rivers actually involved would have been named the Missouri if they hadn't been named separately (Gallatin, Madison, Jefferson, and a little further up the Ruby, Big Hole, and Beaverhead). In truth, the actual headwater of the Great Missouri can be said to lie up the Red Rock River, not far from Henry's Lake.
If you are planning on staying with I-90 to Three Forks, that's fine, but you may miss a lot of Lewis & Clark stuff south of there. We like gunkholing around the country from Countryside RV Park south of Dillon, and as mentioned, Ennis RV Village. There's a lot of spectacular scenery and historic sites to see in that corner of Montana. Just north of Dillon is Beaverhead Rock where Sacagawea finally recognized her Shoshone homelands (in Dillon it's pronounced "Suh kag uh way uh" by the way, not Sac uh juh wee uh).
-Joel
