50 Years At Big Spring
Montana has several famous spring creeks, but my favorite is one that seems to get the least attention. I’ve fished Big Spring Creek, flowing through Lewistown, Montana, for 53 years, and it’s been my home water for 32 years.
Big Spring Creek is one of the largest spring-fed streams in the state. It originates 9 miles southeast of Lewistown, near the Big Springs Trout Hatchery. From its source, it runs northwest 30 miles, mainly between the Big Snowy and Judith mountains, and enters the Judith River west of Brooks, Montana. Along its course, a steady stream of cold, 52-degree F. water oxbows through beautiful trout country.
In the upper stretch, from the hatchery to Lewistown, the creek averages 30 feet in width and l8 inches deep. From Lewistown to the mouth, in its lower reaches, it widens to about 45 feet, and the depth—as well as summer water temperature—increases. According to Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP), Big Spring holds up to 3,000 pounds of trout per river mile.
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Through the years, Big Spring anglers have landed browns up to l9 pounds and rainbows to l6. The Big Spring record brown was taken by Vic Farrah in l949 on a nightcrawler and fly rod. The local Sports Center has the mounted brown on its wall. It is 33 inches long with a 2l-inch girth. Average browns and rainbows in this stream range from 12 to 18 inches.
My introduction to Big Spring Creek took place in l956 on the lower stream near Scott’s Bridge. In a long glide between riffles, I spotted a dozen fish sipping mayflies. My fly box contained nothing similar, so I clinch-knotted “old reliable”—a #l4 Brown Bivisible—to my 5X tippet. I cast several feet above the uppermost rise, and my fly drifted untouched over the pod. I made several more drifts with the same result.
Twilight was fading as I studied the fly. It was larger than the naturals, but I noticed that the tail almost doubled the total length of the fly, so I snipped it off. The next cast fooled a l5-inch rainbow, and the trimmed fly produced three more fish before dark.
Of Blondes and Brooks
In 1959, the late Joe Brooks wrote a Big Spring article in Outdoor Life entitled “The Stream That Has Everything.” I didn’t meet Brooks on his early trips to Lewistown, but visited with him a couple of times later. Our first meeting was at Armstrong Spring Creek. During that talk, he gave me a huge streamer the Platinum Blonde. It had produced for him everywhere in salt and fresh water, but two years passed before I tried it.
Word had spread on Big Spring about double-digit trout being caught below the fish hatchery culvert tubes draining into the stream. During the summer, hatchery employees scrubbed the raceways every morning, allowing small injured and dying rainbows—normal hatchery mortality—to wash into the stream. Large trout lurked under the brush covering the far bank near the outflow. They feasted on the hatchery castoffs and grew huge.
Late one morning I drove the 7 miles upstream and parked in the visitor area. Standing on a sod-covered culvert, I cast Brooks’s Platinum Blonde next to the brush on the far side. Stripping it back in foot-long jerks failed to move a thing.
My next cast was 10 feet upstream. I let the fly sweep under the overhanging brush before retrieving it. On the third pull, a jolting strike smashed the Blonde. A large rainbow leaped into the air, jackknifed back, then streaked downstream for the thicker brush. The fish easily snapped my 2X leader. I doubt if even 0X would have turned it.
A week later the Blonde got another try downstream where the current curved sharply to the left and narrowed rapidly, funneling more than 50 yards toward a county bridge. Letting the streamer swing around to the bank, I stripped it back as I moved slowly downstream. Suddenly I felt a solid tug, like I’d hooked the bank.
Big fish always excite me, so I forgot that old saying, “Look before you leap,” and jumped into the current, almost swamping my waders. Precariously, I kept my balance and followed a fish that still hadn’t jumped. (A large brown, I thought.)
It swam under the bridge, and my hat just cleared the bottom planks as I followed underneath. Here, the stream fanned out into a calmer pool, where I played and beached a 5¼-pound rainbow. My tactic was impulsive and risky, not advisable even for strong swimmers, and no, I hadn’t seen it in the movies. A River Runs Through It—Norman Maclean’s famous fly-fishing novella—had not even been published at that time.
The hatchery area was also one of the haunts of the late Jack Pittman, a noted big-fish hunter and commercial fly tier. I asked him once if persistence and knowledge of the creek were important in taking trophies.
“Oh yeah, you have to find the fish,” he replied. “Then you go visit them every day.”
The late Gary Sanford was a self-professed trophy chaser, and in addition to flies he was known to use a Rapala. Sanford was often heard saying, “I like to get the big ones.”
One spring day he hooked a huge fish on a Rapala, and while fighting it, an angler strolling by asked, “You hung up in there?”
“No,” Gary replied. “Got a big one on.”
“Sure you do,” the angler scoffed, as he continued downstream.
Gary finally landed the 13½-pound, 30-inch brown trout and had it mounted. The river has produced some big trout, but don’t plan on mounting a trophy after your next trip. Bring your camera, as it is catch-and-release only on upper Big Spring Creek. You can keep one fish on the lower stream.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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