Milesnick Spring Creeks
Spring-creek junkies have a new playground in Bozeman, Montana. Benhart and Thompson spring creeks on Tom and Mary Kay Milesnick’s MZ Bar Ranch near Bozeman are now managed as limited-access fee fisheries and provide better fishing than they have in many years.
Local anglers and a few visiting fly fishers have known about the waters for years, but the streams received little attention because they lacked quality fishing. They couldn’t compete with the fishing available at the Livingston/Paradise Valley area spring creeks—DePuy’s, Armstrong’s, and Nelson’s—less than an hour away.
All that has changed thanks to the Milesnicks, who began an extensive stream restoration project in 1992. Now both creeks offer quality trout fishing and have become great additions to any spring creek aficionado’s itinerary.
In 1998, for a variety of reasons, including increased angler pressure and the need to pay for improvements, the Milesnicks established a fee for access to the streams and set a limit on the number of rods per day. The fishing is strictly catch-and-release, fly-fishing-only.
The 1,400-acre MZ Bar Ranch, which has been in the Milesnick family since 1936, has 31/2 miles of Benhart Spring Creek, 1 mile of Thompson Spring Creek, and 5 1/2 miles of the East Gallatin River. Eight of these ten miles of streams are shared by no more than six anglers per day. Each stream has unique character and challenges, and some anglers have spent an entire day on just one small section of one stream.
In April 1992, Tom Milesnick bought an excavator and used it to dig silt out of the streams. He created deeper water and narrowed the streams to speed the flow and keep the streambed cleared of silt. Milesnick has used the excavator on different sections of the streams every April since 1992, and between Aprils he reads about stream improvement practices and talks with stream habitat experts such as Dick Vincent of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and stream consultants Inter-Fluve and Buddy Drake. He also installed more fences and began using a rotational grazing program to limit how long the cattle have access to the streams. This keeps the streambanks stable.
The stream restoration efforts paid off, and word began to spread that the streams offered good fishing. For the past three years, the Milesnicks have given permission to as many as 30 rods a day for a total of more than 1,500 rods each year. They say they had to set
limits. Besides, the cattle market has declined in recent years, and a supplementary income was needed. Beginning in 1999, the Milesnicks set the daily fishing fee at $50 per rod, with a daily maximum of six individual rods. Reservations are required.
Benhart Spring Creek
I first heard about Benhart Spring Creek in the late 1970s through Mary Brooks, wife of the late outdoor writer Joe Brooks. After getting permission at the Milesnick home, I crawled along Benhart’s banks eyeballing trout in the bright sun. All my casts were futile. Whenever the shadow of my fly line hit the shallow currents, the fish panicked and raced about, looking for nonexistent cover. The fishing was made especially tough by the poor, shallow stream conditions. It was so tough anglers said the trout would spook when you opened your car door. The fish are still spooky, but now they have deeper water in which to hide.
Benhart has a higher flow than Thompson, but it is only about half the size of the Paradise Valley spring creeks. It has more browns than rainbows, and the fish usually hold in the obvious deep holes and feed around their edges. Sometimes they feed in the riffles between holes. Most of the riffles are so shallow that when the fish feed, their dorsal fins and half their tails stick out of the water. Your first cast either catches one of those fish or sends them all scurrying back into the deeper water.
Benhart can be as tough as you choose to make it. The easiest way to fish it, and the method most likely to produce, is to cast a nymph into the end of the riffle and let it bounce over the shelf and into the deep water. Use a #6-#8 black Woolly Bugger or red San Juan Worm, a #14 bead-head Prince or Pheasant-tail Nymph, or a #14 Soft Hackle Pheasant Tail or Hare’s Ear with a mini-split-shot. I fished Benhart this way with friends one afternoon in June 1999 and we had spectacular results. Together we caught and released three browns pushing 20 inches, four browns and six rainbows measuring about 17 inches, and several smaller fish.
Thompson Spring Creek
Like Benhart, Thompson Spring Creek is a meandering meadow creek with only a few bushes to snag your backcast. But its bright green weeds and undercut banks provide more widespread holding water than Benhart. It’s a dry-fly delight that holds more rainbows than browns. In summer, you can usually find a fish rising to Pale Morning Duns (PMDs), beetles, or ants.
Bud Lilly remembers fishing Thompson Spring Creek in 1935. “I was ten or eleven and caught fish with worms without too much trouble, but to tell you the truth, it’s better fishing now. It was beat down by the cows even then. Later, when I started fly fishing, my mother would take me over (I couldn’t drive yet) and sit and wait for me. I was using snelled Sandy Mites from Potts Flies in Hamilton, Montana, which sold for 35 cents apiece or three for a dollar, a lot of money in those days. I kept catching them in the bushes and breaking them off. There were more bushes then. My mother would say, ‘Can’t you use something a little less expensive than those 35-cent flies?’”
In July 1999, I took two members of the board of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to Thompson and got them into a few fat 14- to 16-inch trout that took PMD spinners. Unlike the surface feeders in the shallow Benhart riffles, the fish in Thompson keep sipping and give you more chances to catch them, as long as you don’t line them or scare them with sloppy casts or startling movements on the bank. Because there are so many weeds in Thompson’s narrow confines, weighted nymphs are tough to use. Dries or emergers are the way to go on Thompson.
The stream does not originate on the MZ Bar, but it flows into the East Gallatin on the ranch. Its hatches are similar to those on Benhart.
East Gallatin River
Dave Kumlien, former owner of the Montana Troutfitters Shop in Bozeman and now development director of the Whirling Disease Foundation, sings the praises of the East Gallatin River on the MZ Bar Ranch.
“I’ve fished Milesnicks’s since 1975 and guided on it since the early ’90s,” he says. “I always liked to bounce my clients over to the river as a relief from the one-fish intensity of the spring creeks. Because the creeks empty into the East Gallatin there, it’s a rich and productive stretch with good hatches, some great riffles, fast banks you can throw streamers at, and at times some great dry-fly fishing to caddis, Baetis, Tricos, and some PMDs. It fishes almost like a big spring creek, and it’s on a par with the creeks once it clears up by about July 1. There’s always the chance you could get a really big one, too, especially with a streamer.”
The East Gallatin is much bigger water than the spring creeks, with hat-floater holes of 8 to 12 feet deep or more. The bottom is often silty clay and slippery. The water is almost always slightly turbid, even before and after runoff, which can be an advantage when you find rising fish; they’re less spooky than fish in the crystal-clear spring-creek water. Fish can move freely between the East Gallatin and the spring creeks. If there is no surface activity on the East Gallatin, try bouncing weighted streamers and nymphs into the heads of the holes or swinging the flies along the undercut banks.
Access to Public Water
The East Gallatin flows through private land for almost its entire length. The Milesnicks allow free access, with their daily written permission (stop at their house), on about two miles of the East Gallatin at Dry Creek Road. The public-access water extends upstream and downstream from the road, and signs mark its boundaries. There is also a public-access area at the north end of N. 7th Avenue at the edge of Bozeman, about 15 miles upstream from the Milesnick property. You can also get on the river at its highway bridges. Ask for details at the local fly shops.
The spring creeks outside of the Milesnick property are on private land with no public access or fee fishing.
A Season of Hatches
The Milesnick Ranch fishing season follows the Montana trout season, which runs from the third Saturday in May through November 30. With Dave Kumlien’s help, I’ve made the following outline of the season’s significant hatches (see hatch chart). Interestingly, the spring creeks and the East Gallatin do not appear to have scuds or cressbugs.
Midges are one of the first flies on the water, but they are not often significant on either the creeks or the river. A pupa pattern can take some fish.
A spring Blue-winged Olive (Baetis) hatch comes off on the creeks and the river in May, but the river is high and muddy until runoff ends in late June or early July.
Next comes a #14-#16 olive-brown caddis hatch on both creeks and the river. Caddis hatches occur from about early June until mid-September, and they are especially strong in late afternoon and evening.
The river has some golden stoneflies in early July, but you will not see them on the creeks.
Pale Morning Duns start hatching in late June and continue through August. The hatch usually begins around 10:30 A.M., and the spinners fall in mid- to late afternoon to evening, depending on the weather. The PMD hatch is one of the streams’ most important hatches. It rivals the fall Baetis and the tremendous Trico hatches.
Tricos start in late July and run through September if the weather is decent. The Trico duns come off in large numbers by about 7 A.M., and the spinner fall occurs around 10:30 A.M. Some days you can look out over the stream in the morning and see a silver ribbon of Trico spinners bouncing over the water. Fish feed on the #18-#22 Tricos hard when they fall; it’s a faster cadence than you see during other hatches, making the fish easy to spot. Often you can fish spinners well into the afternoon, because dead spinners pile up in backeddies and bankside pockets, then break away and float downstream, like little cookies for trout. The East Gallatin has a great Trico hatch, too, and its fish are easier to catch than the spring-creek fish.
The fall Baetis hatch starts in mid to late September and lasts into November. These insects are smaller than the spring versions, #18-#20 rather than the #16 in spring. The fish really get going on the fall Baetis, especially during overcast weather with little wind.
Terrestrials work throughout the summer, but surprisingly there aren’t many grasshoppers, so hopper patterns don’t work well. Beetles, however, are very effective, and a small black deer-hair beetle will take sippers that won’t eat anything else. Ants also work well, but not as well as black beetles.
Streamers can be effective on all three waters. Black or olive Woolly Buggers (#8-#10 on the creeks and #4-#8 on the East Gallatin) have produced well and are especially good weapons on windy days when it is difficult to make a graceful presentation. In low-light conditions, streamers can be fished effectively without weight. Cast them across or across and downstream. Usually, however, you will need added weight to sink them to fish holding in the holes and undercut banks on Benhart and the East Gallatin. Thompson has too many weeds to fish weighted streamers or nymphs effectively.
The spring creeks hold many 10- to 15-inch trout, and a 16- to 18-incher could be the big one of the day. The streams have 18- to 20-inch and even larger fish, but few anglers catch them. And the fish are fat. An 18-inch fish can weigh 21/2 to 3 pounds. The East Gallatin has browns and rainbows in a wide range of sizes, and it sometimes gives up large fish over 20 inches. None of the streams have cutthroat trout.
Spring-creek anglers who use stealthy approaches and good dry-fly and nymphing techniques can catch 15 to 20 fish a day, even more during a good hatch. Anglers who use only drys will catch fewer fish. To get more cracks at good fish feeding on the surface, you must conceal your presence as you quietly walk the streambank. The fish are spooky in the clear water, but they will resume feeding if left alone or if you remain still long enough to rest them. How long it takes depends on how much food is on the water and how hungry the fish are. Also, if you put a fish down, you can make a note of its location, continue fishing upstream or downstream, and then return to that fish later with a planned approach and a new fly pattern.
I like an 8- to 9-foot, 3- or 4-weight rod on the spring creeks, with a 9-foot, 6X leader in most conditions. Longer leaders are usually too tough to handle for the short, accurate casts necessary on the creeks. These are narrow waters, and the fish are wary, especially when they’re feeding on top. The best way to fish a dry fly is to locate feeding fish, then figure out how to present the fly to them without putting them down. It is usually best to cast from the bank, and a downstream presentation is often the ticket to success. It’s difficult to avoid lining the fish on a straight upstream presentation, and an across-stream presentation is difficult because of the narrow flow and tricky currents. Adjust your casting to deal with the wind and position the sun behind you without putting your shadow on the water.
On the East Gallatin, if there is a hatch in progress and little wind, you can use the same 3- or 4-weight rod. If there is significant wind or you plan to dredge weighted flies to fish on bottom, use a 5- or 6-weight rod.
If there is no significant hatch on any of the waters, you might find a few top-feeders on Thompson; however, your best bet under those conditions is to fish weighted nymphs or streamers on Benhart or the East Gallatin. The largest fish in both of the latter two waters usually hold with their snouts right up against a drop-off from a riffle into a deep hole.
Benhart and the East Gallatin have sharp drops from shallow riffles to deep holes. If you use just enough weight to bounce your fly along bottom in the riffle, you’ll sail right over the best fish in the deeper pool. If you put on too much weight, you’ll hang up in the riffle. A #14 bead-head with a mini-shot placed a foot above it is usually about right for Benhart. The same fly with at least two BB split-shot above it will work best on the East Gallatin. Place your fly barely upstream of the drop-off lip at the end of the riffle, then coax it over and down the drop-off into the pool. When using a streamer, tumble it over the lip and let it sink to the bottom before beginning a twitching retrieve.
The Milesnick spring creeks are like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania limestoners, except they have more consistent and longer-lasting hatches and mountains for a background. These small, slow, meadow streams require stealthy, well-planned approaches, careful positioning, and accurate presentations. If, as some fly fishers say, Montana’s Paradise Valley spring creeks are a checkers game, then the renovated Milesnick creeks near Bozeman are a game of chess.
For reservations, contact a local fly shop or Tom and Mary Kay Milesnick, Milesnick Recreation Company, 406-388-7001, fax: 406-388-4180.
Harry Piper is a former attorney, a board member of the Whirling Disease Foundation, and a freelance writer. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.
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