Cabin Fever

Last week we had been having some quasi-shitty weather, nothing new for Montana.  I had been on a couple of solo outings and decided that  my continuous trout road-trippin buddy needed to get his ass off the couch and go fishing.  I called him and told him that one day inparticular looked somewhat promising, no snow forecast and a high above freezing, what more could we ask for, right?
After some serious prodding and griefing Brooks reluctantly agreed to go.  I loaded up the mpg-friendly camry for the trip to Missoula to pick up Brooks and head down the Bitterroot.  The bright spot came early on this trip when we turned off the highway into an empty fishing access parking lot.  It would all go downhill from there, literally and figuratively.
After gearing up we weren't 5 minutes into the half hour hike to the river when Brooks slid down a steep embankment and promptly punched a hole in the boot of his bootfoot waders.
Once our shit was rigged (i should probably not just use parentheses here because this little diatribe may become somewhat lengthy but what the hell-here goes.  I chose to go with a streamer out of the gates and Brooks went directly for the bullshit go-to setup of a turd and a worm.  I chose a streamer not just because of some recent success on this trip but because I can be somewhat of a stubborn bastard.  On the way to pick up Brooks I stopped by an unnamed fly shop in Missoula.  Don't get me wrong, this is a first class operation with friendly and knowledgeable employees.  But for whatever reason on this day the combination of whiny voice and overall douchiness of the guy working the shop that day chafed my ass to the point that I was going to fish a streamer, hence my stubborness.)  Anyway like I was saying, once our shit was rigged we weren't in the river a minute when Brooks realized the extent of the damage to his waders.  The dialogue went roughly like this "holy shit Craig, water is pouring into my waders!" "just hike up the skirt and fish sally"  "I don't know how long I can last" "for fuck's sake nancy, nut up!"
This went on for roughly half an hour with Brooks in and out of the water a half a dozen times.  When I finally watched him pour the water out of his boots and with the weather taking a turn for the worse we decided to call it a day.  Cabin fever can get pretty bad around these parts this time of year.
Oh yeah, once back at the parking lot Brooks and a guest gave us this gem of a report...... Enjoy!


Untitled from Craig Pablo on Vimeo.