Wow, we missed a day yesterday; I think yesterday was the first day we didn’t post since coming back this past July.  It’s a long boring story; I (Mark) ended up having a relatively minor surgery in SLC early yesterday morning, and Jake and I drove down on the afternoon of New Year’s Day, and then blasted back up to Bozeman yesterday.  

We had a great drive through the Gallatin Canyon on Thursday; somewhat surprisingly there was no slush to speak of in the entire river canyon up to Big Sky, though from there until up within a couple of miles of the Park border the river is frozen and snow covered. 

There is quite a bit of snow for this time of year down along the Henry’s Fork, and the snowmobilers were out in force as you’d expect this time of year.  The snow keeps coming as well – we had near white out conditions driving highway 20 along the Fork; bring it on – that’s part of next year’s river flows. 

People often say that you need to occasionally visit other places to be reminded of how much you like your home territory; that sure was true for Jake and I as we traveled back down along the Wasatch front.  We first encountered the smog plume about 100 miles out of SLC (there was a strong south wind blowing ahead of the next storm), and predictably it gradually became more dense the closer we drove to the heart of the SLC valley.  Despite living there (quite happily I should mention) for well over a decade some years ago, it was till unnerving to drive in the “big city” traffic, even if traffic was light for the holiday and day after. 

We did enjoy some great chinese food and were expertly served by our health care team at the hospital, but I was elated to walk out of same day surgery, jump in the car, and head for the open country of Montana.  Call me a redneck, fly fishin’ fool – I’ll take trees and cows instead of condos, cars and crowds any day.  Yes, there are some things we give up living in semi-rural country in the Mountain West, but we find we miss those “things” less and less every year.  

We’ve got some improvements planned for the New Year, and will be adding some new features to the blog and site over the next few weeks.  We appreciate your interest, and look forward to sharing Yellowstone and Southwest Montana fly fishing with you over the next year once again.  

Here’s to being home again. 

We’ll round up some fishing reports today - there were a suprising number of intrepid fly fishers out on the Gallatin yesterday despite the wind and snow - the shack nasties do tend to start tweaking folks after the holidays a bit….

Tags: Best Fly Fishing Yellowstone: Random Team Ramblings