Slough Creek and Soda Butte

My original plan was to hike up to the first meadow on Slough Creek. We got a late start, and the rest of my group didn't think we'd have time for me to hike up there, so we fished the lower meadow.  It started out pretty rough. I picked a nice run but had a bunch of buffalo and a beaver run me off.  I only got to fish for maybe an hour. We returned to the car and ate lunch. We all decided to keep fishing, so I hiked downstream. It was hot and relatively crowded. As I stopped to tie up a technical rig I heard another in our group yelling upstream that he had a nice fish. A nice fish indeed - big cuttbow on some sort of small prince pattern.

I worked on down stream and got to a strange split in the creek. I chucked a hopper and couldn't believe it when I saw a huge trout rise to the fly and then turn around.  I thought perhaps it was an illusion.  I worked to a nice run a little further downstream and right in the foam line were 3-4 beautiful cutties slow rising to something in the water. I spent 2 hours trying everything in my fly box, but I couldn't figure it out.  I finally gave up. I figured if 7x tippet and a size 22 bwo couldn't catch one of those cutties, nothing would.  I'll be back, though.
We took a short trip to soda butte to try to get the skunk off from Slough.  It was getting dark, but we managed a couple on soda butte.  Very interesting stream.  The highlight, of course, was the cuttbow pictured above.