Stoked On The Smith is now live!!!  This spring we had the opportunity to float the Smith River in Central Montana.  We wanted to see this resource for ourselves and document the trip to help raise awareness about the Smith and the current situation with a copper mine proposed for Sheep Creek, one of it’s main tributaries.  To read about the trip you can start with Part 1 right here > Smith River Trip Part 1

Informative links regarding the Smith River:

–www.saveoursmith.com
–www.tintinaresources.com
–www.smithriverwatch.org
–www.backcountryhunters.org/sign_smith_river_petition

-Zack

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Part 3 – The Trip Days 4&5 and Our Thoughts

The last two days of our trip were blessed with more sun and gradually warmer weather.  The only decent fishing we saw the last two days was mid-afternoon on Day 4 when a gray drake hatch came off for a few hours.  Fish were stacked in pods along a few banks and in some foam lines where a dropped anchor and a few casts through the right zone resulted in fish.  Again the views were stellar to finish out the trip.  Enjoy the photos from the last two days and I’ll wrap up below with my thoughts on the current state of the Smith River.

Each morning brought about a battle with frozen gear but slowly warmed with a good meal and sun finally peaking over the horizon.

Hey guys, it’s another sick cliff wall. Weird.

Brandon with a nice rainbow caught along an overhanging rock wall.

Solitude? The eddy to hike to the main pictograph cave was a zoo!

Moments from Day 4.

Maddie with another parachute sipping rainbow. This one caught inches off a rock face after a dozen casts to get the right drift.

Fishing hard despite the tough water conditions.

‘Merica

Awesome to see the ladies crushing it with the fly rod!

Final night on the Smith River.

Keeping things fresh on the last night.

Thoughts on the current State of the Smith

First off I strongly feel that the Smith River Drainage is a resource and area that we need to preserve for generations to come.  Whether it’s fisherman, campers, recreational floaters, mountain bikers, hunters, ranchers, etc we need to make sure this valley continues to thrive naturally as it has since it was settled by early cattle and sheep ranchers.  I have my own personal thoughts on the proposed mine and those are constantly evolving as the process and situation continues to progress.  I think right now given what I’ve read and seen that the mine is a bad deal for Montanan’s and the Smith River Valley.  Our historic track record with mines has only resulted in mine companies making their money extracting resources and then the waste and damage is left with the people of Montana and public taxpayers.  Mining is a subject that is a double edged sword in my head though.  Our society relies on mining in almost all aspects of our lives.  Is it right to be ok with mines in South America and Asia that tarnish their environments because we never have to live with the consequences or eye sores of those mines?  Do we really care about conservation and the environment or do we only care when it’s in our own backyard and effects our happiness? I think there are ways to responsibly mine and have minimal impacts on the surrounding areas.  We just need to be active in making sure all parties are accountable and that we have good forward vision with each project that comes up.  Most importantly though, we all need to be involved in these subjects and do our own research.  Don’t believe what Trout Unlimited or Tintina Resources tells you just because they sent you an email or postcard with some fancy facts and info on it.  Don’t let a social media post sway your opinion.  Go read, talk to people about it, experience it first hand, dig a little deeper, gain an understanding and most importantly BE ENGAGED!!!  That process is so, so important on so many issues we currently face as sportsmen and as people who love wild places and public lands and waters.

-Written by Zack Boughton

-Photos by Travis Boughton, Zack Boughton, Calvin Connor

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To protect a place or thing, you must appreciate and understand the value of it.  The greater the number of individuals that have that appreciation and value residing in their souls, the more support you have and the stronger the voice when a call to action is needed.  Although the Smith River is the only permitted recreational river in Montana and is enjoyed by thousands of outdoor enthusiasts each year, it continues to seemingly fly under the radar as a Montana destination in comparison to some of our other wildly famous resources.  That all has slowly been changing over the last year as a proposed copper mine has brought the beloved Smith River front and center.  Some cringe at the idea of more people knowing of their beloved spots and diluting their chances at drawing a permit yearly, but others see the necessity of a wider awareness and hope more people can become personally acquainted and educated on this beautiful river system and the overall majesty of the larger landscape of which the Smith River calls home.

A classic look at Montana’s Smith River.

The Smith River is what I would call the Grand Canyon of Montana.  Flowing north out of the Big Belt, Little Belt and Castle Mountains it picks up size as it winds its way through windswept cattle country near White Sulfur Springs, Montana.  As it passes Camp Baker, where floaters put in on their 59 mile float, it dives into a deep limestone canyon that provides some of the most stunning river vistas Montana has to offer.  Cliff walls soar over corner after corner of this epic river and the beauty often distracts the fisherman from an eat of their fly by a hungry brown or rainbow trout.

This dynamic river is considered a red-ribbon trout fishery with trout densities back in 2011 averaging about 250 brown trout and 250 rainbow per mile in the upper stretches.  Angler-days averaged about 14,200 between 1982 and 2009.  The primary species to be hooked under these limestone walls are brown trout and rainbow trout, but cutthroat and brook trout do exist in lesser numbers as well.  Given the nature of the upper 100 miles of river it often runs a varying hue of brown for much of the first half of the float season.  Fishing a nymph will produce your best numbers but the Smith offers some exceptional dry fly fishing and great structure and pockets for the streamer junkie to target the larger fish in the river.

A nice Smith River brown trout.

Why the Smith is the #4 most Endangered River in America for 2015

Currently Tintina Resources is going through the permit process with Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality for an underground copper and related minerals mine in the Sheep Creek area.  Sheep Creek is a tributary to the Smith River and prime spawning habitat for native fish populations from as far away as the Missouri River hundreds of miles downstream.  The proposed mine has many worried.  A few of the concerns revolve around acid mine drainage and it’s potential effect on fish and other aquatic life, the potential for a lowered water table that could effect adjacent stream flows in a river system that already has to deal with low flows during the summer months, as well as groundwater contamination issues.  (More about the risks of the mine can be found in the links at the end of this post).  Now it’s a fact that our society and most all of us rely on mining in our daily lives.  I’m surely not anti-mining, but given Montana’s poor history with mines heavily polluting waterways it’s hard to not be highly concerned that we eventually will see many negative environmental effects from a mine such as this.  The Upper Clark Fork basin is currently one of the largest Super Fund sites in the nation due to a flood in 1908 that caused an open-pit copper mine in Butte to spill millions of tons of contaminated sediment downstream along the river for hundreds of miles (https://www.hcn.org/articles/clarkfork_superfund).

Over hanging cliffs line a large portion of the Smith River.

With the debate raging on it was easy to see how both sides had valid points regarding their stance on the project.  One side wanted to protect the environment and recreational value of the resource and the other wanted to mine a valuable raw material our society demands while providing jobs to the local economy which currently has few to offer.  I figured the best way to feel out the subject was to actually get a first hand experience on the river.  Both my brother Travis and I had drawn permits for mid-April, and we knew that after 5 days on the river we’d have a much stronger opinion on the matter at hand.  As we spent time researching more about the river, I found that there was not much to be read or seen about the fishing on the river or the experience in general.  A quick Google search of “fly fishing the Smith River” led to the first page being dominated by outfitters and fly shops offering guided trips.  A read through these pages did provide some insight into the river but left more questions than it could answer.  A quick look at Youtube revealed an assortment of poor quality, handicam style videos that didn’t seem to showcase the grandeur of a place that was seemingly so epic and suddenly so threatened.  With little high quality content it seemed it would be hard for someone to understand the amazing value the resource had to offer without going on a trip firsthand.  Given the nature of our work we felt documenting our trip would be a great way to raise awareness for a resource that seemed to desperately need it.  It seemed that if thousands enjoyed the trip each year and our state was comprised of tens of thousands who enjoy fishing we could do better than only 8,022 signatures on a petition that needed 10,000 as of writing this.

Looking for risers in the foam.

Filming a nice cuttbow.

After a few weeks of quick planning we had arrived at Camp Baker with rafts, camping gear and a handful of cameras in tow.  Our group totaled only six people and only Sam had been here before.  Our goal was to see this resource firsthand and capture the trip through photo and video.  We had no big production crew, no big sponsors, no shot lists or scripts and no expectations, just a group of good friends, a beautiful river and five days of wild experience before us.  (Part 2 is now up on the site.  You can read it HERE > Part 2)

Launch Day

To learn more about the Smith River Mine please see the following links:

Save Our Smith – (www.saveoursmith.com)

Tintina Resources – (www.tintinaresources.com)

Montana Environmental Information Center (www.meic.org/issues/smithriver)

Black Butte Copper – (www.blackbuttecopper.com)

Smith River Watch – (www.smithriverwatch.org)

Tintina’s mine proposal – (deq.mt.gov/Land/hardrock/tintinamines)

News Articles:

NY Times – (www.nytimes.com/smithriver)

Montana Kaimin – (www.montanakaimin.com/news/smith-river-mine)

Bozeman Chronicle 10/17/15 – (http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/guest_columnists/why-gamble-on-the-future-of-montana-s-smith-river)

Helena News 2/11/16 – (http://www.ktvh.com/2016/02/black-butte-copper-project-tintinas-technologies-part-3/)

-Written by Zack Boughton

-Photos by Travis Boughton, Zack Boughton, Calvin Connor, Maddie Sieler

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