Travis , Bryan, DW and I headed north last week. Plan was to hit the Blackfeet Rez in northern MT to sample some of the great fishing for the big rainbows in the lakes. I had heard about it for years and was anxious to finally try it out. The entire north was experiencing Indian Summer and the lakes were definitely a lot warmer than we would have liked…up to 52-54 degrees. This time last year at Henry’s the water temp was 34-36. The big ‘bows hadn’t come in to the shallows yet so it made fishing tougher than usual. The lakes fished really tough to be honest. A couple fish a day was the norm for most of us. The rez has plenty of water so we split up to find which was fishing the best. We hit Duck, Hope, Mission, Kipps, Four Horns, Mission and several smaller ones.
I think the lakes were actually in “Dog Days” still and we worked for every fish we caught. The saving grace was the size of what we did catch. The young guns took big fish honors with a 10.5 lb rainbow each. DW landed an 8 and 9. I manage to pick up some 6 plus fish but nothing in the jumbo class. All were caught on simi seal leeches of some color and configuration. All either stripped slowly or under an indicator.
Here’s some pic’s. 
As you can see the fish were worth the effort but with the bluebird skies and the warm water temps fishing was tough. We fished them 4.5 days and the last day between the four of us we landed 5 fish so we headed down to Henry’s Lake in Idaho hoping to find some better conditions and some big cuttbows and brookies swimming around with their mouths open.
Unfortunately the warm weather was hitting northern Idaho as well. Water temp’s were the same and so were the conditions. There are more fish in Henry’s though and we all had good days fishing simi’s again. It fished very similar to the Blackfeet. With the temps at 54 the fish fought very hard, much harder than what we are used to in the usually colder water. Big cuttbow went 7.5 and the biggest brookie was just shy of 5 lbs. We have caught bigger fish there before but who can complain with those numbers. It almost sounds crazy that you can be a little bummed about fish on ONLY 7.5 lbs but that is how good the fishing is up there. You always have a chance to catch a double digit fish. It’s awesome.
Here’s some pic’s.
We fished Henry’s for 3.5 days and headed south. We logged over 3300 miles but well worth it. Good bunch of guys that fish hard. Looking forward to hitting it again next year.