Rob Breeding

1 week ago | flatheadbeacon.com | Rob Breeding

I’d like to tell you an epic tale of traveling more than 1,000 miles to Montana and catching fish until my arm fell off. That would be the bee’s knees. I’ve a better story to tell, however, and it involves just five trout, distributed in a 3-2 ratio. And I got two. That’s how many fish I caught in Montana, and it seemed plenty. To elaborate, I didn’t fish the whole time I was in the Treasure State.

2 weeks ago | flatheadbeacon.com | Rob Breeding

A few days ago I was back home on the Plains, managing a spring heatwave air conditioning free. By Monday, I was at Rogers Lake, looking for grayling but finding only lingering winter. I needed fish, a magnificent lavender sailfish. What I got was a gathering puddle of rainwater on the port side of my drift boat, the direction this imperfectly made wooden dory tilts toward when we float. It’s been several years since I’ve been on Rogers Lake.

3 weeks ago | flatheadbeacon.com | Rob Breeding

I don’t mean to be stating something, but I’m particularly fond of red birds. Last week, I wrote about cinnamon teal, my undisputed GOAT of waterfowl. Some might consider the teal a not quite red bird as the males are more terracotta than red, but this snappy duck is crimson in my book. My new fave red bird is the northern cardinal. For people living on the far side of the Mississippi there’s nothing unusual about cardinals.

1 month ago | flatheadbeacon.com | Rob Breeding

The other day I saw three cinnamon teal, my first sighting on the Great Plains. People who know me well know how happy that made me. My first Montana home was in the Bitterroot, and there I learned from a writer friend that true Bitterrooters, at least those of the birding persuasion, liked to say it wasn’t truly spring until you saw your first cinnamon teal.

1 month ago | flatheadbeacon.com | Rob Breeding

I meant to write this column last week but went down a John Wesley Powell rabbit hole instead. My plan had been to examine illogical, multiple-outlet watersheds draining into separate oceans, but I critiqued right-angled state boundaries instead. I’ll give it another try this week. Hopefully, I won’t get distracted this time. A new scientific paper published in April in the journal “Water Resources Research” explores bifurcated rivers in the Americas.