Frank Bailey is a quiet guy…100% Montanan, lived through the Big Quake of 1959, ran his auto mechanic business in Bozeman, retired, goes fishing, plays golf…nothing special?…well, actually, very special. One day a few years ago Frank went fishing on Meadow Lake like he did quite a bit…except this day was different. Cruising along and drifiting in six feet of water there was a tug…a big tug…like you hooked on to a tire or a log or a refrigerator. Pretty soon he saw it… a fish so big it was hard to believe…this one made a twenty inch trout look like a sardine…up it came…just the biggest brown trout of his life. (click on photos to enlarge)
Frank kept the great fish alive in the livewell…got to the dock for photos, weighed and measured, revived, released alive, swam away into the depths.
The trout measured 34 inches and weighed 13.2 lbs! …might still be out there if it didn’t die of old age or a heart attack…knowing a great fish like that is swimming around under my boat or right next to my waders makes me think…who’s next?…are there more like that out there? Just this past week I got a report of another monster caught in the same area. To know these huge trout are living in my neighborhood is pretty cool…makes me want to get out there and get after it.
Maybe there’s another Madison Flats Monster out there…for you…or for me…or for anybody…it might be…it could be…