 for Montana's Fort Peck Lake  Montana's Fort Peck Lake is one of the more remote, rewarding and unique fishing experiences you can enjoy in the continental United States. Formed behind the four-mile-long, earthen-fill Fort Peck Dam on the Missouri River south of Glasgow, the lake is 134 miles long. The reservoir has 1,520 miles of shoreline and a maximum depth of 220 feet. Primary game fish in the lake are walleyes, sauger, northern pike, smallmouth bass, lake trout and Chinook salmon. Access points to the big lake are relatively few and far between. The only paved access road to a boat ramp is at the Fort Peck Marina, near the north end of the dam. All other accesses to the lake are on varying degrees of good-to-bad gravel or dirt roads. Some boat ramps are as far as 50 to 60 miles of gravel and dirt from the pavement.
At low lake levels, some of these ramps may not be usable. Click Boat Ramps to check on ramp elevations and Lake Elevations to check the daily water elevations to check on which ramps might be out of service. On the water boat gas is available only at the Fort Peck Marina, Rock Creek Marina and Hell Creek Marina. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates campgrounds near the dam, with drinking water and some with electric plug-ins and showers. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks operates a state park at Hell Creek with drinking water and showers. Drinking water is also available at Crooked Creek. All other areas are more remote sites where camping is free and services are few. Motel rooms and restaurants near the lake are available either in Glasgow or at the town of Fort Peck near the dam and at Jordan and Hell Creek. For more information on food, lodging and campgrounds in the Glasgow-Fort Peck area, go to our Travel info page.
The time just after ice-off is perhaps the best opportunity of the year to catch lake trout. Trolling deep-diving crankbaits on either monofilament or Fireline is the best strategy. Work 20 to 25 foot depths. Blue-and-silver crankbaits are often the best, imitating the cisco in Fort Peck that the lake trout feed on. This is also a good time of year for trophy-sized northern pike. Pike can run 25 or more pounds and they'll be up shallow on the points and in the backs of bays. They'll bite on a variety of crankbaits, spoons or spinners. Make sure you run either strong monofilament or Fireline for them. Most of the locals feel it's only a matter of time before Fort Peck produces a new state record to break the existing state best of 37 pounds, 4 ounces.
Walleye fishermen on Fort Peck learn quickly to fish structure. The lake is made up of a mixture of long points, medium points and short points. The waters run deep clear up to the bank near some points and are shallow flats near others. A rule of thumb on Fort Peck is to cover plenty of ground to locate walleyes first. Rather than holding in particular spots, Fort Peck walleyes are great travelers. They're here one day and gone the next. Because of this, the primary fishing strategies for the lake at this time of year are pulling crawler harnesses with spinners behind a bottom bouncer sinker or trolling crankbaits. These methods will allow you to cover more water as you fish. Then, when you locate feeding walleyes, you can key in on them and, perhaps, try other techniques like jigs or live bait rigs. The key thing to look for is patterns. Try to figure out what depth is holding the most walleyes. Try to key in on the spinner color they prefer. Pay attention to crankbait finish or trolling speed. When you figure out the pattern, look to duplicate it elsewhere on the lake where you find similar situations. When you start for the day, look to the wave-pounded shorelines and either stained water or mud-lines where waves have eroded the bank and created muddy water. Also, the depth the fish are holding at may vary by the day so try different depths. Good colors for spinners or crankbaits can vary by the day, but chartreuse is always a good choice as a starter as is blue-and-silver. Perch-finish, fire tiger finish and clown finishes also work well on crankbaits. Smallmouth bass fishing can also be good at this time of year. They key to finding smallmouths is to find rocky areas. Look to the banks to see rocky areas that extend down to the water. Work the rocky face of the dam. Go to the Devils Creek-Fourchette Bay area, which seems to have more rock than many other parts of the lake. AUGUST-SEPTEMBER -- These months offer a mixed bag of fishing on Fort Peck. It's the warmest-water period of the year. Look for walleyes to head deeper and to often demand more delicate techniques to catch them. It's time for live bait rigging with leeches and nightcrawlers. Use slower-working spinners like smile blades when the fish go deep. Or hope for a good "walleye chop" -- some wind and waves to pound shorelines and bring up the active feeders. By this time of year, most of the walleyes have abandoned the shallow-water areas of the lake and the shallow bays. You'll find them on the main lake points or working the edges of weed beds for perch and leeches. When you get a good chop, it's a good time of year to work the shallows with trolled crankbaits or use a faster presentation with a crawler harness and spinner. If not, be prepared to go to the 20 to 35 foot depths for them. Smallmouth bass will go deeper, too, and many of the northern pike will be in the depths, working the deeper schools of ciscoes off the points or the perch in the weedy areas of the bays. This is when the prime time begins and gets better and better for chinook salmon near the face of the dam. It's a downrigger bite with flashers and squids and it will draw fishermen from throughout Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas, hoping to pick off one of the 30-pounders that return to this part of the lake during these months of the year. Be prepared to hook into a lake trout as you fish this bite. Some very good ones are caught by salmon fisherman each year.
While most of Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas sets its sights on the fall hunting seasons, Fort Peck continues to offer good fishing for the few anglers who head out during these two months. Walleyes might be deep or shallow as the waters cool and they'll fall prey to almost any technique, depending on the day, from crankbaits and crawler harnesses to jigs and bait rigs. Northern pike will put on a fall feed. And it's perhaps the best time of the year for trophy smallmouth bass. Smallmouth bass will bunch up at this time of year in rocky areas and if you hit pockets of these fish, you can literally tire your arms out fighting these battlers. The chinook salmon bite will continue near the dam and the fish will begin to come shallower as water temperatures cool and the adults search in vain for places to spawn as they complete their life cycle. Keep a close eye on the weather at this time of year. In Montana, we have "weather averages" but we don't have anything that could be classified as "weather normals." Montana can get early blasts of winter with cold, wind and snow from early April on. But it's just as likely to have warm, sunny days with high temperatures up into the 70s, 80s and perhaps even low 90s through October and into early November. A good weather radio and warm lodgings -- whether that's in a camperer or a motel room in town -- is a good contingency for when Mother Nature decides to issue a taste of early winter.
In most parts of the country, these are strictly ice fishing months, but that's not always the case on Fort Peck. In some years, you can fish out of boats near the dam almost throughout the winter. In other years, the ice lays on early. Ice fishing can be very good on Fort Peck. Look to the shallower areas of the lake -- the upper reaches of the Big Dry Arm and Fourchette Bay to the head of the lake -- to be the first areas that get winter ice. After that, it all depends on how cold it gets and how long the winter lasts as to how many areas will be covered with safe ice. Ice fishing on the lake can be very good for walleyes, northern pike and big burbot (locally called ling and sometimes referred to as lawyers or eelpout in other parts of the country). Both the Montana state record walleye (16 pounds, 10 ounces by Dan Spence of Bozeman) and the world record saugeye (15.66 pounds by Myron Kibler of Sand Springs) were pulled up through the ice. And the co-world-record sauger (8.805 pounds by Gene Moore of Fort Peck) was caught from a boat as ice was forming on the lake in early December. One thing to remember about ice fishing on the lake is that it's illegal to drive on the shoreline below the high water mark because of C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (which borders the lake) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (which operates the lake) regulations. You can drive vehicles out onto the lake only at boat ramps and other legal accesses where open refuge roads end. And because of underwater currents, fluctuating water levels and varying weather patterns, some people put pickup trucks and four-wheelers through the ice every winter. But anglers in spearing houses take good northern pike every winter on Fort Peck. And most other fishermen use tip-ups baited with live minnows to catch pike, walleyes and ling. |
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