The first day of the 2009 Yellowstone fly fishing season is now only 19 days away. What the hell does that have to do with Bigfoot? Read on.
Visions of hungry rainbows, cutts and browns rising with abandon in Yellowstone’s fabled waters to blanket blue winged olive hatches are dancing in more than one fly fisherman’s head. How do we know that’s true? From the emails we’re getting every day asking what and where to fish on opening day this year.
Yellowstone’s opener is (more or less) a week early this year – 23 May 2009 – the Saturday of the Memorial Day Weekend.
Yep, it’s early this year, and while you might not think that an extra week of time would have much impact on your options, that very week combined with the current snowpack and weather will indeed have an impact on your fly fishing options in the Park for the opener.
Here’s the poop on the matter as of today. Upper level snowpack has been bolstered by several weeks of impressive spring storms. Clearly more snow has fallen in some areas of the region recently that in many years; take the reporting station at MSU here in Bozeman – they received 50 inches of snow in April (a record), and the totals for the year are second in record history only to the very snowy winter of 1996-1997.
How about the Yellowstone area more specifically? The NRCS website this morning that snowpack in the Upper Yellowstone – Madison drainage basin is running at 117% of normal as is the Snake River drainage basin. The Bighorn basin is at 103% and the Shoshone River basin at 102%. Nifty – not a huge snowpack surplus, but very, very encouraging, and the snow season for the high country isn’t over yet.
Weather is of course the real wild-card in terms of thinking about river conditions for the opener.
If temps remain seasonal and slowly pull off the recently enhanced lower and mid-level snowpack, the most fishable water in the Park will likely be the Firehole, and it will more likely than not be stained. The Gardiner is iffy early in the season around the opener; check with the guy’s at Park’s in Gardiner – they’ll know what condition the Gardiner’s in day by day. Joffe Lake (Gardiner drainage) is almost always fishable as well. Our last look (last week) at the upper most Gallatin in the Park revealed beautiful, low water – that will likely change by the opener (the water remains very, very cold as well early in the season).
If on the other hand summer arrives sometime in the next two weeks ‘all at once’ as it did last year, most of the Park waters will be blown (maybe even the Firehole). What then? Here are some suggestions for neighborhood waters:
- Madison – the between the lakes section has been fishing well for weeks, and will likely still be in good shape around the opener. Lots of elbows, particularly if the Park waters are shot. The lower Madison below Ennis Lake has been fishing well; hike up Beartrap for even better options and fewer fisherfolk.
- Box Canyon on Henry’s Fork – opens on the 23rd, and can be very fishable pending flows. The wild card here is that Henry’s Lake is basically already full, and if warm temps push inflows, they’ll crank flows up on the main river.
- Beaverhead – may be the safest bet for non-YNP water in the region; flows out of Clark Canyon are way down, and there are great spring hatches over here. Wait, on second thought, the fishing sucks this time of year and Bigfoot has a spring mating rendezvous over there. Particularly don’t go if you’re big and hairy.
- Big Hole – fabulous spring fishing but it’s day to day with runoff. The Bigfeet wander over in this drainage as well so you shouldn’t even think about it.
- Paradise Valley Spring Creeks – ‘nuff said.
- A few more miles will put you on the Missouri or Big Horn – the tailwaters will be crowded but more likely than not very, very fishable.
We’ll look at lake options in the next few days.
