I’ve been away for a couple of days doing some work in the Flathead region of Montana (photography work at the Rebecca Farms Three Day Event in Kalispell) and have come back to Bozeman to find the weather forecast this week looking a lot more like the first or second week of September than the [...]
July 2009
Soda Butte is coming into its prime. Flows are coming down, water is clearing up, and there are lots of bugs hatching with abandon. Not much as changed hatch-wise since last week. PMDs and drakes are key hatches, with evening caddis being pretty prolific. Terrestrials are becoming an ever more important part of the [...]
As always, Slough Creek is one of the hot waters in the park. Flows have been slowly dropping to almost perfect levels, and clarity is just getting better and better. There are a fair number of folks on the water these days, so be prepared to hike a bit to find some solitude. PMDs [...]
This stretch of river is still fishing well. Flows out of the lake continue to drop, but remain quite high for this time of year. Water clarity is good, with several feet or more of visibility. Drakes and PMDs seem to be the dominant hatches above the canyons. Morning to early afternoon is the [...]
It has been a hot one over here for the past few days! With temperatures reaching the triple digits, getting out on the water to cool off is never a bad idea. Water temps are rising on the Rock, but they are still at fishable levels, especially up high. There are a lot of PMDs [...]
One picture (ok it’s really a graph) tells a lot of the story on the Missouri this week – check out the drop in flows this week…. Fish have been looking up in a major way all week now, though folks patient enough to nymph have been and will continue to do very well. It’s [...]
Flows on the Yellowstone continue to slowly drift downward, just dipping below 7000 cfs around midday yesterday at Livingston. A pretty big thunderstorm tracked across much of the Yellowstone’s headwaters yesterday afternoon and evening and may very well load a mud plug to come down river over the next several days. The upper river (say [...]
The Blackfoot has hit its summer stride. Hoppers are here, the lower river is full of drunken tubers, and there are caddis and mayflies in abundant quantities. Flows have been slowly dropping down, as of this morning they were just over 1,000 cfs. The lower flows mean a couple of good things. The fish [...]
Flows have come down quite a bit on the Bighorn in the past week: down to just over 4,000 cfs at St. Xavier this morning. This means that it is now possible (and safe) to wade the river! It also means dry fly fishing is picking up. The fish have really been going after [...]
It’s been the proverbial hot as hell for the past few days in the Bitterroot Valley. There are a lot of places where it’s hotter around the country, but for these parts it’s damned hot – folks have been a bit cranky if you ask me. At least there’s a bit of a break coming [...]
The big news over on the Lamar is a small lightning strike started fire on Druid Peak. When the official press release came out yesterday, officials said the fire was less than a half-acre in size, but is expected to grow slowly. Firefighters are keeping an eye on it. Just a heads up. From a [...]
The Lower Madison is pretty much effectively shut off at this point. The combination of rising water temps and the damn tubers is killer. Look for this stretch to improve come fall. If you do feel compelled to fish the Lower, hit it in mornings before the legions of tubers awake from their drunken stupor. [...]
The state of affairs on the Gibbon hasn’t changed a great deal from last week’s report. The warm weather has more or less made the river below Norris off limits for fly fishermen at this point in time, with abundant brookies and other feisty river residents available and interested above Norris. (Though a very early [...]
As extraordinarily well as the river between the lakes (damned crowded) and on the upper Madison has been fishing, the Madison River in the Park has been getting a bit warm on these long, sunny days (and given the very warm input from the Firehole). Unquestionably we agree with the admonitions coming from most quarters [...]
