Was just chatting with a friend who guides out of West Yellowstone and he asked if I’d seen recent water temps on the Firehole; I told him I hadn’t though it was easy to guess what’s ‘cooking’.
As happens in skinny water and about-to-get-damned-hot summers, afternoon water temps on the Firehole have been well above the safe zone for fishing – the Firehole should be left alone until the cooling days of September. Graphs pulled just now tell the story…
The Madison in the Park isn’t much better, hitting 75+ yesterday afternoon, with the real heat coming this weekend. Though nothing official has been posted as of yet, anglers should leave the Madison (YNP) undisturbed until the fall as well.
There’s other fishable water in the neighborhood, though with flows as skinny as they are today (as the cut from the USGS WaterWatch site at about 1300 today shows), it’s going to most likely be a very skinny water summer with closures on some waters looming.
It’s going to be a damned busy tailwater season.
Click here to access the Montana USGS WaterWatch map in real time – all the report site’s links are hot so you can find flows and temps at a glance.
Click here for the Wyoming map.
