Friends and fishers back home in Montana have been murmuring about the snowpack and the 2013 water year for months now.
Come to think of it, they do every spring and on into summer regardless of how much snow has stacked up during the long winter to melt into the cricks, creeks, streams and rivers over the upcoming six or eight months.
As with soothsayers and fortune tellers, projections abound though correlation with reality is always suspect.
Folks have been saying this water year has ‘one of those different feels to it’ and evidence is mounting that they’re right. For example, like a lot of other fishers I tend to keep an eye on this map; there’s a hell of a lot of orange and red for this time of year (indicating flows 25% of normal or less)…
That said, when someone like Mark Raisler at HeadHunters says this I tend to sit up and pay attention…
Honest. I would be here this month. Look for the bulging pre hatch behaviors daily with more and more fish looking toward the surface. With low flows they cannot help but look at the surface. Even in the deep green lanes, they will move for the right bait. Just figure out the correct flies, and presto bang-go…get the net….
So, convinced yet? I am. Tell your wife that you are headed to the Mo for the month. She’ll understand. Just tell here it may be the best dry fly fishing you have all year.
The Billings Gazette wrote about it here (link via Mark R.) and Montana’s NRCS Snowpack Report for May looks reasonably sober, particularly for southwest Montana.
The point of it all?
Fish Now.
Particularly if you have that hankering that only southwest Montana can address.
Low flow water years happen.
There’s always fishing to be done regardless…
…though the hardcore fishers among us may find ourselves fishing in places we hadn’t planned on a few months ago – click back on the NRCS link a few paragraphs above and check out flow forecasts for the Kootenai and Flathead for instance.
Might just see you in the Northwest Corner this year.
