Imagine

I found this guy in my boat yesterday while floating the Missouri. Could you imagine if we got a significant salmonfly hatch on the MO? Holy crap. Twenty-two inch browns racing across a seam to crush a size 4 dry fly? It would be like hopper fishing in the spring only 100 times the action. The problem is, fish on the Mo don't eat these guys because we don't get enough of them and there's too many other options. I've tried it. They will eat an orange rubber legs but I've never seen them eat a dry. Bummer.

A few people have reached out, asking about me because I haven't posted in a while on the blog and we haven't been producing The Montana Dream Cast. I'll be honest, and I'm not trying to sound like a country song, but this winter and spring have been tough. I've moved into my third house in less than 8 months, my truck took a shit, and life has pretty much just been kicking me in the nuts. The podcast was keeping me a little grounded and little focused but then my co-host disappeared. The one positive note has been fishing. When I'm on the water with clients, nothing else matters so let's talk fishing!

If you're wondering about flows and how they're managing the Mighty Mo, I've got no answers. We have average snow-pack and pretty much average rainfall for the spring. The river, however, has been running close to double of what's expected for spring time and the reservoirs are still about 14 or 15 feet lower than capacity and it doesn't look like the powers-to-be are worried about filling them. What's coming into Canyon Ferry is 11,600 cfs and what's coming out is 7600 so I guess they are now starting to fill it. But all spring, we had double the flows, which kind of sucked for the dry fly anglers.

So in the last few days, they dropped the lower river by about 3,000 cfs. What does that do to the fishing? Well, the first couple days it would appear that every whitefish in the river decided to eat. (By the way, I kept a few so I'm going to try smoking them today.) It seems that whitefish like the dropping levels and I feel like every time there's a significant drop, whitefish come out to play. But there are other really significant changes.

The big thing is water temps change and bugs come out. We've been seeing tons of midges, some BWO's and some March browns. That's a big deal folks. Fish are now happy and you can find some good browns looking up if you spend a little time searching. The other thing is fish have moved off the shelves and the inside out bends and are now in the scum. Do you know how easy it is to catch fish in the scum right now? It's ridiculous and you don't have to fish a ten-foot leader with a bobber and a big ole wire worm and sow bug. Can't give you all the secrets but let's just say, get a bug in the scum and hold on.

The other thing that happens is suckers are spawning...Nice work Bubba.

If you're waiting for the right conditions, I'd jump right now to take advantage of the fishing. It's pretty damn epic right now and we have slots available. Check us out at mdfishingoutfitters.com or give us a call: 406-403-8163.

Keep 'em where they live...