Dave Goff with a beautiful Brown
Wow! What a beautiful couple of days we’ve had in the past few days. When it’s warm this time of year AND the wind doesn’t blow upwards of 15 mph that’s a great day to go fishing around Livingston, Montana.
There’s not a whole lot of insect activity right now, but there are some midges in the afternoon, a few random baetis, and every once in a while you see those tiny black stone flies crawling long the snowy banks.
Regardless, of the insect activity the water is a balmy 39 degrees and flowing at 1,160 cfs so a small pheasant tail (sz 16-20) and a zebra midge dropper (sz 16-20) is a good nymph rig. You won’t have to go too deep as the water is low, plus you’ll want to concentrate on the inside riffle corners, side channels and tail outs of the pools. We’ve also been picking up a few nice Rainbows on white streamers dragged slowly off the banks.
http://www.montanaflyfishingguides.com/Movies/MontanaFlyFishingTrips2Web.flvIt’s been a lamb of a start to March so far in Montana so we’ve already started hitting the water. Our most recent fishing expedition was a dual mission. Most obvious with the overcast weather, good fishing reports and mostly light wind we wanted to get up to the Missouri and visit our friends at Headhunters trout shop and do some fishing. Eric Adams and Tony V. did a mid day float from Wolf Creek to Craig. We fished a variety of nymphs and midge pupa under the surface, but we really wanted to get a few fish on the dry fly – so looking for rising trout was the goal. About 3:30pm the winds were light and the midges started hatching. We found a nice long flat where the heads started rising with some consistency and were able to pick off a few fish on the black posted Griffith’s Gnat and a couple on the bead headed Zebra midge. Not a stellar day on the mighty Missouri River, but dry fly fishing in March in Montana is something special.
Our second mission was to row a new drift boat by Adipose Boat Works. We’ve been talking with these boys about a modified skiff for a couple years now and we are getting excited to get into the full production model this spring. We’ll keep you updated on the progress and features and we can’t wait for our fishing guest to see how functional and comfortable this boat is.
