Hatch Update 05/04/11
Yep, those are all Caddis
At 3PM today we saw a number of Mother’s Day Caddis on the Yellowstone River just below Carter’s Bridge. While this looks like the begininning of the hatch it could progress quickly and go from zero to sixty in a hurry.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Mother’s Day Caddis hatch it’s one of the great hatches anywhere in the western United States. These medium sized tannish/olive insects can hatch in such vast numbers that the river appears to have an orangish hugh. One of our guides several years ago stated that, “if you had snowshoes you could walk across the river.” Not too far of an exaggeration in our opinion – just look at the mats of adult caddis in the photo to the right.
If you get the opportunity the next few days could be very good fishing. Stay tuned and we’ll keep you posted as we’ll be on the river the next several days.
It’s mid April and in Southwest Montana we should be starting to see some March Brown mayflies particularly on the Yellowstone River. Fellow Montana Fly Fishing Guides, Eric Paramore, was doing some river scouting today and say a good hatch of March Browns on the lower Yellowstone River at the Otter Creek fishing access near Big Timber.
Eric Adams is pictured with a great looking Cutthroat trout caught east of Livingston, Montana last spring. All of us Montana anglers are looking forward to a repeat of that great hatch from last season.
The predicted weather for this week is looking good for encouraging our mayfly friends to start hatching in earnest, so as always we’ll keep you posted!
To learn more about March Browns and other insects check out our Hatch Chart.
Pale Morning Dun
It’s June and anglers from around the world are starting to filter into the world famous spring creeks of Armstrong, DePuy and Nelson. Starting in the next week (June 15th) or so we should start seeing steady hatches of Pale Morning Duns. These great mayflies are a pale yellowish/olive and range in size from 12 to 16. Anglers obsess about PMDs as they are a larger mayfly and trout can’t help but look up to eat the dry fly.
We stopped by DePuy Spring Creek just the other day and turned over a few rocks and saw good numbers of PMD nymphs starting to stage up in the riffles. Based on our observations the nymphing should continue to get better throughout the week and dry fly action should start in the next 10 days.
For a hatch chart and more detailed information on these awesome trout snack visit our Interactive Hatch Chart.
We still have a few spring creek rods available on Armstrong Spring Creek so if you’d like to book a guided fly fishing trip please contact us.
Happy Mother’s Day Caddis hatch! We hope you can get out and fish it today, because some nasty weather is rolling our way. Highs over the next few days will continue to drop while the chance of rain will increase through Friday.
Not to worry the fishing will still be very good as we have a great March Brown and Baetis hatch that will be prolific with the cloud cover.
In the video fishing report you’ll see that the caddis hatch really just started yesterday. While the number of bugs on the water are not epic they are starting. Farther downstream near the 89 bridge the hatch was much heavier and we expect to see more of that today.
Stay tuned and we’ll keep you posted!
Mother's Day Caddis Hatch from 2009
As many of you know (since we love talking about it!) we are getting close to our annual Mother’s Day Caddis hatch on the Yellowstone River. We have seen some – I repeat some – caddis on the river. In total we’ve seen a few dozen adults over the past several days and plenty of pupa starting to drift and migrate. So, we are getting close.
The recent warm weather has melted some of the lower snow and the Yellowstone has come and cooled off a bit. The magic number for the full blown hatch is when the water temperatures go upwards of 54 degrees.
So if we had to guess? Within the next week we should start seeing some good caddis fishing. So keep your thermometers handy and check the river temps often over the next several days – or you can just read our blog and we’ll let you know.
Remember we do have a great spring fly fishing rate from now until June so come on out and enjoy a Montana fly fishing trip this season!
