Well it was yet another cold and rainy day on the Missouri River. We decided to wait and see if the heavy morning rain would let up a bit. It didn’t. Regardless the fishing was still pretty good. If you could handle being wet and a bit cold the trout were still eating the in the soft water.
Currently the Missouri River is at 14,100 cfs but the Little Prickly Pear is over 2,000 cfs (and muddy) and the Dearborn Is over 5,000 cfs. All the rain has made fishing below Craig very difficult as the water is very dirty. However at the moment there are relatively few boats on the water and boating 20+ fish a day is pretty common.
Our best bugs are a variety of sow bugs, scuds and as always the worm. Fishing is still all deep nymphing at about 8 to 10 feet with a big 3/0 split shot. Not super fun to cast but with a good guide rowing the boat, keeping pace with the indicators hooking up on big rainbow and browns is worth it.
Also it’s currently the only fishing in the state.
- somewhere near the water via iPad
We’ve been up on the Missouri River in Craig, Montana for the past several days and despite the less than stellar weather (read as cold and rainy), we managed to have some pretty successful fishing. Currently the Missouri is 14,600 cfs, which is fairly high water flows, but the nymphing is still good – 20 to 30 fish days are doable.
The Dearborn River is still muddying the lower river so Dam to Dearborn accesses are the only real options for fishing at the moment. The predicted warm weather is probably not going to improve the high flows in the near future.
The technique is pretty much the same deep nymph rigs of 9 to 10.5 feet fishing the inside corners in the soft water. Flies are San Juan worms and Czech Nymphs in medium sizes and small size 18 sow/scuds bugs like the Tailwater Scud or beaded headed Ray Charles. Split shot should be at least a big AB or 3/0.
We’ll be back up here the middle of next week but in the mean time we are heading back to Livingston for a couple days of private lakes and spring creeks.
While the new Fish Pimp Palace is great it’ll be nice to sleep at home for a couple days.
- somewhere near the water via iPad
O.K. there’s nothing we can do about it so let’s have some fun with this.
We aren’t all gloom and doom over the crazy amounts of rain and snow here in Montana (see the pretty rainbow picture), but it is crazy right now. As many of you know this is how we get our averages here. Average 80 degrees in the summer time = Monday it’s 100 + Tuesday it’s 60 degrees. However, this is getting a bit ridiculous. Granted it’s heading into Memorial weekend so the weather should be pretty crappy, but they didn’t forecast rain – they forecasted HEAVY rain. Oh, and did we mention the Winter Storm Watch in Paradise Valley and Yellowstone National Park for to day through Monday?
To put it in perspective last week Livingston received about 2.5 inches, the forecast is for another 2 or 3 inches, our annual rainfall is 12 inches. That’s about 45% of our total rainfall for the year in a total of two weeks yippie. In eastern Montana last week they got 8 inches in one storm – it washed out bridges and closed the interstate fun.
Once again if you didn’t catch our previous post about the large amounts of snow we still have check it out and consider adjusting your fishing plans this summer.
I remember a story about this, what was it? Oh, yeah Noah can you get us the building specs on that ark you built? Maybe we can use it to float from Yellowstone National Park through downtown Livingston.
Blogging with a snorkel on somewhere near the approaching water…
We’ve been fielding a lot of calls lately about our snow pack so we wanted to relay some information to all those coming out to Montana this summer.
Background:
One of the reasons so many people love to fly fish Montana is that we have wild rivers and wild trout. A large portion of our Montana streams and rivers are freestones, which means no dams. In the spring when all the snow melts out of the mountains it floods the rivers and renders a majority unfishable for weeks at a time. You know all that water that the Mississippi is getting – a lot of it starts from the snow melts here. Hence, the term run-off season substitue construction season if you live in a city. If you come to Montana in late May through June chances are you’ll have some serious run-off issues to deal with. However, one of the great things about Montana is the variety of waters. Spring creeks and tailwaters (those with dams) are less effected by this annual event, but tailwaters can still have big flows and virtually no wading opportunities.
Current Conditions:
We are at 1997 water/snow levels. We use this date as a benchmark because we had a 100 year flood event through a majority of the waters in the state. Now we’re sure the weather guys are going to be ‘readjusting’ that event as it was only 14 years ago and it looks like we might have another one. We are watching it closely as many waters in 1997 had major flood issues and didn’t fish at all until August.
Currently the National Weather Service has projected that due to La Nina Montana will likely experience a cooler and wetter June than normal. This seems to be true as we’ve had little snow melt due to warm weather and there’s still plenty of snow in the hills – 180% of normal snow water equivalent in the upper Yellowstone drainage right now.
What does the Mean to Anglers:
Most importantly there will be good fishing throughout Montana no matter what happens remember all the variety we mentioned earlier. So come fishing whenever works best for your schedule, but you might have to be flexible on where and how you fish. If you only like to fish the Yellowstone River we recommend pushing your fishing dates until late July, August or September – which should fish exceptionally well with all the water we are going to have. If you are coming in June or early July make sure to plan ahead and book some private water (or just call us and we’ll do it for you) as those reservation will be hard to come by in the next week or so.
So that’s the prerun-off scenario right now, but don’t worry we’ll keep you posted with videos and photos sure to follow…
The water is high and expected to be higher by tonight, but the fishing was pretty good – if you consider 20 healthy trout in the boat a good day. Be warned, if you are planning on coming up the river is at 13,500 cfs and expected to go another 1,000 cfs tonight. It’s a nympher’s dream at the moment and a dryfler’s nightmare, with the high flows the river is pretty cool and the changing water levels aren’t conducive to the surface feeders.
It’s not pretty to cast, but a 10 foot nymph rig to the AB split shot followed by a San Juan Worm, Czech Nymph, Hot Head Sow Bug are the best bet. Hit the soft water from the inside, casting out toward the soft side of the seam. Don’t be afraid to get deep and heavy!
We’ll be up here till the weekend so give us shout for more specifics.
- blogging somewhere near the water via iPad
Fly fishing DePuy spring creek today would have been a challenge for anyone. The breeze, no make that full on wind, was brutal so the baetis and midges on the surface were hard to come by. However John and Jeff, fresh from the Bighorn River and Steve Galletta’s Montana Trout Anglers weren’t detoured. We caught enough good trout in the morning to make it interesting, and then even with the wind picking up speed in the afternoon we managed to find a small piece of water that was relatively unaffected. Patience was the name of the game and a small (18) Zebra Midge under the smallest pinch-on indicator was the ticket. We land about 15 trout, which is good for any day on the ever technical water of DePuy’s – especially with the tough conditions! Hats off to the boys from Ohio.
Best Bugs
Tungsten Zebra Midge, Brown Olive Surface Emerger and Harrop’s CDC Last Chance Midge (sizes 18-22).
As the Yellowstone and surrounding waters are blown out due to high spring water and will be for the next five or six weeks we are off to the Missouri River for the next several days, so we’ll keep you posted.
If you’re looking for some good fly fishing in Montana in the near future join us on the Missouri or one of the local spring creeks or make sure to check out Montana Trout Anglers on the Bighorn.
- somewhere near the water via iPad
