For Your 4th of July Weekend - Salmonflies as High as Ruby (probably above there even)
Yellowstone Will Be in Shape Shortly Barring More Rainstorms...
Updated 7/3/09 Rods and Reels from Winston, Ross, Sage, Echo - Lines from SA, Rio and Airflo - Korkers Boots...
Fishing Reports
Floated the Upper Madison from Ruby to 8 Mile on the Upper and there were bugs all over the place and fish are active on top. So nows the time to go do your favorite stretches of the Upper Madison - just don't expect to have anything to yourself, it's packed. The Lower Madison is heating up, literally, water temps are right around 67 out of the damn right now, and the trash hatch is on so go early or go late and the dry fly fishing late has been pretty darn good. The rest of the area is still coming into shape around the Yellowstone, not too much longer. .
Other than that, it's been good in the evening for dry fly fishing on the rivers and creeks with good caddis hatches and good PMD's and Yellow Sallies. Chubby Chernobyls are starting to work again (when don't they is the real question) and attractor dry fishing is just around the corner on nearly all of the fisheries around the area - it's going full boar on the Big Hole, should be a good weekend over there fishing on top.
It may be another week or more till we see the Yellowstone get into fishable shape, likely won't be slamonflies anywhere but up high around McConnell and Joe Brown and of course in the park for cutties will be good. The Jefferson is in fishable shape now and streamer fishing has been decent, so has the Lower Gally, so nows the time to hit some of your favorite weird spots while they still aren't crowded yet.
Carping Locations - Bozeman Ponds, Three Forks Ponds, East Gallatin Rec Center, Canyon Ferry, Harrison Reservoir, any number of local area ponds (all over the state), down around Toston Dam (if you have a boat) and lots of backwater, nasty $#!+ around the state, Bighorn reservoir and a lot of others. In fact right now Canyon Ferry is full of hundreds of thousands of Carp in all of the bays as they are chasing one another in heat...
Fishing on the lakes around the area has been excellent - look for the Ruby to be good with Callibaetis and Cliff and Wade are both fishing well on callibaetis and nymphs and small leeches. Better off fishing in mornings and evenings on the lake right now, so for the 4th get out and enjoy some fishing!
Give us a call at 406/587-4707 for the most up to date info!Tip of the Month: Reading and Interpreting Flow Charts (Updated Version)
With the fantastic invent of the Internet we have been able for years now to get up to date flow information via USGS satellites on most of your favorite local rivers and creeks. But what escapes a lot of us when looking at the flow information and charts is...What does it all mean and how do I read and understand the charts?
Well first and foremost familiarize yourself with the units of measure CFS. CFS stands for cubic feet per second, in scientific terms "(CFS) is the rate of flow representing a volume of 1 cubic foot passing a given point in 1 second" basically its a measure of both the amount and velocity of water moving through the measuring stations at a give point in time. That means that when you have more water moving through faster it has a compounding effect on the CFS measurement. The "STAGE" is something I really don't pay attention to, but is used to measure where the river is at (ignore this unless you own a home on the river and this year when it gets into the flood stage, call a home restorator...)
The most important part of reading flow charts is putting everything into context. 1000CFS on the Gallatin River is much different than say on the Ruby, thus you need to look at historical flows for a body of water. So read the historical averages provided on the detailed USGS flow charts. These links are available on our site. You need to go into the Daily Historical Data section of the site and then enter the time period you'd like to look at. Once you begin to understand what individual rivers median flows are for specific times of the year you can begin to understand whether the flow charts are indicating high or low water and whether or not it's significant enough to influence the fishing. Say perhaps that a 60 year median flow on the Big Hole for April 16th is like 700CFS if it's running at around 2500CFS that could indicate dirty high water, I would advise calling someone first before throwing in the towel - now you need to start breaking down the chart.
Reading spikes and understanding spikes in tributaries. One of the most overlooked aspects of the flow charts is right in front of you, patterns! If you see that a particular body of water is holding really steady and not showing massive fluctuations over a few weeks, you can generally expect that fishing will be pretty decent - at least in the Springtime, summer is a different story... However, if you notice a sharp spike in the river, say a 10+ percentage increase in the flow, you can bet that it's going to mean mud coming down the pipeline. Also, look at main tributaries to rivers, like the Lamar for the Yellowstone and Taylor's Fork on the Gallatin, if those spike then you know that mud is on it's way even if the flows haven't changed on the main river yet. Once rivers have begun their ascent upwards, it typically takes cold evenings and cooler days to slow the flows - if the weather is forecasted to be in the 70's and above freezing at night, don't expect your favorite river to clear and drop once it's begun rising.
Finally, the more time you spend fishing, the better your knowledge of fishing conditions will become and you will be able to relate that to your successes and failures. As you do this, learn to look at the flow charts and discern water temps and water levels and what time of year you were on a particular river and how it fished. It sounds corny and I'll probably get emails harassing me about this, but I have kept track of water flows and followed the charts and you can learn to tell how the fishing might change based on reading the charts before you get the reports back. It makes for a much more enjoyable time fishing if you aren't flailing around in mud, or frustratingly trying to figure out why the fish don't seem to be biting and later realize it was because the flows had come up 1000CFS in a couple of days...
If you ever have questions on this feel free to ask me, I'm more than willing to help out.
Fly of the Week (or two or three): Bearded Clam - So some of you might be asking yourselves right now, "Why would you want to be fishing a crayfish pattern in the middle of the salmonfly hatch?" And that would be a legitimate question usually. But this isn't your normal crayfish, and everyone likes to eat bearded clams especially brown trout on the Lower Madison. It's a spoonfly crayfish orginally tied for Red Fish, but we've found that fish on the Lower Madison and other drainages with crayfish in them are quite fond of the bearded clam. We've found that fishing it on a mono loop is the best way, because if you add a swivel all it does is spin...
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