A testosterone fueled dance with Death

A testosterone fueled dance with Death

This is a great article that will have me re-designing my hopper patterns. No wonder they are poor swimmers.

Last trip for the year.

It has been a while since I have written anything so I thought I might make a quick entry.  This past Sunday I we fished the upper Madison and it was just a great day.  Plenty of trout, good weather and great company.  It was a great way to end the season.  The following day it snowed 6 inches and the temperature hasn't gotten over 38 degree's.

Dam problems on Ennis lake.

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Yesterday a school bus sized boulder busted out part of Ennis Dam. They are calling for an immediate draw down of the lake of 9 feet. How will this effect the Lower Madison? I will post more when I find out.

Making a mess of this town.

Fishy clip

The other side of run off.

I have put on to almost 1000 miles traveling around the state in search of fishable water this week.  I have concentrated on the Beaverhead and Missouri rivers.  Both rivers had there share of pressure, but that is to be expected.  The majority of the rivers have peaked and are now on the downward side of the bell curve.  There are reports of some Salmonflies on the Lower Madison and it has stopped raining for the time being.  The fishing has been good, but the summer should be even better.  All of the drainage's that we fish have gone from a bleak 65-70% of snowpack to almost 100%.  Conditions may be tough at the moment, but we are still getting our share, and having a great time on the river.  

Epic dry fly fishing on the Missouri river.

Mike came out last week for a few days of fishing on the Missouri river.  The fishing was so good that he insisted that we stayed another day.  It took me about 2 seconds to agree that we should stay.  I knew that we had to take advantage of the great fishing.  Most of the trout were in the 16-18 inch range, but we did catch some great trout up to 22 inches.  The fish where eating March Browns, so we were throwing a size 12 parachute adams.  This Missouri can be a very technical river, but on this trip the fish eating everything that floated over their heads.  What a great trip.

The rainbows are returning to the Missouri river.
Reports are coming back to Bozeman, that fishing from the Dam to Craig has really picked up this last week.  The Prickly is dumping a little mud, but it is soon dissipated downstream.  The Dearborn river is putting a little more color into the river, but with this recent snowstorm will probably clear up for this weekend.  There has been prolific hatches of midges and blue wing olives, and the fish have keyed on them on overcast days.  Small mayfly nymphs, midge larva, and cripple patterns are the flies of the day.  Streamer fishermen are catching some big browns on sculzilla's and such, but you have to be willing to cover water and stick with it.  We will be up there this weekend and anticipate more great fishing.  We will be sure to let you know.

April Dry fly fishing

When the wind hasn't been nuclear, the fishing has been very good later in the afternoon on the Yellowstone.  Both Baetis and midges have been hatching and once the water temperatures rise the trout get hungry.  The trout in this big eddy were going crazy and we just sat there and picked them off one by one.

Fishing on St. Paddy's Day

Tom landed this nice mid river brown trout on the Yellowstone on St. Paddy's day.  The fishing was decent, but not awesome.  We caught some on dries when we found rising fish.  A few on nymphs in the deeper runs, and the majority on streamers.  I believe we would of caught more if Tom would of been dressed a little more toned down, or if we all had those cool hats on.  A great time was had by all regardless.

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