High Water Update

 

I guess we’ll start with the good news.  The Missouri is fishing superb right now and the dry fly fishing is starting to heat up with skwalas and BWOs. Nymphing is just plain silly…anything with rainbow dub in a scuddlesowcressczech and a fire-bead whatever and you’re bent all day. There are some skwala adults wiggling down the banks in the canyon and beyond and a few fish are eating the big dry. Stick with it and they will come. We just had some cool cats from MN over for a few days and they were trying to cancel there ticket back home….Good times!  We hope they recover from all the Moscow Mules.

Now for the bad news. Our west-side freestone rivers are all pretty high. You might be able to work it out on the Bitterroot but you’ll be scratching to put it together. It appears that things are slowing down and should begin to drop. The forecast is calling for a fair bit of rain this week so we will have to see how it plays out over the next few days. The Flathead and Clark Fork are big and brown and will be out for a little while. The upper Clark Fork graph @ Deer Lodge is stable but if you are going to drive that far just go to the mo. Upper Blackfoot didn’t look too bad on our way back from the Missouri but it’s been pissing.  We had some decent reports from the upper Blacklfoot a few days ago.  Once the water drops and we get another stretch of warm weather, the dry fly fishing should be great on the Clark Fork and Bitterroot.

The lower Swan and Bay are producing some fish and will remain a clean water option. There should be some new fish showing up daily with the recent surge in flows and warming water.