After a slow start, the river has fished well for the last few weeks. Rick and George joined me for a fun day of adventure wading. We found a number of nice fish with dry flies, and only took one swim.

Thanks for another great trip guys. Thanks also to Dwight and Carter for a fun day, and to Steve and Scott for a great visit.

I joined the crew at Big Sky Anglers for a few days to fish with the boys from Omaha. They arrived in style and fished the Madison for a few days out of the Old Kirby Place. Thanks guys, I hope you had as much fun as we did.

It took a little while for our evening caddis fishing to get fired up this year. But, once we got some hot weather it was on. I've had some terrific evening floats over the last two weeks. Howard and Stephen from IF joined me this past week. We had a fun float, fishing dry flies from ramp to ramp. Stephen fooled this big brown on a small midge. Thanks, guys. Sorry you had to see P-Man with his shirt off....

Dillon and Greg, John and Greg, and the rest of the folks I've fished with in the last few weeks, Thanks for some great times. We'll try to get some photos next time.

As the summer chugs right along I look forward to a few more weeks of good dry fly fishing on the Madison. Gulpers have begun gulperig on Hebgen. And, soon it will be time to head into the back country.

Stay Tuned...

The Madison and H-Fork rivers have been my focus lately. The Madison is truely in perfect shape for salmonflies. The water is slightly green, and flowing at 1110cfs out of Hebgen / 1650cfs at Kirby. The big bugs have been slow to get started so far. There are sporadic bugs below Ennis, and one or two here and there just above town. I'm hoping warmer weather and lower flows get those big bugs in the mood this week.

The H-Fork has also seen a drop in flows. The lower river is at 1800cfs below Ashton. That's a perfect dry fly fishing flow. At least it's supposed to be. Fish haven't gotten into the real dry fly swing of things yet. Most of the bugs we hope to see in June are present. Pmd's, flavs, and golden stones have been the headliners lately. We're still waiting to see that first good gray drake spinner fall around Chester. It feels like things are just about to pop on the lower river.

Stay Tuned.

Flows coming in and out of Hebgen Lake have quieted down this week, and the braintrust in charge of the outflows have brought the river down to 1400cfs. The reservoir sits at 98.7%. Inflows remain around 1850cfs. We'll see what the forecasted rains do to inflows. Hopefully, we won't see another bump. The river has been at the same flow for two days now, and some consistentcy would sure help the fishing.

The clarity of the water below Quake Lake is a very fishable "glacial-green". The West Fork is still putting some brown water into the flow, but it's effects are minimal.

P-Man and I floated from Lyons to the access formerly known as Windy (now visible from space). We fished the standard muddy water rigs....rubberlegs, worms, yellow streamers. Fish seemed to be in the usual high-water spots, and we managed to fool a few of them. If flows stay consistent for a few days, the fishing could get pretty good.

In other news, dry fly fishing on the Firehole and the Madison in the park has been good. Pmd and baetis hatches have been reliable and productive on the Firehole. I spent some fun days up there with Seth and Brad...Thanks, Guys.  Salmonflies and AM spinner falls on the Madison are slowly becoming a factor. I've spent several mornings looking for Grey Drake spinners here as well, but one or two is all we've seen so far.

Nationally acclaimed and regoinally adored H-Fork icon, John Hudgens reports that Dry Fly fishing is "really coming around" on the Henry's Fork. The lower river is slowly dropping (2400cfs below Ashton), fish are finally looking for PMD's and Green Drakes are imminent. This weekend is the annual Railroad Ranch opener.  Winter flows out of Island Park Reservoir were strong again this year. That should bode well for the ranch. It still hasn't been publicized well, but the fishing in the Ranch is slowly getting better. Don't get me wrong, it's not like the glory days. But, there's a good chance at seeing multiple targets and strong hatches with little or no other anglers around. Not bad.

Leaving West Yellowstone we headed north along 191 towards Hebgen. The Madison above Hebgen was bank-full and brown as were Cougar and Duck Creeks. Grayling Creek was cranking out into the maze of willows between the highway and the lake.

Hebgen is close to full-pond (96%), and covered up in big midges. The inflow is currently over 3500cfs, and they bumped up the outflow on the Madison yesterday to nearly 950cfs. Those Madison flows are going to have to get much higher in the coming days to accommodate all of the water that's still to come.

I'm sure glad they filled the reservoir and ran the river at a trickle during the core of the spawning season, just to dump it all now. Who's in charge here anyway, Rain Man?

The Madison below Hebgen (between the lakes) was packed with people. Every inch of fishable water had a thingamabobber on top of it. Moving down, Cabin Creek was puking mud. The flow was strong enough to completely overtake the Madison flow as soon as they came together - no half-and-half downstream. Beaver Creek looked like you could shovel it. Quake Lake was, surprisingly, not brown. It still had that green color to it. So, the river downstream was very fishable. But, I have to think that that's going to slowly deteriorate as Quake fills with pure mud from Cabin and Beaver Creeks.

Moving downstream into the float stretch, mud from the West Fork had turned the river-left half of the Madison pure, dark brown.  With mud on its way through Quake Lake, and the inevitable cranking of the flows from Hebgen, I think we're going to be looking squarely at a goat-show down here for a while.

Of cousre, there's always the H-Fork.......Stay Tuned.

Stay Tuned........

I fished the Firehole with Fran and the boys just like we've done for years.  Conditions have been pretty ideal for hatches - cool, rainy, skuzzy. Reports from Saturday ranged from stretch to stretch along the river. Franny and the boys saw a blanket baetis hatch, but not too many fish on them. Their best action came to pmd's. In other areas we heard of just the opposite. Cool weather forced most of the best action to the later hours in the afternoon. Sunday brought more cold wind and fewer bugs. Fish rose sporadically to baetis and pmd's throughout the afternoon. We found inconsistent risers, but it seemed that if you saw a fish rise and got a fly over him, he'd eat. The skies cleared a bit and warmed on Sunday evening keeping the boys out chasing caddis until nearly dark.

One thing that both days shared was more people, both fishermen and tourists, than I think I've ever seen on Memorial Day weekend. Parking lots were packed from the top of the Firehole Canyon all the way to Biscuit Basin.

On Monday we headed down to float the Madison. Flows and clarity were still low, and relatively clear. We headed down in a couple of boats from Lyons to Ruby passing by the two new Walmart parking lots that have become the Windy and Pallisades fishing access sites.

We had a fun time (some of us more than others) fishing streamers and big dries to early season browns and rainbows. Jamie did well fishing a big, nasty, yellow cone-head. P-Man had a few on a smaller black, bunny leech. A very few march browns came off sporadically, and we managed to bring a handful of fish up on a #14 para-wulff.

All in all a good day in May on the Madison. We'll see how the water conditions hold up for the next week. Temps are expected to remain low, but there's a lot of rain in the forecast.

Stay tuned...

Stay tuned for more shots.....

We just finished another Oarsmen Expeditions Spring Road Trip. Fishing has been great this spring. Over the last two weeks we hit rivers like the Yellowstone, Gallatin, Madison, Stillwater, and Jefferson. Weather has been all across the board. On Wednesday we hit the Stillwater under sunny skies and 50 degree temps. The day before snow fell as hard as it could from Dillon to Livingston. Over on the Yellowstone beatis emergences have been strong on the cloudy days, and fish are looking for dead drifted streamers - even whitey!

Two more weeks of spring fishing around southwest Montana, and then it's saltwater bound. Stay Tuned.

I can't imagine what we looked like to the poor guy gearing up at the road. He thought he'd have the whole place to himself; a quiet walk down a lonesome, snowy winter road to catch a couple of trout. Then we roll in with skis, a sled, a baby, a dog. It was a shit show.

We managed to pull it all together and glide on down to the bridge. Fish were rising to midges in just about every piece of soft water we could see. We crossed and skied upstream to a favorite spot. Sara proceeded to put on a clinic while Jack, the dog, and I looked on. Fish rose well for a couple of hours until clouds and wind cooled both the air temps and the action.

We skied out with a sleeping baby, a tired dog, and a few nice fish to close out the season.