Things are Good

Most everything has started to come around for the season over the last week. Salmonflies up in the Gallatin Canyon near Big Sky, they're almost up to Lyon's on the upper and they are already above Yankee Jim on the Yellowstone. 

Everything is about a month behind schedule based on the last few years. The lower is still fishing pretty good, but getting weedy below Black's Ford. The Yellowstone is still real high for he time of year, but has finally greened up.

The upper madison has been crowded, so I'll give it a break for awhile...a couple days anyway. The salmonflies have been out over there but I only had one real good day on the dries an that was last Sunday. I fished it a couple other times and the fish were gorged and just ate real inconsistently. It could have had something to do with the 120 boats ahead of me and 5 days of every fish on the bank getting stuck a time or two as well!

I hit  3 spots this past week that were a bit off the beaten path and we were rewarded each day by getting away from everyone else. There's enough things starting to fish well now that you can get some fish just about anywhere. I think the best is yet to come as August should be smoking good on the Yellowstone. 

Bad Timing

This whole early summer seems to have been plagued by bad timing as the water just keeps on coming. The Yellowstone and Gallatin are still not fishable and the upper Madison is pretty bad below Macatee...still. But we have some Salmonflies starting on the upper so I'm going to make an early morning run in the am to see if we can get them on dries. 

The last two weeks have taken me all over the place it seems, but mostly just on the Madison with a few trips up to the Missouri. The lower finally greened up about a week ago and I finally had a good numbers day about a week ago. I've been fishing a big brown Yuk Bug, a pattern that I haven't fished in years. It's been really good for me the last 3 or 4 times down. I did Greycliff to teh Interstate today and we got about a dozen fish and a really nice 23+" inch 5.5-6 pounde brown...all on teh Yuk Bug.

The Missouri has been really good for me as well the last couple of weeks. Even the dam section has nymphed well which is kind of refreshing  as I don't fish that section as much as I used to. We really whacked em on a pheasant tailed color Little Green Machine. The dry fly fishing is just starting to get good on the lower river with lots of PMD's and so

me caddis around too. 

Right in the middle of this last run, the family and I came down with a pretty nasty sto

mach virus that we blamed on some bad pizza. Well, the pizza was fine I guess. I spent the better part of Thursday throwing up and Friday was spent drinking gatorade and whining about how bad my ribs hurt. Felt better this morning and am back at it.