Catch Up

It's been a whirlwind of a summer and not enough time in the day to do everything on my list, including keeping up with the blog. The essential thing is that fishing has been great all summer so far. Hopper fishing on the Yellowstone and Upper Madison has been going for about a week now and looks to keep on getting better. 

The Yellowstone is about a month behind schedule, so the water conditions right now are comparable to the last several early Julys. Big browns are up on the skinny flats looking for hoppers on the lower river. The cutties are eating just about everything that floats over them on the upper river. Things have really been good and recent afternoon showers are just making everything even better. This is undoubtably the best August I've seen in over 16 years of fishing in SW Montana.

The Spruce Moths are back in force this year. We've seen some ridiculous fishing on the Gallatin as it seems like every fish in the river is looking up. I've also had some really good dry fly fishing on the Upper Madison in the mornings on moth patterns and then switching to hoppers late morning.

I had a few days off a couple weeks ago and headed up to fish the Blackfoot and Clark's Fork. Beautiful water, crappy fishing. One of those places that fished really well late in the runoff...everything fishes great then! Needless to say, I think our rivers are much better!