April Showers

It's been a wild weather coaster the last week here in SW Montana with the mountains getting 2 feet of snow a week ago and now it's almost 80 degrees an everything is green. We're supposed to get more rain later this week. So, is the runoff started or not? Things are definitely getting dirty but I don't think this is the big push, its just low elevation stuff right now as the mountains are staying cool at night.

I've fished the Upper Madison and the Big Horn since last I wrote. 

The Upper has been very good but mostly nymphing. The Golden Stones seem to be very active and I found a MFC pattern called the Real Stone that just seems to work real well up there. The boat accesses are opening up and fish are moving into the buckets more and more. Things should stay good up there until runoff really gets going.

The Big Horn was a disappointment. Water levels are higher than normal at 3200 cfs and very cold. We got fish both days but really had to work for them. I've grown accustomed to 50+ fish days over there the last few years, so I was pretty surprised when we got about 25 in the boat each day and we had to work for them. We fished a variety of bugs and never really found anything that was better than anything else. We got fish on just about everything, we just never really got into a lot of them. The weather was great, camaraderie super, and it was a great time overall. I also learned that you can call the Park Ranger if you lock your keys in the car, he's much cheaper than the locksmith that I used!