Spring Fishin'

Wrapped up a little 4 day stint yesterday. 2 days on the Bighorn, 1 on Depuys and 1 on a place not to be named.

The Bighorn was very tough. The fish are on midges, mostly little grayish olive pupae, and the water temps are cold enough to keep the BWO's from getting going as well. One would expect to find dome fish eating some scuds and sowbugs anyway, but that just wasn't the case. So, the best thing for us was to sight fish to feeding trout in runs below the riffles. We're talking lots of casts with long leaders and 6x, hoping that one would accidentally bump into a size 18-20 midge pattern. At least the weather and the company was great! We definitely gave it hell, but just wasn't as good as would've liked. The water needs to warm up a little bit to get some other bugs moving around so that the fish get off their tiny midge fixation.

Depuy's was a welcome relief with a good number of fish caught sight-fishing with midges and small Baetis nymphs. Got a few on swayers PT's dropped about 6 inches off a dry too. Not as many fish in the creek this year, but still plenty to keep it entertaining. Only bad thing about it is that the majority of fish are in the lower creek and everyone knows it.

The Lower Madison is still pretty much a wreck. We got a few fish out if it yesterday, but went to plan b pretty quickly. I think you could probably do fine out there right now so long as you're concentrating on hitting the buckets and pockets that aren't necessarily in the main river channel. In other words, look for some holes around the weedbed edges. Crayfish and worms.

Spring fishing is what it is around here. If you get the right weather and not too much wind, the days are usually pretty bannerish. I dread those bright, cloudless, high-pressure days this time of year! I like some partly cloudy - overcast, slight breeze, and temps in the 50's. I guess we all do though when it comes to fishing. This year has been a little odd in that things were really mild in Feb and Mar, but more back to normal so far in April. The LM is unusually dirty from winds or turnover on Ennis Lake, the Yellowstone has been blustery more often than not, the upper Madison is very low and the boat ramps at VG and Ennis still aren't open. So, Varney to 8-mile is the best option around right now, but I have a feeling it's been getting a thumping. The Gallatin is actually probably the safest bet these days and the word in the shop is that it has been fishing very well around Gateway, up to Big Sky.