Crawdaddies

The weather has changed for the worse...or cold, so I guess that depends on your opinion. The Mother's Day Caddis has kind of started in places, but the cold weather should slow that down. The cold nights have brought the Yellowstone and Gallatin back into shape in regards to flows and visibility. This should be a good thing as we're getting more into an appropriate date range for the brunt of the hatch. (personally I love the hype of the hatch, but get really tired of talking about it) Fishing can be amazing during the hatch and that's all I'll say about it.

I'm much more of an expert on crayfish and the Lower Madison. The Caddis are over there too, especially down below Black's Ford. Look for one warm day with some clouds and no wind and fishing will be epic over there. In the meantime, fish are eating the pupas and the occasional crayfish. Saw this at Canaday the other day, though they were redds at first. Someone has gotten pretty good at eating crayfish!

Pink Spring

Pink is great. Rainbows are either spawning, getting ready to spawn, or just finishing up the spawn. This all depends on the individual fish and which river, stream, or lake we're talking about. Some have been spawning in the spring creeks for awhile now, while they are just getting started on the Bighorn. Regardless of where you fish this time of year, there is always a good chance of getting some fish on PINK. Eggs a plenty in various shades of orange, amber, red, and pinkish hues are being spewed into the water right now so all the fish are looking for them and know that bright colored goodies mean food. The trick is to practice some self control and avoid the spawning beds or redds.

Pink has always been a staple on western tailwaters and I can't tell you how many times I've heard people talk about finding fish that are keyed into orange scuds or pink sowbugs. Just for the record, scuds and sowbugs are olive, gray, or tan in the "wild". The actual color varies, but they are always a muted tone that probably has more to do with the alkalinity and habitat than anything. They turn orange when they die due to some chemical process of which I don't know much about, but that's what happens.
So, the point is that the fish are probably looking more for eggs than dead scuds and that's what they taking our orange and pink flies for in the end.

Big News

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. Fishing, guiding, traveling, working. It's just plain been busy. I'm looking forward to some shop time over the next couple of weeks and getting ready for the season.

This week, Orvis held their annual Guide Rendezvous in Casper, WY. Many of the endorsed operations from the west get together once a year to network, go over marketing strategies, look at new products, and generally just try to get sense of where we all are and how we can all improve.

The Orvis Endorsed program (ELOG) has been around for nearly 30 years and consists of a variety of sporting life related businesses, but primarily, guides, lodges and outfitters. It's not the easiest thing to get involved with as they are pretty particular of who they choose to endorse. We've been an Orvis Endorsed Outfitter going on on 7 years now and are the exclusive endorsed operation in the Gallatin Valley. It's been a real win-win for Fins & Feathers and Orvis over the years and we've all liked the program.

So, it is with a whole lot of humility and gratitude that I get to announce that we were given the honor of being named the Orvis Endorsed Fly Fishing Outiftter of 2010 at this week's rendezvous. This award is based on feedback through surveys, letters, and "buzz" that Orvis receives directly from our customers. There are a lot of great operations out there in the Orvis network and we are all very proud to be given the distinct recognition as being the best of the best at what we do.

Everyone at the shop and on our guide staff is always looking to improve at what we do and how we service our customers. I speak for everyone at Fins & Feathers in expressing gratitude to everyone involved from our customers on up through the ranks at Orvis for this fantastic recognition!

We couldn't have done it without everyone on the team so I just want to thank all the guys, including Chris Jones, Rick Weisend, Ben Jantzen, Charlie Napoli, John Geer, Steven Rendle, and Paul Neuman! Thanks guys! Also, thanks to everyone at Orvis especially Jim LePage, Dave Perkins, Tom Evenson, Mike Clough and Doug Best for the appreciation of our efforts.

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.

Spring Cleaning

The last week and a half has been pretty hectic.
My grandfather passed away this past week, he was 84 and had a good life. i was lucky enough to see him the week before while visiting family in Dallas. He had been on dialysis for over a year and his body just finally shut down. I'm very thankful that my boys got to see him last week as well. I've lost both my grandfathers in the last year now, I think I'm probably luckier than most as I have had all of grandparents in my life up until now.
On top of that, Christine got sick with a pretty bad cold. I delayed a trip over to the Bighorn so that she could get some rest and not be stuck with Matty by herself. I went to the horn on Wednesday and came home with the cold that my wife had. Ok that's my personal stuff for the week!

The Bighorn was ok. We arrived around 1 on Wednesday afternoon, floated until 7 or so at night. Beautiful weather, BWO's and got some fish on dries, nymphs, and streamers. Fishing was not epic by any means, but good enough. Thursday sucked...cold, wet, windy, rain, snow.

I'm heading back over there next Tuesday for a few more days on teh horn and then come back for a couple days guiding around here as well. Hopefully the LM will clean up a little so that I can fish it next week. Winds on Ennis Lake and the spring turnover of the lake has made for some crappy water color.