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Big blog tonight in terms of content, but short on words.
Who knew that the US Govt. shutdown would  cause so much uncertainty to anglers in Montana this time of year? Lots of BLM fishing acres sites are closed, YNP is closed, rivers are dirty, options are limited for the less inquisitive minds right now. In regards to the Govt., I have been meaning to say this for awhile but Crow can be hard to swallow...I officially have reviewed my opinions on FWP over the years and formally recant all harmful and nasty things I've said about them to date. I have had a lot of pleasant, efficient, and mutually respectful dealings with them the last couple of years...save one incident with a guy that was an asshole last year on his day off...so I can't say that he was representing the dept. at the time. All of my official and unofficial dealings with them the last several years have been good and I have decided that I will offer them the respect they deserve from today on....terms like fish police are not meant to be derogatory and I shall continue to refer to "in field" dealings as such. We are fortunate enough to have a F&G organization that affords such personal service in the field and in the office.
OK, fished the upper today with a couple of dudes that wanted to throw streamers, so that's what we did. Had a couple of 19-20 inch browns early on so  the rest of the day was gravy. Ended up with a dozen or so fish in the 14-20" range on sex dungeons, gongs, and peanut envies. Varney to town.
The lower Mad is dirty in that lake turning over kind of pea soup color. Did not look exciting and had bad reports from there yesterday. I'm not sure how the BLM stuff is playing out at Warm Springs and Canaday, but there were some boast at both places this morning. It sounds like the BLM FAS on the upper are closed for the time being, but I don't know that for certainty...that would include Windy, Palisades, Ruby, and Story, possibly the one at Ennis Lake too. You might want to check that out before going up there and I am not the source in that regards. The Yellowstone is junk and will be so for a few days I imagine. The Gallatin was getting greener today and there were a lot of boats on the lower portions today. The Jeff is dirty from the Big Holio.