While the faint of heart may cringe at the thought of spending the day on a river on a cold, wet, gloomy day; die hard anglers salivate at the chance.  Seasoned Montana fly fisherman understand that inclement weather offers the best shot at hooking up on a monster brown.  Giant browns like the 25″ monster that first time fly fisher Eric Seigel landed on Saturday normally spend summer days avoiding bright sunlight.  Most of these monsters are big carnivores that come out after dark to pound a smaller trout, a few crayfish or some sculpins and call it a nights work.  The vast majority of trophy browns that I have had clients catch in 15 years of guiding have been during rainy days.  There is something about the combination of cooler water temps, low light and low air pressure that triggers the big boys to feed during the day.  The best way to hook these brutes is to fish water that holds big fish with really big flies.  Streamer fishing may not be the most productive method of fishing, but it is the best way to land giant trout.  Dead drifting large streamers or crayfish also can pull big fish.  If you want to land the trout of a lifetime don’t sit on the couch in the warmth of your home when bad weather strikes, put on the cold weather gear and swing for the fences!

There is something absolutely addictive about hopper fishing.  Watching big fish large flies is the apex of fly fishing.  Once mid July comes around everyone becomes hopper crazy and begins throwing countless foam hoppers on our local rivers.  By mid august fish have seen a lot of hoppers!  One strategy that consistently brings in fish during the late hopper season is to add some action to our hoppers.  This technique is especially effective on calm glides.  We like to telegraph a small hop in the line while stripping to make our hoppers twitch periodically.  Ideally the hopper should just barely move then dead drift in between twitches.  The twitch we use is very similar to a small mend (and sometimes is).  It is important to strip a bit of line in as you twitch to retrieve the slack that is generated so that you are prepared when a fish strikes.  Twitching hoppers often converts nibbles on the rubber legs into full fledged bull rush takes!

The dry fly action has been hot and getting hotter.  I was fortunate this week to guide a skilled angler, John, into some exciting dry fly opportunities.  On Wednesday, we enticed lots of eats on size 6 rogue salmon flies on the upper reaches of the Yellowstone just below the park.  We wrangled a variety of rainbows, cutthroat, and even a brook trout from both the boat and while wading distinct rifles and eddies (some eddies produced a dozen fish before slowing down).  On Thursday we enticed big browns and rainbows to the surface of the Boulder using PMX’s and Hopper Patterns.  It was the first hopper action of the season and the fish were not timid!  John quickly learned how to open up his peripheral senses to prepare casts ahead of time for slow water pockets following fast rifles (while the boat was still traveling at a brisk pace).   Immediate gratification characterizes the take from an accurate dry fly delivery cast from a fast moving boat!

It is certainly a treat to catch fish on salmon flies one day and hoppers the next!  We suffered through a cold wet spring but will reap the benefits of great water volume and lush grassy banks for hopper season.  Grasshopper fishing usually picks up after the insects molt and gain their wings, typically in the last weeks of July and throughout the remainder of the summer.  We are expecting a fabulous hopper season equal to or better than the last two years  (last August we recorded 30 to 40 fish days on the foam hopper)!  Big fish love to strike the dry fly with a vengeance, making for unrivaled excitement!

Miles

We fished the Upper Madison today on a guide trip today. The river has been steadily dropping (currently at 1850 cfs) and the water clarity is improving to about two feet of visibility. Although we didn’t net a large number of trout today, we interacted with some true hogs. The moderate visibility combined with limited fishing pressure during run-off has the big fish hungry and opportunistic. Catching the river on the first fishable days following run-off vividly demonstrates the number of huge fish lurking in the Madison, and provides one of the best opportunities of the year to set a hook into them. The fishing is only going to improve over the course of the next week! Get here if you can.

Ann and I have been travelling and fishing throughout Western Montana the last few days. Her parents are in town watching the kids and it is the first chance we have had to do such a trip in a few years. The Bighole and Beaverhead have been fun, as well as a few of the mountain lakes just below the divide. We were catching grayling hand over fist yesterday before getting chased off the water by a thunderstorm. The hatches are all delayed right now with the exceptionally cold and wet spring we have had. The weather is really getting old…it snowed June 11th in Bozeman! We somehow went from a horrible snowpack in late March to above average…even the old timers have never seen such a cold and wet spring. Although we are all worn out by the weather it should produce great summer fishing. Many of the rivers cleared back up recently with the last round of cold weather, but there is still more snow to come down so we have all quit trying to make predictions. The hatches are very far behind schedule. The salmonflies that are normally thick on the Bighole by June 9th aren’t even in the shallow rocks yet. We visited McCoy spring creek and the PMD’s have yet to arrive in any quantitiy. McCoy is amazing by the way!!! It is near Dillon, a bit of a drive but worth it. You can reserved the entire spring creek (actually there are two) with 4 people. The trout are huge!!! When we were there we saw several 26″ trout and watched huge 20+ fish smashing the handful of caddis on the water.

Each year Montana rivers become swollen from the melting snow pack.  Typically run off begins sometime in mid-late may and can extend into June and even July on big snow years.  Despite the fact that some rivers are un-fishable and dangerous during run off, there is still great fishing to be had….sometimes the best of the year.  Rivers are rarely crowded during runoff (except for some tailwaters) and water temperatures are kicking trout into feeding mode.  Since it is still early in the season, trout have not received much pressure and are easy to fool.

1)  Fish tail waters

Large reservoirs filter sediment out of rivers.  Below the dams, water runs clear and fishing remains terrific during the high water run off time period.  Rivers like the Bighorn, Beaverhead, and Missouri are world famous tailwaters.  The Ruby and Madison are also tailwaters that remain fishable during most of runoff.

2)  Fish spring creeks

Spring creeks originate from underground springs and stay cyrstal clear all year.  They also do not fluctuate in flows and produce spectacular fishing in May and June.  The PMD emergers during this time period producing terrific dry fly action.  Montana’s spring creeks are some of the best in the world!!!

3)  Fish stillwaters
Lakes and irrigation reservoirs produce awesome fishing for very large trout.  Often trout cruise the shallows allowing for anglers to site fish.  Watching a 27″ trout swim to your fly and then inhale it is truly a rush!  The first brood of callibaetis mayfly hatches in June producing exceptional fishing.  Weedbeds are still not established making May and early June an exceptional time to fish during run off.

4)  Fish the high water!

When waters are rising fast, they become very muddy and fishing is poor.  When waters begin to drop, they may still appear off color but fishing can be good.  When visibility hits 12″ and the waters are dropping, work the banks with big stonefly nymphs or streamers and hang on.  Boats are a great tool for this type of fishing.  We often use the boats to work our way downstream, then jump out and fish the slower eddies where fish have concentrated to escape the high flows.

We are transitioning our name from Big Sky Angler to Montana Angler.  After way too much work on the website and horse trading sage rods for the www.montanaangler.com domain…we are ready to go.  We decided to make the change to differentiate ourselves from Big Sky Anglers in West Yellowstone and to incorporate an emphasis on Montana fishing into our name.