From Montana Troutfitters on 8/2:
Upper Madison
The flows have come back up again, filling up Ennis for pulse flows. We had been running nearly all of our trips on the Madison, but with spiked flows we headed over to the Yellowstone some as well. Reports from up this way have varied, if you find the sweet spot and fly combo things have been really good. But if you are used to running hopper dropper and never try anything different it can be tough. When the water is coming up, fish tend to be in limbo, not really hanging in one place, thus trying all over the river with big searcher patterns seems to work well for me. In the case you find yourself stumped, I like to pitch a streamer or sculpin below an indicator with a nymph off the back. At these water levels that's a pretty good way to comb the river. Upper stretches around 3 Dollar are ripping at this level, best to find the pockets and fish something heavy, I guess you could look for fish heads, but you'll have to have good eyesight and patience at nearly 2000CFS. I would guess flows will drop back off here again in a bit, when that happens, look for dynamite fishing - almost always good on this river when flows start dropping.
The Stone
The clarity on the Yellowstone now is back to normal, and barring any more big rainshowers in the park should stay that way for a while. Reports were pretty good just as the river was clearing, and with the last push of really hot heat the other day, things dropped off a little bit, look for it to recover as long as the evenings stay cool as the days shorten. Fish have been looking up and eating some grasshoppers, so it's definitely time to start pitching your hopper dropper combo. For the dropper, this year I highly suggest if you haven't ever tried it pitching an ant off the back. My father is a big believer in the epoxy ant, and I personally have seen it work. Hopefully we will continue to see a cooling trend in the weather and that will be good for everyone. Still it's a morning game, closures are from 2pm to midnight river wide. If you are just nuts enough it's fun to do a night float on the Yellowstone, done a couple myself and there's nothing quite like getting your line tugged out by a big brown trout at 3am in the pitch blackness...
