InsideSeam

I fished the upper Madison below McAtee bridge over the weekend. Trout were stacked tight in softer deeper water and willing to eat anything drifting past under a bobber (although, I didn't venture away from a two-nymph settup w/ a girdle bug and either an egg or San Juan worm dropper).

It was cold and windy and our guides were freezing shut. Standard late winter stuff, but conditions should improve shortly.

I've added some shop reports, and we'll try to keep them updated from here on in.

A few photos:

Everything went basically according to plan this weekend - the weather was poor, heads were up, and a few browns were getting after it.

I only had about 90 min of light Friday evening, so I pulled streamers around boulders for a half mile below the Reynolds Pass bridge. I moved about a dozen fish, but didn't hook into anything verifiably noteworthy. There was one little brown that came shooting up through 4' of heavy water to swipe at my natural/yellow double bunny the instant it touched the water, so that was cool.

I hit the river again around 11:00am on Saturday. The temp was in the mid 30's with periods of sun and relative calm between snow squalls. I started the morning fishing a sculpin and beadhead pheasant tail under a bobber. Twenty uneventful minutes later I spotted the first head.

Even with ideal conditions it's not easy to spot risers and keep track of your fly in the riffles and turbulent slicks up there, but the flat light and snow were making it really tough. Still, if you watched carefully, there were fish sipping all over the place. I'm still not sure if they were targeting the few very small mayflies or the even smaller midges, but small to medium trout were pounding anything size 20 or smaller that maintained a dead drift for more than a few seconds.

There were some larger trout porpoising in skinny water just inside the main current, but I was only able to get one take; the heavy rainbow pulled some line and pulled a few aerials before breaking me off.

Anyway, the constant removal of hooks from lips had numbed my fingers, so I decided to switch back to a nymph rig and hope to twitch-n-drift my way into something more substantial. I've landed fish up to 24" in this stretch by high-sticking through the fast pocket water with super heavy flies and a handful of splitshot (although, I'm usually doing it in May or June w/ black rubberlegs). While I didn't land either, that method put me in contact with two really big trout on Saturday. Aside from the treacherous wading, the trouble with fishing big boulder strewn water is that you generally land only a fraction of the fish you stick. In any case, it's worth it to me just to hear my reel scream.

Here are a few other photos from Saturday:

I started to update the shop reports this morning, but since every shop has essentially the same report for every nearby river, I'll just sum it up here: the fishing is generally good; use small BWO dries on cloudy days, two-fly nymph rigs w/ big-ugly/beadhead when they're not rising, or swing for the fences by stripping streamers.

Also, here's my photo-excuse for not fishing this weekend:

I spoke to the guys at Angler's West in Emigrant this morning and they said the Stone is off color...2-3 feet of visibility...but definitely fishable. Not sure whether or not another mud plug is coming through but we definitely had a nice downpour in Bozeman last night.

The Upper Madison spiked so my guess is that the fish will be hanging out more towards the banks. I will be fishing the Madison tomorrow so I will try to post an update tomorrow night. As for weekend plans take your pick-clarity issues on the Stone or water level issues on the Madi. Hopefully the conditions will stabilize in the next day or so. Good luck.

We floated from Ruby Campground to Storey Ditch yesterday evening. The fishing was pretty slow. We had fish looking, but few would commit. Popular hopper patterns weren't even getting looks. The banks were completely dead. The fish that we did see moved out of slicks, pillows and those weird mid-river seams.

This brown rose through the pillow of a large mid-stream rock to take a big golden stone pattern (if you look close, you can see the fly on the water):

Mason and I floated Lyon's Bridge to Palisades yesterday afternoon. The fishing was hit and miss. We caught some fish near Lyon's Bridge and then it turned off. Then the caddis and mayflies came out and the fishing picked back up. We managed to land a few nice browns with some smaller bows mixed in.

Andrew, apparently, crushed them on the Upper this afternoon, fishing down from $3 for a couple miles. Action improved with distance from the bridge. He loves to fish hoppers, and although he didn't move a single fish to the damn thing, he tossed a hopper-dropper rig all day. Not to be redundant, but all of his fish were on the dropper, which was an x-caddis.

[You may have noticed something about my bro by now -- he's more about changing water and presentation than flies. We learned that from our father, who taught us to fish with one fly -- a #14 hares ear -- while meat-fishing for Louie Lips on the Weber River:

(Since I'm slightly buzzed, and on a roll here, I'll continue the story.) After a decade or so, he (and thus, we) discovered the Henry's Fork and added the black bead-head bugger to the arsenal. Two decades into it, he/we are still fishing that same rig (albeit, some of us more than others).]

Also, Andrew drove down the Gallatin this afternoon and said it's totally blown out.

I wade fished the Upper Madison with a few friends yesterday evening. We pulled into the Lyon's Bridge parking lot to check out the water and a friendly older gentlemen coming from the Henry's Lake area said he saw several cars at Reynold's and Three Dollar access sites. While the Three Dollar area offers some great wade fishing we deceded to skip it in hopes of getting away from the crowd.

We fished from about 7:00-9:30 and caught fish on hoppers, caddis, yellow sallies, and caddis emergers. The fishing wasn't red hot but we managed to land some nice ones. The fish were most interested in smaller light colored caddis patterns. The mayflies came out late but not in large numbers like we had hoped. I tried a rusty spinner right before dark and caught a few smaller fish.

The older gentleman that tipped us off on the crowd up river felt inclined to give us his fish count on the way back to his truck..."landed 15 and missed about 20...on a size 16 tan caddis." Not a bad evening for the old buzzard.

Looking for a late meal after the evening hatch? The Claimjumper Saloon in Ennis is under new ownership and they are now serving food until 11pm. I recommend the Spicy California Chicken Sandwich.

I don't have time to flesh this report out now, but lets just say the fishing has been good on the Upper Madison. Speaking of the 'upper seven' (first seven miles below Quake Lake), Kelly Galloup of Slide Inn commented that, "it doesn't get easier".

These were the best producers for us:

Another nice fish falls for the x-caddis:

My brother, Andrew, floated Lyon's Bridge to Pallasades this afternoon with a wookie, I mean rookie (rod and oars). I skipped it in fear of the wind, heat, and less-than-stellar fishing I experienced last weekend. Apparently, my judgement is lacking (somehow I manage to continue reliving this 'epiphany'; see bias blind spot, pseudocertainty, anchoring, overconfidence, etc.).

Fish were routinely rising to smallish brown spotted foam hoppers. As previously mentioned, the oarsman lacked experience which inevitably leads to poor drifts in the middle of the river--not a problem this afternoon.

They did report a number of refusals, but suggested that short dead-drifts were to blame. I have a hunch that an ant or beetle hanging off the back of a hopper will kill it tomorrow, and I hope to find out.

Andrew took this photo of the virgin fly-fisher Nick (no offense meant by the link, it just seemed appropriate somehow):

I spoke to Ian Davis from Yellowdog Flyfishing Adventures this morning. He has been guiding on the Upper Madison (mostly Varney-Town) for the past few weeks. He has had good luck dead drifting bow river buggers and stonefly nymphs and dropping either a caddis emerger or PMD emerger off the back. He said he has seen some small floaters in the water, he wasn't sure whether they were trout or whities, but the carcasses are offering easy meals for the larger trout. The dryfly fishing has been decent, the smaller fish have been committing to PMD's and caddis patterns tight to the bank. I expect the fish to move back into the riffels and drop offs as the water level has dropped below 1500 cfs. No terestrial activity yet but be be ready. Be aware of the water temps and try not to over-exhaust the fish.