Fly fishing on the Missouri River continues to be pretty good right now. The weather has been a bit all over the place. A day ago it was in the mid 80’s and sunny. Today, our highs touched the mid 40’s and it rained pretty much all day. You gotta love Spring time in Montana!
The river continues to run a little higher than average. Honestly, it is perfect where it’s at, right around 7,500 cfs. Its just a great flow for this river. All the side channels have plenty of water to hold fish. There are plenty of cut banks with water on them to hold fish. And it is enough water to largely keep the wade fisherman to a minimum. This, we really enjoy!
As for the fishing, it is decent. Not great and not bad. But pretty solid. Most are nymphing each day. 5-6′ rigs are most common out there. Seems like the wire worm is the favorite lead fly, with any sort of scud or sowbug to follow. A few fish have been taken on mayfly patterns as well, although they don’t seem to be working quite as well. But if you are willing to get down (deep) and dirty, you will certainly be rewarded with a number of fish. And, there are a lot of big browns being landed right now too, as is common with the elevated flows.
The dry fly fishing has been a little tougher as of late. With the warmer temps and blazing sun, the BWO thing didn’t happen at all. Midges as well. So that makes it a little tough on those in search of rising fish. But the warm weather did allow a few caddis to pop a couple of days. They were in pretty good numbers down low, around the Cascade stretch. We haven’t really seen fish eating them yet, but it was still nice to see them.
The best option, on these brighter days, has been rolling the dice with the march browns. We will certainly see a few buzzing around here and there. Most are lower in the canyon and on to Cascade. For those willing to trust it and throw them blind, you will be rewarded. Maybe not in quantity. But certainly in quality fish. Saturday was spent floating from Prewett Creek to Cascade throwing nothing but the big dry blind. We moved a handful of fish all day. This was about the number expected. Also, the quality of fish was what we expected as well. All were very nice brown trout. So if your arm can take it, its not a bad option maybe.
Its looking like more sunny/warm weather for the week to come. This will certainly mark the end of our midge and BWO fishing. Hopefully the next wave of bugs are close behind.
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