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4/23
A group of guys from Virginia stopped by the shop and mentioned that they saw a few caddis in the bushes down by Mayor's Landing. "Not enough to get the fish excited, but just enough to get us excited." Meanwhile Doug and Derek were probably giving each other a high five after releasing a monster brown that Derek caught on a big streamer pattern. The fish looked perfectly flawless - no spawning scars, no skinny belly - this guy definitely wintered well as they say. Doug and Derek caught 4 other fish that day over 20" to complete one of the best streamer days either of them have ever had on the Yellowstone.... 4/24
It snowed on the 24th pretty hard through the day. I hit up the Stone around 5:00, which was just about when the storm was settling down. The streamer bite was definitely on - I caught 2 nice browns - the first on a big articulated white streamer, the second on a smaller black and purple. I even managed to tease a 12 inch cuttie into smacking a 7 inch streamer by twitching the fly and feeding it slack about 4 times - if only the could breed a cross between brown trout and cutthroat! Fishing got cut short due to a TU meeting, but I bet it would have been good right up until dark. 4/25
More snow - this time big snow flakes! Josh Stanish took some guys up into the Valley and did really well. He said that the fish went nuts as the huge snowflakes came down. After the storm, the bite slowed down quite a bit. Hank and Justin floated down low and had the same experience - good fishing during the snow and but slow after. Doug, Butch and I floated after work and found the fishing to be quite slow. Doug did nail a couple nice browns on that night. Butch caught a 5 inch whitefish on a 3 inch white Home Invader - must have been a territorial strike, as in that whitefish thought he could bully butch's fly but ended up with a size 2 hook in his lips. I got skunked myself... one chase with a bump and that was it. It's nice to have Doug in the boat so at least at the end of the day you can say that "we" caught a couple good fish. That Doug is a fishy mother %(*&^*... 4/26
The water temperature is still very low - under 40 degrees when I checked it this morning at 7:20AM. For the mother's day caddis hatch, we're looking for water temperatures to increase above 52 degrees. 54 is when things really get rocking and rolling. Unfortunately, we still have a lot of lower elevations snow left and the same temperatures that will bring out the caddis will also melt the snow and dirty up the Stone. If the river gets muddy (as in less that a foot of visibility) before the caddis pop, then the fish won't really get a chance to get keyed on the caddis. The dry fly fishing won't be so hot, but there's always an outside chance that the streamer fishing will be good. The best case scenario would be to have hot days with no precipitation and cold nights to shut off the runoff faucet. Keep you fishing fingers crossed and we'll see what happened.
Doug and Butch hit the river again in search of some big browns. The day was pretty sunny, so they didn't catch a ton but the ones that made it to the boat were nice fish. No caddis - but they did see a variety of bugs including march browns, baetis, and midges. Other folks who floated on Saturday had similar results, not many fish but the ones that ate were of good size. One gentleman stopped by the shop to bring us a 6 pack of beer after we hooked him up with some flies and a good map on where find some fish on the Stone. He had never caught a fish on the Yellowstone until that day. He mopped up the floor with the whitefish, right away and then moved into some trout. He decided to quit on a fat 17 inch rainbow he caught below Carter's Bridge on a size 18 pheasant tail. 4/27
The closest reports we had to caddis dries were some bugs hitting the wind shield near exit 350, however, the windshield and grill bug-smashed aftermath looked more like March Browns and baetis than caddis. We did have some good reports on caddis nymphs however. Hank Bechard was on a trip and noticed that every single time they brought in their nymphs there was a caddis shuck stuck to the hook. They saw blanket midges on the water but the fish weren't on them, which might make sense if they are feeding on caddis below the surface. They did get into a nice pod of rising fish which were eating blue wings but other than that it was relatively slow action on top. Tracy Allen was floating down low and took a water temp at the end of the day around 54° and Chad Olsen took one around the same time which was about 52°. Shouldn't be long now until it's time to develop a serious cough and be sick from work for a couple days (you know how quickly that strep throat gets around)! 4/28
I took a water temp. at 7:30 in the morning and the Yellowstone was 45°. Josh Stanish gave us a call and said that the caddis had popped in the Valley. That was enough for us to skip the PB and J and head to the river during our lunch hours. Doug caught a few fish in the "Livingston Ditch" below DePuy's. He said he only saw one caddis but definitely saw a lot of caddis pupa takes - big boils and slashes in the surface of the water. He caught his fish on peasant tail sock hackle droppers. Amory and I floated after work from Mallard's to Carter's. We had much better action below our caddis dry - with a sparkle pupa. The fish were really eating hard under the surface. We only got one cutthroat to fall for a dry but it was a good night. I took a water temp just above Pine Creek and it was 52°. 4/29
9th Street Bridge on April 29th, 2008
9th Street Bridge on April 29th, 2007 Water temp in the morning was 46°. I checked it again at lunch and it was between 53 and 54°. I saw one caddis dry on the rocks but that was it. I noticed that the river is still a lot lower than it was last year on the 29th (see the comparison above). It's also a lot less muddy than last year, but we do have more mud coming. The Lamar spiked up pretty good today and you can already see some color from the Yellowstone webcam above Yankee Jim. We got a lot of reports yesterday from folks who did well on caddis pupa... Unfortunately it looks like this colder weather is going to drop water temps tomorrow, which will put the caddis out of commission. The streamer fishing looks like it should be incredible though. 4/30
We woke up to snow over here in Livingston. Rick drove over the pass and said Bozeman had about 4 or 5 inches of snow. Bridger Bowl had an inch - Big Sky got 8 and it is still snowing up there. The yellowstone at 9th street bridge got muddy - about a foot of visibility - most likely due to snow melt. Surprisingly enough the water temp was still 46°, the same as yesterday morning. Not much wind today which should make for good baetis fishing. Doug and Mike Nelson fished down low but didn't do so hot. "Chalk one one for paying your dues" is what Doug had to say after getting skunked and breaking his 8 weight in two spots at the same time... Biggy and Rob Olson took a look down low and decided to take the boys to the Boulder instead which fished quite well. 5/1
Their was definitely some mud in the river through town on Thursday. We still sent out trips and they caught some fish. You pretty much had to hit them on the head, but Brian and his clients managed to catch 8 nice trout out of the boat. I fished a bit before our local TU meeting and caught a nice brown off the bank on a white streamer. The brown had a really pretty purple/blue iridescent hue to it's gill plate. You can sort of see it in the photo, but in real life it looked awesome. 5/2
It looks like the weather may actually give us a shot for round two. The hills did accumulate some new lower elevation snow, but a lot of it has melted and already gone through town. We should be back to somewhat of a clean slate - the forecast looks great so far - not too hot in the day and cool enough at night to slow the snow melt. Water temp this morning was 42° and the visibility at 9th street bridge was only a foot. Clear water coming from above however, which brings hope for Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday... 5/3
The river is clearing through town today, with even more clear water on the way. 9th street had about a foot and a half of visibility with that nice green hue to it. It looked like great streamer fishing. At 7:30AM, the water temp was cold at 40° but increased to 46° by 12:30. I saw two caddis dries fluttering about at lunch, but that was it. The chance of catching fish on caddis today will still be there, but I think it is going to be sub-surface on caddis pupa, peeking caddis, or soft hackles. Slim chance of caddis dries today, but pretty good chances of seeing them tomorrow with a nice clean river through the valley and town. Reports from the guides were relatively slow action through the day, but in the evening things picked up - even for dries on top. Doug and Rick caught quite a few fish from Carter's to 9th after work. They said the saw about as many caddis as one would see during a normal summer evening - not tons but enough to catch fish. It should pop hard tomorrow... 5/4 ... The Caddis have popped!
Water temp at 9:00 in the morning was 47° so it looks like this evening the caddis are definitely going to pop. With last nights caddis flying around here and there you should see thousands if you are out on the river tonight. It looks like both the CFS on the upper Yellowstone has spiked up since yesterday, so we may have some mud coming through town by Tuesday night or Wednesday. Looks like the best days will be tonight, tomorrow, and Tuesday so get out there and fish hard before the mud gets here! Try to go to work early and see if the boss will let you out for a 5:00 after work float the next couple of days... 5/5
Visibility today is about a foot and a half at 9th street, water temperature was 47° at 7:30AM but by 5:00PM it had increased to 56°. There were thousands of caddis in the air and on the water. Hatch wise, it was exactly what we had been waiting for. The fishing however, could have been better. We caught 5 fish that night, but the fish weren't exactly going nuts. The few fish we did catch ate dries - despite my efforts to upset Hank by fishing streamers during the best hatch we've seen in a year.
5/6
The visibility at 9th street looks like less than a foot. The color also looks more brown than green with worse mud on the way. This is a tough call, because the fishing is right on the fence. If you like to gamble, I'd say go for it. Otherwise, the safer bet is heading to the Lower Madison. You'll probably see some caddis over there soon, and the clarity will be much better. Looking at the weather, we should get rain and even snow up high by Wednesday with continuing precipitation into the weekend. That should be the knock out punch, putting the Yellowstone to sleep until July. We still have our fingers crossed, maybe the colder weather over the weekend will help clear things up a bit. We'll keep you posted should the Stone come back in action... We were watching our friend's kids for a few days, so I took Thad Hampson out to Nelson's Spring Creek. The fish were eating caddis dries on the pond, but the one we tag-teamed ate a small brown home invader. Thad tried a red grand hopper for a while, but soon switched over to a black lead eye. That was definitely the hot rod that night. Not only did he caught his first fish with a fly rod (all on his own) but he also stuck a handful of hogs. Thad wanted to stay and probably would have fished well past his bedtime, but we had to get back for spaghetti and meatballs. As we drove home, Thad mentioned several times what a great time he had. He also pointed out that he caught more fish than I did... which is true. Nice work buddy!
5/7
Doug holds up a solid Sitz Ranch rainbow photo: Derek DeYoung With the River dirty, it's time to start looking elsewhere to fish! Thar she blows! The Yellowstone is officially in spring runnoff... Folks who are still chasing the Mother's Day Caddis will be heading over to the Lower Madison. The caddis should pop on the lower sometime next week. If you're focus more on the fish and less on the caddis, south western Montana offers a lot of fishing options. Public and private lakes are on the top of our list this time of year, as are the Paradise Valley Spring Creeks. If you're up for the drive, don't forget about the Bighorn or the Missouri either, they are both fishing very well right now. Sitz Ranch
photo: Derek DeYoung With the Yellowstone getting into runoff mode, I start to focus on fishing lakes for May and June. Brady, Derek and myself went over to Sitz ranch hoping to get into some fat lake fish. Sitz ranch, just north of Norris, has 4 lakes that offer some great fishing for some of the heftiest fish around. We got into fish right away on the middle ponds, fishing big lake midge pupa and scuds. The water was covered with midge shucks and with little to no wind, you can take some of these fish on dries. We saw many large fish cruising around in the shallows slurping midges, a lot of these fish would do big head and tail rises which was really cool, you could tell that these fish were really big! The rig that worked best during the day was a big midge pupa with a scud off of the back under an indicator. The same rig also worked well with a slime line and a slow hand over hand retrieve with some pauses in there. All of the fish were in unbelievable shape, you would be hard pressed to find fatter stronger fish anywhere. These footballs fight hard and jump and will rip a bunch of line off of your reel! There are so many scuds and midges in these lakes, the fish just get huge grazing on them. Give us a call at the shop (406-222-7130) and we can get you set up to fish this wonderful fishery. Also feel free to check out our Sitz Ranch page for more photos.
photo: Derek DeYoung 5/8
Snowpack levels have been decreasing slowly, which will be the key to a smooth runoff. With much of the lower elevation snow melted and down stream, we should safe from sandbagging any banks this year. Looks like we should have plenty of water for hopper season this year. Also, since we haven't had a real harsh freeze this spring, we should have an awesome hopper year.
5/9
CFS on the Stone has looks like a bull market for a while - too bad the DOW doesn't look like this. Streamer fishing is really your only option on the stone right now. The good news is that the fish won't see you. The bad news is you're going to have to get your fly hit them in the head in order for them to see it. Usually the Stone is a swing and a miss with streamers in the mud, but every now and then you can hit a homer. I like to fish the confluences of the tribs right now. Since the stone is muddier than many of the tribs, you'll often find fish hanging out close to the seam of the clearer water. But with the way gas prices are, unless you live in Livingston you're better off fishing the Madison.
The caddis on the lower Madison have already started to pop - the only potential problem is that they bumped the CFS up to 1710. Usually the bite is off on days when the river fluctuates drastically like this, but as the flows become more steady, the fish settle down again and think about eating. The streamer fishing should be decent this weekend and by early next week the caddis hatch should be thick with fish chomping at dries and pupa droppers.
5/10
The river dropped quite a bit in town but the clarity is still only about an inch. We seen the occasional rise here and there, but the fish just aren't that active. The river is definitely not worth missing out on your kid's t-ball game... 5/12
The Yellowstone has about a foot of visibility, the caddis are on the water, and the fish are keyed in on them... I saw about 75 solid eats last night. There were a ton of midges out as well as a few baetis, but the fish were really focused on the caddis. Ironically I was equipped with my 8 weight Native Run with a 330 grain Rio Outbound line - not the ideal combo for rising trout. I managed to land a couple fish on streamers, but for the most part I was just putting the rising fish down. I tried a sparkle pupa for a while (which was hard to tie on with 1X), but went back to streamers. Should be good tomorrow...
5/13
Hank Bechard with a nice brown. Hi-Vis Elk hair was in full effect! The Yellowstone was red hot tonight. I can't really imagine it being any better - the bugs were there, the fish were hungry, and our dries were working. As soon as we put it we were into fish. I started off with a Hemingway Caddis, but totally lost visual contact with it - there were just too many caddis on the water to tell which one was mine. Luckily Hank had a couple extra Hi-Vis caddis for me otherwise I would have been striking to any rise west of the Mississippi. A few droppers worked really well for us: the Butch Caddis, the Goddard, the Hemingway... surprisingly enough, the emergers weren't as good as the dries. The caddis were thick all night and stayed on the water until about 8:30 - 9:00PM. After that, they moved onto the rocks and into the bushes.
What an incredible night. I can still play several of those quick turn rainbow takes in my mind... A couple caddis dries bouncing off the cliff, floating high just inches away from the rock, just waiting for a trout to rip into it like tiger. We saw some incredible head shakes; the fish were in incredible shape. We got a grand slam in the boat that night: Browns, rainbows, a cutthroat, and a whitefish. Getting a dead drift was very key, as was dry shaking your flies after they started to sink a bit. Any high riding freshly dry shaked flies we threw at them without drag got smacked like a wine bottle rolling through a jail cell. Perhaps the best part about the night was that we didn't see another boat. I wouldn't be surprised if we were the first boat down the section all day...
Looking back over the hatch this year, May 13th was probably our best evening of fishing dries. The 14th and 15th easily took second place, and the the 4th and 5th a distant third. As always, some of our biggest fish during the caddis hatch didn't even come from the Yellowstone, but private lakes when the Yellowstone was too muddy...
5/14
Since the day started off kind of cold and drizzly, I was glad to see the caddis were still out and about. I didn't see nearly as many caddis in the air, but they were covering the rocks and sticks at my feet in front of the river. As soon as I tied on a fly I was in the midst of a feeding frenzy. The pod was packed with 8-10 rainbows with a few ones mixed in the pack. The fish were absolutely boiling, but my hook up rate was horrendous.. a lowly 24% (I landed 8 fish out of 33 eats or fish on that night).
The wind and rain began to pick up and that put down the fish for a while, but the caddis came back and the fish were up again. My biggest fish of the night ate a size 16 Butch Caddis dropper which hadn't been dry shaked in a while - in other words it preferred to hover about 6 inches under the surface. It didn't matter, as long as the drift was there and your top fly was riding high you were in the game. Hi-Vis got plenty of action that night too...
About 8:30pm everything started to shut off. I clipped back my leader a few knots into the 1X and tied on a Creamsickle. I didn't cut the tail this time, I figure if a fish wants it, he's going to go get it. The action of the fly looked unbelievable in the water - I don't think I'll be cutting those for the short strike anymore. Just as I was admiring the jiggle in the bunny fur a nice brown came up and rolled over, and half flicked his tail at me as if to say, "I see you mother $@^&*! " He never came back.
Hopefully the river will stay clear enough through Saturday. My guess is that Thursday, and Friday will be lights out, and the weekend is still up in the air. If the mud gets too thick, we'll be headed towards the lower Madison. Keep checking this page to for updates or just give us a ring... 406-222-7130.
5/15
The river was top drawer to night... Plenty of visibility, caddis everywhere, and the trout were boiling. I had a TU meeting that night, but Doug ripped 'em up. He said right at the boat ramp he caught a few rocket rainbows that tail fluttered high into the air, jump after jump. He was just wade fishing that night, and walked his way into a nice side channel with a little current against the rocks. The side channel was completely peppered with fish. He caught a handful of nice browns on dries and missed a really big one. The big guy was rising slow and steady, and just as he was ready to inhale the dry, he felt the tippet strike and spooked. It was really windy and eventually the caddis started hugging the rocks and moved off the water. Doug tied on one of his home invaders and went to work. upon first cast up stream next to the big boulders there was a hell of a whomp. $%^&! Second cast, a little higher at the head of the run... bamb! Another miss... Doug went 2 for 10 on streamers as he walked back down to his rig, all of which felt like solid fish...
5/16
We had our first slow evening after 5 nights of lights out fishing. We floated 89 to Sheep, hoping took hook a couple toads. We were successful in the hooking part - but the landing part was not as good. Jordan and I both had nice rainbows come up and gulp our caddis dries, unfortunately mine gave a viscous head shake, and upon closer inspection Jordan had lost the tip of his hook! It was amazing that he got the fish in as far as he did... We had a couple other eats, including a good tug on a green and white Home Invader.
There were plenty of caddis in the air and the visibility was about a foot. I think the biggest difference was that there weren't a lot of caddis on the water and there were very few risers in comparison to the previous nights. Also this was the first night when we saw numerous sticks and logs floating down - a good sign that the river is up and in full runoff. Looks like it is time to head over to the Madison!
5/17
Along the lines of Chaucer, one thing's for sure: All good things must come to an end. The good news is that we have perfect timing is perfect - the bugs on the lower Madison have been going strong and the fish have been eating them. The bad news is that it might be hard to see the caddis on the water with all those Clackas and Hydes in the way... 5/18
If you like to fish lakes, now is one of the best times to get out there. We went to Burn's Lake on Sunday and tore 'em up, despite the vicious wind. The forecast was calling it 27-30 mph winds from the west with gusts up to 48. It was quite an ordeal getting to the other side of the lake, but once we were over there, we caught a pile of nice fish. They were eating the black lead eyes, white tungsten coneheads, multi-colored buggers, leech patterns (black and maroon), plus scuds, callibaetis nymphs, and crayfish patterns.
A couple times during the day the wind was so bad that it pinned us against the reeds and wouldn't give up. After an adult beverage or two the wind calmed down and we'd get row over to the other side. Butch caught a bunch of nice rainbows, but Tom was on fire. Not only did he catch his first fish on fly, but he also caught his first Brook Trout and first Cutthroat. He got the hang of things quickly and the next thing you know, Butch was asking Tom what fly he was fishing with! It was one of the slowest days I've had on Burn's, but we still ended up with over 20 fish (and a turtle) in the boat - a lot better than we would have done on the Yellowstone that day.
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1st fish ever on a fly!
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3 kinds of bugs (March Browns, baetis, & midges) but no caddis!
