I’m way behind on my fly fishing journal entries, so I’ll try to catch up by lumping together a group of trips from late March.
It’s been a really crazy spring. I mean, spring always brings a healthy dose of rain, wind and snow to this part of the country, but this year has been insane. Aside from a few short warmups, things were unseasonably cold all spring. We were 2-3 weeks behind on stream temperatures and bug hatches, and then we got the rain of rains. More on that later.
So rather than a nice progression from nymph fishing to midge hatches to baetis mayflies, to March brown mayflies, to an explosive caddis fly hatch, we’ve been stuck with midges all spring. Even in the short spurts of mayfly and caddis fly hatches, fish still seemed to prefer midges.
I had one incredible afternoon of fishing with both dry midges (size 18-20) and midge larvae in a snowstorm. The next day I got fish on midges again, and had my only afternoon of the spring with a steady baetis hatch that had the fish cooperating. It was nice….while it lasted.
I saw fish rising to March browns on the river one day while I was working, and couldn’t find a reliable hatch though I tried for the entire next week.
I threw in a few more days of fishing here and there where the only thing the fish were interested in was nymphs. The cold, wet spring only had me more excited for the week of vacation I had planned with my friend who was coming in from Maine. Boy would I be surprised with what the weather had in store for that week!
Spring in Montana……what are you gonna do?
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