With June coming up quick, it's time for a Montana fishing report and short range forecast for you, our fishy friends. May has brought us some great moisture this year, with lots of rainy days and relatively cool temperatures which has helped to preserve our snowpack and fill the reservoirs that feed our tailwater rivers. Things are looking quite a bit better for our summer flows and fishing than they were a few weeks ago - keep it coming Mother Nature!
Current fishing is of course specific to the river you want to be on, but generally we are in moderately high water levels, but not so high as to keep a guy off his favorite freestone river or creek, and most of the fish are feeding well below the surface. For productivity you'll have to embrace the bobber and break out the big bugs - remember, there is a lot of food in off color water and this is when trout will stuff themselves full of worms and other dirty water delectables.
Don't give up on the dry fly game though, and if you look hard enough in the right spots you may find some good ones; the brown trout above ate a fluffy caddis fly after we spotted him on a soft bank below an overhanging tree a couple days ago. Island channels and back eddies are the other obvious hangouts for trout that want to eat a caddis or early stonefly for you.
Stay up speed on river flows here, and get excited for the trout explosion and dry bonanza that will be coming along in a few short weeks across the Big Sky state as the pmds, caddis, salmonflies and all sorts of other river insects emerge as our rivers come out of run-off and into the primetime summer season.
Enjoy your holiday weekend, remember who we're honoring, and put a trout or two on your to-do list.
