This time of year the daily morning coffee routine requires a quick examination into the Internet side of the fly fishing world. Blogs, social media outlets, the weather forecast, and most importantly snow pack all have special tabs for quick access on the browser during the winter season. In reality, checking the snow pack on a daily basis isn’t something that demands our attentive observation every morning, but the desire for a great water year is enticing enough and it keeps our anticipation levels high for the season to come.
It’s almost as though checking in frequently will somehow contribute toward the positive outcome of our weather pattern, even though we all know it’s completely out of our control. Luckily, as of now we are looking great in the northern Rockies and most of our watersheds in Montana are well over the 130% mark. The green and blue colors on the image to the right are what we like to see for good summer streamflows and with more snow on the way this week it will only get better. This is all great news and bodes well for the fishing season ahead.
It is also important to remember that although Mother Nature has been gracious to us this winter in Montana, we are still only part way though our snow year and it’s still too early to be sure of how exactly it will effect our fishing season. For now everything looks fantastic, but we still need cooler early spring temps to hold the higher elevation snow as well as a good rain period in May and June.
The best thing to do in the meantime is keep our fingers crossed for continuing optimistic conditions and finish up that cup of coffee early. It’s time to strap on the skis or snowshoes and make fresh tracks in this abundance of frozen fluffy water the trout will be using later in the summer.
