Madison River

Dam: 963 cfs

Kirby: 1,670 cfs and falling

Flows have been dropping as quickly as the river went up just a few weeks ago.  Only four days prior they were letting 1,580 cfs out of the dam, and about two hours ago they  dropped it to 963 cfs.  This will do a couple of things:  First, with less clear water coming out of the dam it should take a little longer for the upper river to clear.  Second, the reduced flows will help the water warm up a lot quicker than we anticipated, so we should start to see good numbers of caddis popping later in the week.  The river is still running with a greenish tinge, but the nymphing and streamer fishing have been good to excellent depending on the day.  Because of the reduced visibility, the float section has been pretty hit or miss when drifting straight through–the best plan seems to be hopping out from time to time in order to cover every inch of fishable holding water.  We’ve been picking up most of our fish on brown and black rubber legs trailing a yellow sally nymph, caddis larva, midge, or small attractor pattern, although San Juans have definitely held their own on some days.  Streamers have also been good, and olive seems to be the best color at the moment.

Madison River

Dam: 1,390 cfs

Kirby: 2,280 cfs

Another letter from PPL:

A flow change was made at Hebgen today about 1:00 PM. The flows were reduced from about 1610 cfs to about 1400 cfs. This adjustment plus the rain should bring the project up to full pool over the next few days. Hebgen Lake is at elevation 6534.48 ft which is 0.39 ft from full. Inflows are estimated to be about 1600 cfs.

The falling water and increased visibility must have flipped a switch because the nymph fishing on the Upper Madison has been great over the last few days.  Anytime you find soft water, whether it be along the banks or in slicks behind boulders, you’ll find fish–it’s as simple as that. We say this a lot, but it’s very important to spend your time fishing productive looking water and skipping over the stretches that are just too fast to hold fish this time of year.  Right now we’ve been doing best dropping red midge patterns like snow cones and dips off the back of brown rubberlegs.  If that doesn’t seem to be working, try throwing some larger attractors like Princes and squirrel nymphs and you should have some luck.  The stretch between the lakes has been fish really well too, but there have been a lot of people up there.  Cabin Creek is still pumping in mud, so most anglers have been concentrating on the areas above the Campfire, and seem to be doing best throwing small midges and baetis nymphs in the likely spots.  We also heard through the proverbial grapevine that some big bugs were flying around Bear Trap Canyon yesterday, but that is yet to be confirmed.  We’ll keep you updated on conditions in the days to come.