Madison River Fishing Report for May 17th, 2022
5/23 Flow & Clarity Update
The Upper Madison is still running clear in the wade stretch between Quake and Lyons and the float stretch is running with just a tinge of green below Palisdades. Flows out of Hebgen dropped to 405 cfs as of yesterday as Northwestern Energy is making sure they can fill Hebgen Lake by the end of June. Flows at the Kirby gauge are 619 cfs and Varney is running at 795 cfs. We expect the clarity to get worse from Lyon’s down to Ennis with the warm weather in the forecast on Wednesday and Thursday, which should get the West Fork of the Madison running brown again.
Dam: 640 cfs
Kirby: 886 cfs
Varney: 1,160 cfs
The Upper Madison has been fishing well this week, and the cooler temperatures have kept the creeks low and clear up until last night. The river is still running clear from the Slide Area down to Pine Butte, but the West Fork is putting in a good stripe of mud down the center of the river and Cabin and Beaver Creeks have started to put a lot of dirty water into Quake Lake. Our guess is that Quake will start to get more brown-olive in color in the next week or so. If you are looking to float the river, the mud starts to mix evenly between Palisades and Ruby and there was approximately 8″ of visibility in Ennis this morning. There is a good possibility that the cold front coming in on Thursday could slow things down a little bit, but I think it’s safe to say that the first stages of Spring runoff have started on the Upper Madison.
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