Madison River
Dam: 1,270 cfs
Kirby: 1,360 cfs
Varney: 1,500 cfs
It’s been more of the same on the Upper Madison these days….great mornings and evenings, and much tougher afternoons. The dry fly bite has been good to excellent from O-Dark-30 until 11:00 a.m., and we’ve been doing best on Nocturnal stones, PMD Cripples, rusty spinners, and small parachutes in the #16-18 range. The streamer bite has been incredible during this time period as well, so make sure to bring some olive peanut envys, barely legals, and double screamers along with you if you plan on getting on the water early. The mid-afternoon action on top has been decent at best with small hoppers and ants, but most of the fish we are finding during this time period are in the deepest, coldest water they can find, so you’ll definitely have a better chance of racking up numbers by putting on the indicator after 12:30 or so. Some of our best nymphs these days have been $3 dips, hare’s ears, and small attractors like copper johns and lightning bugs. There have also been a few spruce moths hitting the water below Lyon’s Bridge, but nothing like we’ve seen over the past three or four years…it may be taking a little longer than usual to get going, or there wont’ be quite the hatch you’ve come to expect in years past.
