Madison River
Dam: 1,120 cfs
Kirby: 1,290 cfs
Varney: 1,640 cfs
The Upper Madison continues to fish very well these days, and although the dry fly fishing isn’t quite as good as the three week extravaganza we had from late June on, fish are still looking up and the nymph fishing has been very consistent. Small dries are the name of the game right now until we have our nocturnal stones show up in the float section (hoppers won’t be far behind either), and a variety of PMD, Flav, and hare’s ear parachutes have been taking some nice fish throughout the Upper River. We are still seeing tons of caddis in the wade section, but the morning swarms we were seeing as little as a week ago in the float section seem to have slowed down a little bit; however, you will still find plenty of egg layers in the evening and fish looking for them–On the tougher evenings, diving caddis dropped below a larger elk hair or X-caddis have been the answer. We’ve also had a lot of cloud cover over the last week, and the numbers of Epeorus that have been coming off throughout the day have been very impressive. When fish haven’t been looking up for them, we’ve been doing best on soft hackles and PMD Barr’s Emergers a foot or two off the bottom.
