Madison River
Dam: 3,100 cfs
Kirby: 3,680 cfs
Varney 4,900 cfs
As promised, PPL began raising the flows out of Hebgen on Friday evening and it finally hit 3,000 cfs this morning. I would guess that they probably won’t be raising it too much more since they are trying to keep the gauge at Kirby below 4,000 cfs. We had some guide trips on the wade section over the last few days, and the reports have actually been quite good. When its been overcast, rubberlegs and other stonefly imitations have been taking some good fish, but the red san juan worm seems to be fly numero uno since yesterday…this makes a lot of sense since the fish are probably seeing more and more get flushed from the soil as water levels continue to rise. Smaller droppers such as red crystal serendipitys, red copper johns, and purple lighting bugs continue to hold their own as well. Water clarity seems to holding at around 14 in. of visibility, and it should only get better with all the clean water being pumped out of Hebgen. Streamer fishing continues to produce some really nice fish, and we’ve been doing best on the black and olive sex dungeons, and olive/black double screamers. One thing to keep in mind is that over the last two days we’ve found most of the streamer eats we’ve had have been primarily along the banks and not as much in the deeper slots behind boulders and reflectors.
