Madison River
Dam: 705 cfs
Kirby: 1,020 cfs
Varney: 1,610 cfs
The nymphing and streamer fishing on the Upper Madison has been very productive over the last week and the dry fly activity should start to get a little better with each passing day. We are still doing best on a variety of different nymph patterns such as Brown and Olive/Brown Pat’s Rubber Legs, green caddis larva, olive hares ears, red dips, purple lightning bugs (still!), pearl and olive zonkers, and yellow sally nymphs. Some days it doesn’t seem to matter what you throw as long as you are concentrating on the right type of water and getting a good drift. Speaking of which, you might want to start fishing a little more like you would be in mid July rather than late June…we are finding a lot more fish taking refuge out on the faster slots and seams rather than the usual holding areas for this time of year.
The river is still in great shape, and running with a slight green tinge above the West Fork. Definitely not what we were expecting to see given the 130% snowpack we received in the Madison Range, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. The streamer fishing in both the wade and float sections has slowed down a little bit from the crazy two weeks we had earlier in the month, but it is still well worth your time out there. Peanut Envys, double screamers and sex dungeons have been our top patterns over the last four or five days, and yellow dungeon hatch has been awesome when the sun is on the water.
With the flows dropping a little more every day and water temperatures creeping up into the high fifties, we should start to see the big bugs popping in mass any day no– We got word last night that a decent number of adults were buzzing down low so if you like throwing giant stoneflies I would start heading down towards Ennis right about……… now.
