Hebgen Dam: 944 cfs
Kirby: 1,150 cfs
Varney: 1,600 cfs
The Upper Madison is in its prime, and the entire river is exploding with bug activity. Right now you can find tons of Caddis, PMDs, Yellow Sallies, Flavs, Epeorus, and Green Drakes scattered just about everywhere and we still have lots of golden stones and salmonflies hatching in the upper and middle sections. It’s been busy, but there are more than enough fish to keep everyone happy and we finally started to get caddis activity in the wade stretches between the shop and Three Dollar Bridge over the last several days. With that said, our dry fly season is nearing its peak and river flows are just about perfect, so you could do a lot worse than spend a day or two on the Upper Madison in the not so distant future.
We have been getting tons of calls inquiring as to the specific whereabouts of salmonflies over the last week. As of today they have moved up to Three Dollar Bridge and can be found as far downstream as McAtee with a few small pockets hanging on between Mac and Varney. We still feel like the heart of the hatch is between Lyons and Ruby Creek and it won’t be long until we start seeing them between the shop and Raynolds. This year has been strange in terms of fishing with the big bug….some days it’s all about the early morning bite and on others it can be late morning, early afternoon, and evening. It’s a little confusing to say the least, but the most consistent action is usually in the evening hours as long as the weather cooperates. If you can’t get them to look at the big stone, try scaling back to a golden and drop a smaller dry off the back. It’s more difficult to get tight to the bank with a dropper but you can pick up more fish on the caddis, PMD, or Sally if you work the boulder slicks and gravel bars.
If things just aren’t clicking with the big dry, you can get it done very easily with smaller dry flies right now. Some of our most productive patterns have been Tan and Olive X-Caddis, Tan and Olive Corn Fed Caddis, Missing Link Caddis, Yellow Stimis, Purple Hazes, PMD Cripples, Natural and PMD Found Links, and Royal Micro Chubbies.
If Nymphing is more your style than you shouldn’t have any issues getting into a pile of fish out there. Tung Rednecks, Caddis Larva, PMD Emergers, CDC Princes, Tung Yellow Hot Spots, Pat’s Rubber Legs, Dips, and yellow sally nymphs are all good choices…just make sure to keep changing up your patterns until you crack the code as there are a lot of options on the menu as of late.
