Here we sit in early June with the biggest question of all … When will the rivers in Montana be fishable? While this is not a question that can be answered easily, with what has been happening around here lately, I can hopefully say sooner than later.
We have two types of rivers in our area: Freestones and tailwaters. For those of you who may not know the difference, freestone rivers are not controlled by a dam like tailwaters. In our immediate area, rivers such as the Gallatin River and the Yellowstone River are freestone rivers and the Upper and Lower Madison and Missouri are tailwaters.
As of today, June 10th 2009, many of our tailwater rivers are beginning to fish very well. We have had recent guide trips to both the Upper and Lower Madison rivers in which the fishing has been very good and the flows are beginning to fall. Does this mean the rivers are clear and runoff is over? Not exactly. While these tailwaters have the majority of their flows controlled by dams, they also have tributaries which will add water, and sometimes dirty water, to their flows. For instance, the Upper Madison is currently very fishable but still has a bit of color in it. The color comes from several small tributaries that dump into the river at various points with the most prominent being the West Fork of the Madison. The West Fork is a small stream that is not dam controlled and is affected by spring snow melt and rain and can cause almost the entire floatable stretches of the Upper Madison to get dirty. Currently, the West Fork is still dumping in a bit of off color water, but once it mixes with the rest of the river, the visibility improves and it is fishable.
As for the Lower Madison, it is also beginning to fish very well. We have had guided trips on it almost every day for the past week or so and the visibility is beginning to improve each day. We are also starting to see a few Pale Morning Duns on the surface of the water making for some great nymph fishing with small PMD emergers. For now, it looks like the powers that be are trying to fill Hebgen Dam so they have actually dropped the flows on the Lower Madison making it not only great for float fishing, but also good for wade fishing. This is a great option for now and I don’t see much changing on it for the next couple of weeks.
Now on to the freestone rivers. In our area, we are mostly talking about the Gallatin and the Yellowstone. The Yellowstone looks like it may have peaked sometime last week at around 21000 cfs (cubic feet per second). Since that time, it has continued to drop at a fairly rapid rate down to about 13000 cfs today. While it has been cold and I think that it may come back up again if we get warm weather here soon, I think that the bulk of the big runoff may be over and although our first guesses as to when we might be fishing on it were well into July, our new gut feeling is that we may be on it closer to the beginning of July if not late June. For now, it is still pretty high to safely float it and it will still have that big “heaving” feel to it. Once it gets down below 9000 to 10000 cfs, it is still big, but we begin to take a look at clarity. If the clarity is more than a foot or so, we start to get the itch to head over there. Hopefully, this is sooner than we think.
The Gallatin has a little different story. It is a freestone river as well, but the bulk of the dirty water in the Gallatin is typically caused by a tributary called the Taylor’s Fork. The Taylor’s Fork is very affected by both spring snow melt and rain. Both can cause that river to become very dirty and in turn, make the rest of the Gallatin dirty and unfishable. The Taylor’s Fork is, for now, the main culprit making the Gallatin dirty and seem unfishable. I say that hesitantly becuase while the river is off color, there are a few brave soles fishing some of the back eddies and slower runs and catching some fish, and typically nice fish during this high water. That fishing can only be described as down and dirty, but is effective. Like the Yellowstone, I feel the Gallatin has peaked as well, but on a river that is 99% wade fishing, we’ll have to wait a bit longer to be able to wade safely on this one.
Above the Taylor’s Fork on the Gallatin is a little different story. Most of this fishing here is done inside of Yellowstone National Park with the exception of about a mile between the Park boundary and the Taylor’s Fork. For now, this stretch has cleaned up nicely boasting about 2 feet of visibility with only a little color left in the river. I would call this water very fishable today and in fact, we have had several good reports from anglers up in that stretch having great nymph fishing. The river is still up and wading is not easy, but since the river has less volume up there, it is a little easier to get around. This is a great option for a nymph fisherman looking for great scenery and no people.
Back to the “big question” of when will things clear up and be fishable? Hopefully I have answered that with some degree of certainty. For now, there are several places to fish and in the coming weeks, there will be many more. A great place to keep track of our fishing conditions in the Bozeman and surrounding area is our fishing report. At The River’s Edge we always try to keep it up to date and keep you informed and if you don’t find the information on our site, give us a call.
