We have been kind of all over the map the last couple of weeks. Missouri near Craig back to Rock Creek, upper Bitterroot to the Blackfoot, and mid Bitterroot while taking a daring shot at the Mighty Clark Fork west of Missoula. Most of our rivers are substantially higher than normal historic flow for this time frame. The fishing has been good at times, tough at times, and unpredictable a lot of the time!
Rock Creek : flows today are around 1500 cfs, goldens, caddis, pmd’s, dropper fishing is solid and the bugs are all over the creek. I like the water from Eudaley’s Bridge to the Dalles if I had to pick where to be up there. It has been weird up there with rain events but it looks great today with only a couple of floating days available there.
Blackfoot: the flows are great there, there was a rain event with mud coming out of Monture creek and some other tribs but it is fishable. I guided the Blackfoot yesterday, we floated the canyon with a bunch of boats in front of us. We kinda fished slow and had windows of fair dry fly eats on salmon flies and goldens. In skinny water near bushes or shade you’d get bit enough to make it interesting. There were some small goldens and caddis popping and we fished a single small golden with limited success. Dropper fishing was fair with a few bigger fish eating the dropper, copper johns, stone nymphs, caddis pupu, and the SJ worm of course.
Bitterroot river rainbow trout
Bitterroot: The CFS at Darby today is still 2930, the water temps came up real quick so the fish are kinda feeding in intervals. The Root for me anyway has been weird, ok one day, and real tough the next, especially if it is bright sun. The flows are pretty high still and a lot of fish aren’t getting to bugs. The east and west forks have some big bugs and soft water on the insides is the most rewarding for bent rods. My son and I floated Darby water 3 days ago and the streamer fishing was pretty solid. Goldens, turds and worms, caddis, some PMD stuff here and there. If you want to double nymph seams and slower swirlies coming from shallow water, its rewarding.
Missouri: I haven’t been on the Mo for about 8 days. When I was there it was the typical sow bug #14, pmd/ split case or skinny pheasant tails. The flows were getting jacked up and down by the dam knob twisters so it was good one day, and hard the next. I did find some real nice bows and browns sipping PMD spinners and we stuck a few real toads, but I need to get back on the MO. Wolf Creek Anglers, Headhunters, Trout Shop, and Cross Currents are great resources for up to date fishing reports, flies, shuttles, gear and some food if you are in need of MO info.
Clark Fork: It’s flowing 13000 cfs, The flows were 17000 cfs below Missoula a few of days ago and I took a shot at it. It was too big to find trout in most spots in the section I was on. Deep nymph rigs worked with stone fly, czechs, and sj worms picking up some big fish. It got cloudy and we had a real nice hatch of pmds the fish got happy and we stuck about 5 real nice rainbows sipping the dunn! This river has dropped a lot in 4 days so I bet it’s fishing well today, especially with clouds.