​Be sure to check out Hooked Outfitting, Melissa Harrison and Seasonal Montana on the most recent Episode of the The Movable Feast with Fine Cooking.  We fly fish the Madison River and Melissa and Seasonal host a farm dinner at Willow Springs Ranch near Bozeman, Montana.  The farm dinners are great summer events and Melissa has them on a variety of local farms thoughout each summer.  It can be a really fun evening event to add to a Montana fishing trip.  All the food comes from the local area and the farm that hosts the dinner.

Salmon flies are long gone but the upper Madison river south of Ennis Montana is still fishing really well.  We have even had some cooler days and much cooler nights to keep the water from getting to hot for trout comfort.  Just a few days ago we had a fresh layer of snow in the mountains. The weather has been cool enough that later morning starts have produced better fishing than our typical early July fishing days.  The water is plenty cool and there are still lots of bugs around.  PMDs, caddis and some stone flies are all still abundant and the trout are still eating really well.  Numbers are good, dry fly fishing has been good on the cloudy days and there are plenty of big fish coming to the net.  

People have been asking about river closures.  The hot weather in late June and early July produced "Hoot Owl" (2pm-midnight) closures on some sections of our local rivers like the lower Ruby, the lower Gallatin, the Jefferson and sections of the Big Hole river.  The Lower Madison river was among the restricted rivers.  However, this section of the Madison river is below Ennis Lake and is not part of our normal summer program due to its warmer water temperatures.  The upper Madison river south of Ennis is what most people are fishing and floating during the summer.  This upper section of the Madison above Ennis lake should not see any closures as it is fed by cooler water from Hebgan lake.  Cool water temperatures have kept it fishing really well since mid June.  Conditions look good and we should have plenty more good fishing to come!

​The Madison River near Ennis is in full spring fishing mode.  There have been great fishing reports and some tough days on the Madison.  The entire river is open to fishing this year for the first time in awhile.  Consequently, the boats are spread from Lyons Bridge all the way down to Ennis Lake rather than being piled together in the Varney section. When the water conditions have been favorable, the Madison River fishing reports have been great.  However, in the past week, some warmer days followed by some rainy weather have created a little volatility in the fishing conditions.  There are still some good days to be had but there have been some tough ones as well.  Rising water is just not great news for anglers.  Some of the lower level snow is melting off and combining with spring rains to bring the river up a bit.  Right now the flow at Varney Bridge is at 1,760 CFS which is a pretty significant increase.  As flows stabilize and begin to fall we should see some of that easy spring catching again.  Nymphs and streamers have been the big producers so far but dry fly action is not far away.

Warming water temperatures also mean increased bug activity and there are definitely some blue winged olives around on the upper Madison River.  The lower Madison river should start to see some Mother's Day caddis activity soon.  If this hatch is anything like last year it will be a lot of fun.  The Mother's Day hatch on the Madison usually produces huge numbers of bugs and when the temperatures and water conditions are right, the fish can really feed hard on them.  However, the quality of spring fishing on the Madison is determined by weather and water conditions. The caddis hatch can produce incredible dry fly action for weeks or we could end up having better conditions for throwing streamers than dries.  ​May can produce some really fun days of fishing on both streamers and dry flies so I am excited to see what we get into as the water conditions get good again.  Even if conditions on the Madison are tough, the spring fishing at the Land of the Giants on the Missouri has been awesome and it has very stable water conditions throughout the year.  The LOG should have incredible fishing for the next few months. 

We are easing into fishing season in western Montana and plenty of people have been out catching them on the local trout streams.  There has even been quite a lot of unseasonably warm weather to make the conditions good for spring fishing.  We are running out of time to build the mountain snowpack.  There is a little more snow producing time left but I am starting to feel like we can make some good predictions about how the 2016 snowpack is going impact the summer river conditions.  As of now, most of southwest Montana is still sitting just about at normal average snowpack.  That is great news!  Average snowpack on most of the area rivers usually produces good and predictable fishing conditions across the region.  It keeps pressure spread out across a lot of rivers and keeps everyone on good fishing.  On an average year we normally have a pretty minor week or two of runoff here on the Madison River and it usually hits around the last week of May or fist week of June.  However, the timing and duration are mostly based on weather conditions so it can be a little unpredictable.  Overall, it looks like we are headed for all-around good floating and fishing conditions for 2016!

 A recent article by the Madisonian news paper in Ennis, Montana, reported near normal and and above normal snowpack for the Madison River drainage and southwest Montana overall.  I thought it worth while to take this prompt to break down the current state of our 2016 southwest Montana snowpack and look at how it is likely to impact the 2016 summer Montana and Madison river fly fishing season.  

The map below shows that we are currently holding at about 91% of average snowpack Madison River drainage and that the greater part of southwest Montana has accumulated near average snowpack. That is not to say that we have reached 91% of the snow fall that we typically see on an average year. Rather, we are at 91% of what the average snowpack on February 11th looks like.  However, we still have several more months that can produce large amounts of snow in the mountains and while it may not snow much in June, it can be one of our biggest months in terms of precipitation, which can have a big impact on spring runoff. 

What does this mean for fishing in Montana?  It is still too early to tell.  The next few months could produce record snowfall, which would likely create a heavy and extended spring runoff.  Likewise, if the weather dries up and heats up (like last year) we could still be in for some great spring water conditions for fishing, which would likely be followed by warmer and lower flows in the mid-late summer.  For now, we are right around average and thats probably a good thing.  On an average year we will have good spring fishing conditions until late May and early June when we experience runoff and then good conditions throughout the rest of the season (as long as it does not get too hot in August).  More snow always seems to be better for the rivers and fish.  It is much better to have heavy flows and cooler water.  This might create a little longer runoff but the rest of the summer will usually fish much better as a result.  I will take all the snow that we can get!