Missoula Montana Fly Fishing-Ice, Ice, Baby!

This is so AWESOME!

   Missouri River fly fishing has been sick! Think pink! Find the slow water and fish deep-ish. The weather over there is tropical and it would be a great time to scratch the itch.  You can fish from the dam to Prewett with no trouble.  There are some ramp-ice issues at Pelican. Small, darker streamers fished slowly should turn out some fish, too. GO!

   The Clark Fork and Bitterroot have been decent, but it's still winter- see blow info.  Small stone nymphs, sj worms, princes-You know, the usual stuff. We haven't been on the 'root, but we've heard some stuff.  It's great that for the next month, while the water is super low, it will be getting pounded by bobber-jockeys. That should really help the dry fly fishing later on. Watch out for soft ground at some of the Bitterroot accesses. It's so sad when those Tundras get bogged down to their axles. The good news is that you can Gopro/Youtube the tow truck extraction, with some catchy music and cute captions.  Hooray for Tundras and film festivals.  They've given the angling world so much!

I guess I might have a touch of cabin fever.  

 From our perspective, 2014 was a great year for fly fishing in Montana. We had strong flows and beautiful hatches that carried us through. So far, the snowpack in our most important drainages appear to be well above normal. I really don't think we'll have any water issues in 2015. That's good. It's gonna be a great year, again! If you haven't booked your spring dates, you'd better get on it! Our early booking specials end this month.

   

There has been a little fishing on the Clark Fork and Bitterroot rivers, but it is day by day, and it's really cold. If you can find a day without flowing slush-ice, you might do well with small princes, Zebra midge/blood midge #18, S.J. worm #12/14. 

   The Missouri would be a good play right now, too. Fish anything pink; amex, czech, scud in #14/16/18. Look to the slack water.  Mess around with rig length, current speed, etc. It's the Mo'. It ain't rocket science. 

   Rock Creek is pretty locked up, but given some warmer weather it'll get going. The pink or red worm is the ticket. Fish a shorter rig in deep slow stuff.  In another month look toward the skwala nymph patterns to get the job done. For current Rock Creek conditions talk to Deb at Trout Bums-406-825-6146. She'll have the low-down on road conditions, flies to use and asst. fishing info.

www.flyfishmissoula.com