Missoula Fly Fishing Reports-I lost my razor last September

BITTERROOT RIVER REPORT: There have been a few skwalas out. Our guides had good dry fly fishing last week. The river bumped a few days ago and the dry fly bite took a hit. The boats are very cloggy in the middle reaches. If you go: Try fishing somewhere besides Bell to Stevensville. I talked to the local biologist and he said that there are fish in the entire river. We looked into it and it's true. 

CLARK FORK RIVER REPORT:We had some decent fishing this week. The dries were working and then it came up and went off color. My suspicion is that the rains will knock everything out for a bit. If you find midgers they will eat the skwala.  Try brown buggers, 12/14 princes, skwalas, zebra droppers. We just can't      

bring ourselves to tie on the SJ worm. Nope.

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Missoula Fly Fishing Report-Boaty! Boaty! Boaty!

So at about 10 this morning I pulled into an access on the Bitterroot River. I gotta tell you, it was nothing short of disturbing. There were about 9 in, and another 4 on the deck. What in the world possesses someone to go ahead and put their boat in after they KNOW that there are already a dozen in?  Best of luck, compadre.
   So the skwalas have made a decent attempt at an emergence. There have been a few here and there, but these damn cold H2O night temps have kept this whole thing at bay. Doesn't really matter; the masses have descended. Everyone is hoping that the bite will be "sick" and that the oodles of knuckleheads plowing the water won't matter.
   If you eat 3 Valium and go anyway,  here's the scoop:  12/14 prince under a skwala. If they won't eat the prince or the skwala then try something else. But they should eat that. Seriously.
BLACKFOOT RIVER: Pretty cold. If you have to fish a fish a dry fly go somewhere else. If you can tolerate cold and ice and leftover snow, try a double bead with a red worm. Streamer-wise, go darker before lighter. Olive-ish-ness is always a good bet. Slow and low, for sure. We used to drill them on a low riding yellow marabou muddler.
CLARK FORK RIVER: Still rather big and dirty. I would seriously think about going elsewhere. If you do think you are more awesome than the environment, try a worm/prince combo or bugger-ish stuff fished low and deep and slow. The water's still wicked cold.      Corn, there's always corn.
ROCK CREEK: It should be great right now. The skwala nymphs should be starting to move up to the shallows and there should be a few midges out on the nicer days.  Visit Deb at Trout Bums for more accurate info. We haven't been on the creek in a while. www.rockcreektroutbums.com  Or call them @ 406-825-6146.

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Bitterroot River, Montana Fly Fishing Report-better than yard-work!

Bitterroot River Brownie not caught on a skwala. 

Considering that we have a bunch of fly fishing trips coming up soon, I figured it might be a sweet idea to go poke around the Bitterroot and see about the skwalas. Here's the scoop:
You might read that there are bugs out. There are NOT. We saw one very cold, very lonely adult out today. He drifted down a primo seam. That's it. He just drifted down the seam.
You might also hear that the dry  fly fishing is good. It is NOT. The boats that we talked to day were very excited about the 2 dry fly hits they had had. Yep, two...
   But seriously, the water looks sweet and there is plenty of it. There is so much fishy water that once it gets cookin' it will be good. With night temps in the high teens it could be a while. We caught a few on the good old prince. We caught a few more on a midge. The risers that we found were eager to eat the small bug. We had one come up and nudge a skwala pattern and then swim off, laughing. Not because the fake looked bad, but rather because it seemed so unlikely. Bring a thermos and mittens if you go 'cause it's gonna be on the cool side. Oh, and we saw a dude belly-crawl up to the edge of a nice bank and then flick his thingamacan'tcastitbobba off the edge. I don't believe I've ever seen someone do the stealth thing only toss a plastic ball, lead and two flies into 6 feet of water.  There so many spots where you can stand up and fish.

The Woodside diversion looks extra evil right now. I heard tell that it ate a boat about a week ago. Just portage the dam thing. (Get it?)



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