Early April Fishing Report

We may be finally seeing a break in our “spring” weather, as temperatures are expected to reach into the high 50’s by the end of the weekend.   There has been an abnormal amount of snow around at low to mid levels.  Flows have bumped up into the mid 6000’s and are expected to keep rising as they are making room for incoming water from the Wyoming drainages.  We have received a lot of calls regarding water conditions and our response is ‘Yes the river is much higher than normal for this time of year, but the fish are liking it and eating like crazy.’  (And there are a lot of anglers missing out on some excellent fishing right now.)

Nymphing has been the mainstay with streamer fishing following close behind.  For the dry fly anglers, we have just begun to see a smattering of spring Baetis and quite a few midges.  A few fish are found here and there, but remains yet to be of any consistency. The river is extremely clean right now as high flows have given us a ‘Spring cleaning.’ Don’t be afraid to add more weight to your nymph set up (BB’s) and fish a foot or so deeper than normal (8-9′) .  The fish are eating a wide variety of nymphs including worm patterns, red and tan midge larvae, sowbugs and even a few Baetis nymphs.  The majority of stomach samples have yielded high numbers of red midge larvae with sowbugs a close second.

We are still renting boats and putting out as many guide trips as we can, and no, the river is not frozen.