High Water & High Hopes
Posted by Jimmy | Posted in | Posted on Monday, June 29, 2009
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With the 4th of July only 2 days away, we are still dealing with runoff in Eastern Idaho/Western Wyoming. After receiving almost three weeks of heavy rains, area rivers and streams are all extremely high. In fact, the South Fork of the Snake, which typically runs somewhere between 10 and 12,000 CFS during the summer, is flowing at 22,600 CFS this morning! Water is usually a scarce resource in this part of the West, but that is not the case this year. Check out this chart http://www.usbr.gov/pn/hydromet/burtea.cfm illustrating the water storage capacity on the regional reservoirs - We may never see it look like this again in our lifetimes!
A 20+ inch Cutthroat gulps mayflies on a local lake
A happy angler admires his catch, a sweet 14 inch Brookie
With all that said, we are going to have plenty of water for the second season in a row, and that means happy bugs, happy fish, and happy fishermen! September and October are going to be great months for trout fishing in the West. In the meantime, The Henry's Fork continues to fish well with numerous hatches, including Green and Grey Drakes and Caddis. Yellowstone National Park is fishing well too. Rivers like the Firehole, Madison and Gibbon are seeing some good dry fly action, and lakes such as Lewis and Hebgen are also fishing well. I just returned from fishing the Beaverhead and Big Hole rivers near Dillon MT; Both are fishing very well right now. Not far from there on the Madison river there are reports of salmonflies hatching daily.
A nice Henry's Fork BrownAs the South Fork drops, we should see some great streamer fishing leading up to the much anticipated summer dry fly season. There's a lot of great fishing on the way and I will try to keep you updated throughout the summer. Get out there and fish!
