Monday Afternoon Fishing Report

Extravagant Ones:

 

In between finishing work on a couple (dozen) files prior to my month-long departure to Montana this Friday (the Thirteenth) [Kathy leaves tomorrow morning on her annual (count 'em) four months Montana trek with our trusty Extravaganza mascot, Sir], I have been poking around my various fishing Montana sources and have the following to report this Monday afternoon:

 

    1.  The runoff this year is, indeed, legendary.  Still in the hills is "100% water saturation", something unheard of one month into a runoff.

 

    2.  Fishing has begun but (a) it is spotty, (b) dependent upon rapidly changing fishing conditions and (c) definitely available for those with flexible fishing agendas (i.e., willing to fish one or more rivers in one or more days...and THAT is us!).

 

    3.  When the fishing has been on, it has been REALLY ON--yesterday, there were GH boats out that had 20+ fish days on each of the Bitterroot (Kurt Long) and on the Missouri (no special license needed!) (Evan Philippe).

 

    4.  Rock Creek is still so wet that salmon fly nymphs (which live underwater for over 2 years) have been crawling out and, in their search for cover (it has been raining incessantly and is expected to SNOW tomorrow in most of Montana) have either been going under rock or even crawling all the way across Rock Creek Road looking for dry cover to shed their shucks, spread their wings (if female--the males have no wings) and then mate (see Entomology 1A posting to Der Blog).  That being said, few, if any, salmon fly bugs are on the water yet, so the "fishing" is more of an E ticket ride (for those older ones out there who remember the Disneyland early ticket lettering system) down the Creek than it is a fishing experience.

 

    5.  The consensus of all is that the runoff is far from over and that if anyone thinks that this is going to be a "normal" year where you can predict just what daily fishing conditions will be then that person is not "normal".

 

Fish we will, folks; we know the "when" element of that, but, as to the "where", that is anyone's guess for any of our groups (yes, folks, some sage souls predict that this runoff may extend all the way into the early week(s) of July!).

 

In summary, this Extravaganza will, indeed, be one about which you can later say to your grandkids, "And, yes, my child, I was there fishing during the epic runoff of ott-8!!"

 

Best to all in anticipation of it all,

 

Rock Creek Ron