The Big Short – Missoula Fishing Report

The river flows keep going up, up, up — but soon enough they’ve gotta turn down. Will you be here?

If you are, you might experience some of the best fishing of the year, like the kind we had last week on the upper Bitterroot, Blackfoot, and Clark Fork just downstream of Missoula.

The stellar May fishing usually occurs after a 3-4 day drop in flows, and usually corresponds to a series of nights when the temps fall into the 30s or 40s. That happened last week and the window opened wide with blanket hatches of skwallas, march browns, and caddis.

Then it closed, as it often does this time of year. And we stole off to the Missouri for a couple of days for some epic dry fly fishing. Poor us.

This week the overnight temps are already dropping into the magic zone, and we expect fishing to be strong again here by the end of the week. Come see us?

Finally, it’s looking like we’re leaning away from El Nino winter into what the Weather-Folk are calling a La Nina spring and summer. Which hopefully means we should continue to compile some good snowpack, and replenish what was lost in the last warmup.