January

As the snow continues to pile up in the mountains we have had a serious warming trend in the valley's and the rivers have all bumped up quite a bit.  It is amazing how last week everything was darn near frozen solid and this week we are experiencing 40 plus degree temperatures during the day and the water is on the rise drastically.  I starting thinking back how a couple of years ago although we had a great snow pack up high in the mountains day time temps were such that the last week of February had some of the finest dry fly fishing of the year and as a result March had these amazing Skwala Stone Fly hatches.  I still think we are a ways out from that but who knows.  I remember launching the boat on the Bitterroot on Feb. 25th and thinking to myself, "do I really need this coat?"  We were really just out on the water to be there after a long winter of not trouting and not really worried about great fishing we just wanted to be out. As the afternoon warmed up the fish began to look up and holy cow! the fish were on!  We caught quite a few on the dry and a bunch more on droppers and as we drove back to Missoula that evening all of us agreed that was possibly the best day of trout fishing anyone of us had ever seen in February, and on the dry fly as well!  Western Montana's pre runoff fishing can be just as productive or more so than any other time of year.  We are truly blessed that because of the lower altitude of the Missoula area things warm up enough to offer literally three more months of great trout fishing than any other Montana fishing destination.  Come check it out!  Get ahold of me at http://www.sheerwaterguides.com/