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Tag: Snow Pack

Montana Snow Pack Update 2012

Posted on by Eric Adams
Montana Snow Pack Update 2012

Why should you care about the 2012 Montana Snow Pack? Well, it directly relates to the amount of water we’ll have in the rivers this summer. So as you can imagine our most common question this time of year is “How’s the fishing going to be this Summer”? It is the million dollar question, and here’s our most educated guess for you broken down by drainage.

Yellowstone Drainage:
Our Upper Yellowstone snowpack is at about 70% of normal with our precipitation at 100% of normal. Translation = get your gear ready to fish the Yellowstone River by about the 25th of June and make sure to have some Salmonflies tied up. The fishing in late June, July and August should be good with near normal water levels. Late August and September will depend on the weather conditions, but current long-range forecasts have a normal temperature and precipitation projections.

Madison & Gallatin Drainages:
These 2 drainages have about 50% of normal snowpack and near 100% precipitation levels. Translation = should be great early season fishing, but keep your eye on rising water temperatures by late July.

Missouri River Drainage:
Missouri is a tailwater (dam regulated river) so the snowpack levels are important, but it is somewhat insulated. Snowpack is at nearly 70% and precipitation is over 100%. Translation = dust off your dry fly rod and get ready for some epic topwater action this June and July. The Caddis and PMD hatches with the lower water conditions should be prime. We’ll be back up on the Missouri River at the start of June and can’t wait to see big fish sipping our dries.

That’s the current summary for our local waters, but if you want to stay up to date make sure to check out the Montana Snow Pack
website.

What were the specs on that boat Noah?

Posted on by Eric Adams
What were the specs on that boat Noah

O.K. there’s nothing we can do about it so let’s have some fun with this.

 

Double Rainbow

We aren’t all gloom and doom over the crazy amounts of rain and snow here in Montana (see the pretty rainbow picture), but it is crazy right now.  As many of you know this is how we get our averages here.  Average 80 degrees in the summertime = Monday it’s 100 + Tuesday it’s 60 degrees.  However, this is getting a bit ridiculous.  Granted it’s heading into Memorial weekend so the weather should be pretty crappy, but they didn’t forecast rain – they forecasted HEAVY rain. Oh, and did we mention the Winter Storm Watch in Paradise Valley and Yellowstone National Park for to day through Monday?

To put it in perspective last week Livingston received about 2.5 inches, the forecast is for another 2 or 3 inches, our annual rainfall is 12 inches.  That’s about 45% of our total rainfall for the year in a total of two weeks yippie.  In eastern Montana last week they got 8 inches in one storm – it washed out bridges and closed the interstate fun.

Once again if you didn’t catch our previous post about the large amounts of snow we still have check it out and consider adjusting your fishing plans this summer.

I remember a story about this, what was it? Oh, yeah Noah can you get us the building specs on that ark you built? Maybe we can use it to float from Yellowstone National Park through downtown Livingston.

Blogging with a snorkel on somewhere near the approaching water…

What’s Up with all that Snow in Montana!?

Posted on by Eric Adams
What's Up with all that Snow in Montana

We’ve been fielding a lot of calls lately about our snowpack so we wanted to relay some information to all those coming out to Montana this summer.

Background:
One of the reasons so many people love to fly fish Montana is that we have wild rivers and wild trout.  A large portion of our Montana streams and rivers are freestones, which means no dams.  In the spring when all the snow melts out of the mountains it floods the rivers and renders a majority unfishable for weeks at a time.  You know all that water that the Mississippi is getting – a lot of it starts from the snow melts here. Hence, the term run-off season substitue construction season if you live in a city.  If you come to Montana in late May through June chances are you’ll have some serious run-off issues to deal with.  However, one of the great things about Montana is the variety of waters.  Spring creeks and tailwaters (those with dams) are less affected by this annual event, but tailwaters can still have big flows and virtually no wading opportunities.

Plowing the Beartooth Highway
Plowing the Beartooth Highway

Current Conditions:

We are at 1997 water/snow levels.  We use this date as a benchmark because we had a 100 year flood event through a majority of the waters in the state.  Now we’re sure the weather guys are going to be ‘readjusting’ that event as it was only 14 years ago and it looks like we might have another one.  We are watching it closely as many waters in 1997 had major flood issues and didn’t fish at all until August.

Currently, the National Weather Service has projected that due to La Nina Montana will likely experience a cooler and wetter June than normal.  This seems to be true as we’ve had little snow melt due to warm weather and there’s still plenty of snow in the hills – 180% of normal snow water equivalent in the upper Yellowstone drainage right now.

What does the Mean to Anglers:
Most importantly there will be good fishing throughout Montana no matter what happens remember all the variety we mentioned earlier. So come fishing whenever works best for your schedule, but you might have to be flexible on where and how you fish.  If you only like to fish the Yellowstone River we recommend pushing your fishing dates until late July, August or September – which should fish exceptionally well with all the water we are going to have. If you are coming in June or early July make sure to plan ahead and book some private water (or just call us and we’ll do it for you) as those reservations will be hard to come by in the next week or so.

So that’s the prerun-off scenario right now, but don’t worry we’ll keep you posted with videos and photos sure to follow…

Yellowstone River Blows

Posted on by Eric Adams

I guess it’s officially Spring in Montana when the Yellowstone River blows out. It’s currently at 8,000 cfs, which pretty much means we won’t be fishing it for at least another six weeks.

We are starting to really get busy on the guiding scene starting this week, however – a couple of days on the spring creeks and then up to the Missouri River for a couple of days toward the end of the week. It’s going to be another great fishing season in Montana this year and we are ready for it to start cranking, Literally. As of today, we are at 160% of normal snow pack in the Upper Yellowstone River drainage. That means 1996 levels, and for those not around then it was our 100-year flood event – also known as scary! So let’s get that water moving and snow out of here so we can enjoy some good July fishing and maybe even see some Salmonflies again this year.