Riding The Roller Coaster! – Yellowstone River Update

Just a quick update on fishing conditions on the Yellowstone River, with both bad news and good news. First some good news. This morning, the river looks very fishable. Yes, there’s some color, but the clarity is plenty good enough to get into some action (despite the reluctance of many to fish when the water isn’t perfectly clear). The water temperatures did plummet with the cooler weather and then low-altitude snowmelt that we had recently, so you’re unlikely to see many caddis yet. But nymphs and streamers are both worth trying today.  And probably tomorrow as well. But the warmer temps over the next couple of days are likely to bump the flows up significantly, up to near 10,000 cfs on Sunday according to the experts at NOAA (check out the graph). Saturday, Sunday, and possibly Monday are probably going to be too muddy to fish successfully, unfortunately. And then cooler weather prevails and the Yellowstone should come back down and be worth fishing all of next week. Will there be caddis? That’s a bit harder to predict, but there’s only one good way to find out. Get out on the river, planning to fish streamers and/or nymphs. But bring your caddis dries just in case. And check back here before you go for the latest report. Conditions are changing day to day and we’ll stay on top of things for you. That’s our job, after all!