Apologies on the tardiness of my fishing updates, but we're in the middle of completely overhauling and rebuilding the website, we're hoping to bring you a new and fresh look in June from the Best Fly Shop in Bozeman!!!

Thanks for voting us three years in a row as your shop of choice in Bozeman, that means a lot to me personally and so a big thank you to the fishbums and friends out there around the community!!!!

Now for the fishing - it looked as if runoff was going to be rearing it's ugly head earlier than usual towards the last couple of weeks of April, but cooler temperatures combined with little precip has locked back up the runoff for the time being and the Gallatin, Madison and Yellowstone all three are in good shape and fishing well. The Lower Madison has been on fire with crayfish and copper zonkers dropping worms and little baetis nymphs off the back. The Upper Madison has cleaned up nicely as well, fishing reports have been a little scattered as the wind up around Ennis was brutal this past week, but up between Quake and Hebgen has been good, the standards have been good - pink worms and red beadheads. The Yellowstone has cleaned up and dropped back down dramatically. I would concentrate above Livingston right now with the flows being in flux - streamer fishing is on. The Gallatin has cleared up plenty for fishing and up by Big Sky has been good with a lot of guys just running the stonefly worm combo with a fair bit of success.

The Caddis are coming off on the Madison and seeing a few over on the Yellowstone as well - with cool rainy weather the caddis will liklely wait till Monday and Tuesday to really blow up big with warmer sunnier weather in the forecast for early next week. So if I was glancing into my crystal ball I would say - Tuesday should be good, it may get dirty on the Yellowstone by mid week next week, but we'll just have to wait and see...

As for the other rivers around the area, the Big Hole is in shape, flows have come down on it a bunch, streamer fishing is good, it's still early and cold for caddis over there, but perhaps next week it would be a good dry fly bet. The Jefferson has been marginal, guys at the shop floated it Tuesday and it was really mostly a float as fish weren't committing to the streamer eat. Ruby and Beaverhead are fishing well, just stay up high on both as lower down the clarity becomes an issue.

Boulder and Stillwater are plenty clean now for fishing, the only thing muddying up the Boulder will be the West Boulder and that's still off and likely will be for a little while. That being said the early season on the Boulder has been good, Stllwater has been pretty decent too - when the weather warms back up again probably see caddis on both rivers, may even get a bit more fishing in before runoff settles in. Boulder should fish well again this early summer on rafts, but likely won't have as long of a season on it as we did last year given higher than normal flows.

Bighorn has been consistently good over the past few weeks now, flows are holding steady, baetis are coming off pretty good still, fish are up and looking when conditions are right. When the dry fly fishing is marginal the streamer fishing and nymphing have been good - had a group of guys from the shop head down and tear it up on smaller Bighorn Bugger patterns and did even better on a Yellow Sex Dungeon. The Missouri has been good, when the wind has cooperated the fishing has been excellent, dry fly fishing on top has been the ticket, Blue Wings on top and underneath has been it. No talks of streamer fishing from the dry fly crowd, so DFO's delight...

Other than that lakes have been icing off, Hebgen has been good, Canyon Ferry is full of stupid spawning rainbows cruising the shoreline if that's what you're into, but the Carp fishing has been off the hook and is way tougher and way more fun. Cliff and Wade have ice off them, haven't heard much else though, the other lakes around the area are icing off and fishing ice off can be really good - but we usually wait to fish these when the rivers all blow out and they aren't yet.

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Fly of the Week (or month or so): Bling Minnow
Water temps are warming, baitfish are out about and moving around and it's that time of year when the browns and rainbows are hungry coming off the winter and are ready to chase around and eat some meat. This little pattern is a fantastic stripping bug that is nice in a tandem streamer rig - running one dark and one light is one of my favorite ways to fish... This pattern is infinitely versatile because it takes markers really well and can be colored up to match whatever forage fish are in your local rivers.

The other nice thing about the bling minnow is that it's not weighted at all so you can nymph it underneath an indicator as a lead fly in a two fly rig, or you can throw it on a sink tip and strip it, it's also a great little tigh line swinging pattern. Versatile, effective, and it has a good name... Bling Bling.





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