The end of May has arrived, and it seems it has brought the bugs with it. Craig has been on the river almost daily, and has fished most of the upper Big Hole, and all of the Beaverhead.
The Big Hole has dropped substantially over the past 10 days; it topped out at nearly 5,000 cfs at Maiden Rock and has been dropping since May 24. The visibility is now around 2 to 2.5 feet. With that we have continued to see fish active on Caddis, with some large caddis (#10) in the mix. We have also managed to catch some fish on larger dries (chubbies), with a stone fly dropper. As for streamers, I had OK fishing yesterday evening on an olive bugger.
Craig guided the Beaverhead a couple days in a row while the Big Hole was still big and muddy. It was low and gin clear. Our locally tied bugger (which I have been calling ‘Unicorn Spit’) has been working quite consistently, and we were able to turn about a dozen fish with it last week. The caddis hatch was rather slow on the Beaverhead this year, we hope to see that turn around. If the river maintains its current levels, expect for it to continue fishing well.
Everyone wants to know about the Salmon flies…last year we started to see them on the middle and upper river about June 4-5. With warm weather forecast for the week, and temps reaching 80+ over the weekend, that could remain the same. I have heard reports of people seeing them on both the Bitterroot and Rock Creek. I imagine that there will be quite a few people headed to the river in search of them towards the end of this week, and once we see them, we will be sure to report it here.
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