Spring is in the Air!

by Blue Damsel Manager on April 3, 2009

Our corner of Montana is special. Big freestone streams, cooperative weather, and relatively uncrowded rivers (compared to our neighbors like the Madison and Big Horn), are just a few of the things that keep us here. Along with all that, the four rivers area offers some of the greatest year-long dry fly fisheries in America. Whether salmon flies, golden stones, hoppers, yellow-sallies, BWOs, PMDs, green drakes, grey drakes, mahoganies, or tricos ( and the list goes on!), there is an opportunity for the enterprising angler to catch fish on top all times of year. But the dry fly fishing experience that makes Southwestern Montana truly unique is a big, dark-bodied stone fly that hatches in proliferation when everywhere else in the country is still hoping for the odd-ball day of good midge fishing.

Sometime in the middle of March every year, as the temperature creeps upwards and the sun hangs in the sky a bit longer, skwalas hatch. It is the first major hatch of the year, and the fish, feeling the pangs of hunger after a long winter, go nuts for them. The fishing on the Bitterroot this time of year can be finicky. It is still March and early April and we are still in Montana. Days of sopping snow and wind are common. But there is nothing quite like watching a big cutthroat slurp down a #8 dry fly as soft snow falls on cottonwoods. The skwala hatch is perhaps our last best secret, and we hope to share it with you.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.