Madison River Report

[fishappy]

I made the trip up to the Madison this weekend and it started bad and didn't get much better. First thing that went wrong was when I was buying my licence. Montana has a stupid computer program that you have to use to get your licence, well, the lady working at the computer had no idea what she was doing and had to start over around 10 times. Finally she determined that the program had a glitch of some kind and gave me a paper licence. That was 1 hour cut out of my time. In the near future I will be e-mailing montana about this.
The fishing was not all that great where I was. I mainly stayed between hebgen and quake lake but also tried the first bridge below quake lake. I saw a few caddis and some sort of mayfly on top and some BIG stone nymphs floating by. Nymphs seemed the way to go with a big stone and then a BH pheasant tail dropper. My success was limited to a number I'm to ashamed to say, but some others were pulling them out right and left. I had a few risers for a caddis but didn't hook any. I saw moose, elk, Mt goats and everything else but not enough fish in the net.
I can't complain to much because the scenery was great and so was the weather- It's just fun to get away once in a while.

Fishappy

[jlo]

but seeing other people struggle on the Hebgen/Quake stretch is that the wrong water is usually fished. On the Madison in general, the fish hold in the deep water seems (or soft water) usually in or just off of the main current. This makes for exciting wading and tough fishing with lots of fish being lost to the current. The Madison, for the most part, is a nymph fishery except at certain times of the year (right now--salmonflys, July--caddis, September--terrestrials). The fish subsist heavily on salmon fly nymphs/caddis nymphs/little yellow/olive stone nymphs). Very few fish will be in the shallows feeding on drys until low light conditions exist (morning/evening). The best wade-fishing technique (for me) on the Madison is to get into the deepest current as you dare, and high-stick the crap out of the runs with heavily weighted stonefly nymphs with a smaller dropper such as a crystal serendipity or micro yellow stone. If you need more info, email me.

[Indylab]

I agree with jlo. In my opinion, I wouldn't even fish the stretch between Quake and Hebgen - too many whitefish.

[Greg G]

I just got back from fishing that area over the weekend. We fished the Raynolds Pass area on Sunday. Hiked a good ways downstream from the parking lot and had some good success using stonefly nymphs with a krystal serendipity dropper. Caught several 16-18 inch rainbows and some other smaller ones. Hooked many more that got off. All those that were landed were caught on the stonefly nymph. First time fishing the Madison...had a great time. Can't beat the beautiful scenery.

The other days we spent fishing the Firehole in YNP. Good caddis hatches in the evening and good PMD hatches in the late morning through early afternoon. For the caddis, Iris Caddis and X-Caddis patterns around size 16 worked well. For the PMD, Sparkle Duns and Improved Sparkle Duns size 16 did the trick.

[jlo]

You mentioned you hiked down from Raynolds Pass. Were there swarms of people at the turnouts? Glad you had a good time. When those big rainbows get into the current you're going to lose 75% of them without going swimming.

[Greg G]

The crowds weren't bad at all on the Reynolds Pass section. Most of them were hanging out right by the parking area. As we walked downstream, we saw maybe 5 other guys. We walked far down enough that we were all alone and didn't see a single soul until we walked back to the car.

I really liked that section of water. Lots of good holding areas and seams. After we got back to the car around 5 PM, we decided to scout the river near Lyons Bridge and McAtee Bridge. I was surprised to see that the river was pretty much just smooth flowing. It really didn't look like good water for wading. Maybe floating it would produce...I don't know. Anyone have any luck fishing the Madison from Lyons Bridge downstream to Ennis? My dad is building a cabin at the Island Park Village Resort and we'll be fishing that area much more in the future. I'd be interested in knowing what other sections of the Madison would produce some good fishing.

[jlo]

It's best fished by boat. Obviously there are tons of wading opportunities, but the river becomes wider, and braided down lower with less water flowing through a single channel like at Raynolds or Slide Inn. I've done very well wading, but you just can't cover as much water. Plus, throwing streamers from a drift boat on the Madison is a great chance to wack a very large brown. Right now there are probably more boats than fish with salmonflies making there way upstream.