Friday High Water Fishing Report 11 May 2018

Friday High Water Fishing Report 11 May 2018

High water here on the Mo. Fishable high water. The information leaders in Craig Montana give you today the Friday High Water Fishing Report 11 May 2018

Busy. Lots of boats rowing in circles. Dry little wade fishing at these flows.

Attention to those who don’t like crowds, boats, and high water etiquette norms: Do not come. If you don’t like busy areas, reduced fishing areas, boats rowing around you, close proximity others, sort-of off color water, deep water nymphing with lots of split shot, very little dry fly fishing, not so good streamer fishing: The current Missouri River experience may not be for you.

Beyond that, come on out. The water is clean coming from he dam and the Missouri River is one if not the only fishable resource in the state of Montana. And we love it!

The Missouri River Tributaries

Little Prickly Pear is blowing mud from it. We don’t know the flows as the USGS gauge was removed this past year due to budgeting restraints. It is high, and it is muddy. Worms like muddy water.

The Dearborn River is running high as well including a fair amount of mud too. It is muddy’ing up the water below the confluence. Some are fishing down there. Others are afraid. Your choice on your float. Not as many boats that direction north. The majority is on the upper.

The water is fishable all the way to Cascade. Those who are adept at fishing in high water and off color conditions are doing well. Adhere to the high water technique of choice with the boat crashing through the willows and olives sinking your flies as close to the boat as possible.

Get the down riggers out!

Pink and heavy. Wormy and heavy. Sows, scuds, worms, BWO’s, March Browns, Mother’s Day Caddis…all subsurface.

The lake is not full. Today it is at 74.3% full. DNRC drew the lake down 8 feet below average for this time of year. Look at the chart below.

Charts from DNRC

The black line is the average. The red line is this year. So they have made some concessions to the water this year.

Black line the model average. Red line is 2018. Green line is 2017.

This shows with the past two charts that the water coming is greater than average, and the room made for the water coming is greater than the past years average.

Our Guess on the Future

So what will happen? I’m open to guesses. I have my guess. It is that we will not see flows above 16K. That is my current guess. But we have had an inch of rain intros very wet current rainstorm. Snow in the hills. More on the way. Cool temps this weekend. Then we will have warmer temps as spring moves forward, albeit slowly.

LPP and the Dearborn will see higher flows still. This rain will push them higher.

We are flirting with cancelling all rental boats from Headhunters Fly Shop. Safety first. Call the shop for the up to the minute fishing report, traffic report, and the rental boat situation.

Headhunters does have guides available for those who want to go that route! Good ones too. Well versed int eh high water techniques and hauling a ton of split shot on board for the dredging systems that will be employed on said guide trip.

YTD above. Still a lot of water in the meadows, hills, mountains.

Toston inflows below. It looks as though it will head higher?

Call the High Water Missouri River Hotline today for add’l information 406-235-3447

We have lodging too. The most in the canyon. Your reference site is www.craiglodging.com