News from Blue Ribbon Flies

Fishing Report
Weekly Conditions and Tips

As the seasons change, we will continue to do our best to provide a journal entry from some of our latest tying and fishing. We invite you to call and ask us what we've been up to if you get to wondering. We always have plenty of stories to tell.

November 10, 2010
Blue Ribbon Flies Weekly Report

Craig Mathews

To get my mind off the arduous climb up the mountain this morning I thought of how great the midge fishing would be this afternoon! Jackie and I left the truck at 6am. The early temperature bottomed out at 16 degrees. Over a foot of snow and a brisk north wind made things even "more enjoyable", at least that's what Jackie kept telling me.. ..she was serious.. ..I thought of midges on the Madison and rising trout this afternoon.

Up we climbed, from our starting elevation of 5800 feet to over 8000 feet before I begged to go home and have a late breakfast. The only elk we saw were the 400 plus herd as we left our driveway, not a fresh track all the way up the mountain. At noon Jackie announced she was ready to head in and I was glad for it! Three times I fell coming down the mountain. I thought about how I should quit elk hiking and hunting and get a life.

I headed to the river around 1pm and found conditions perfect for midge activity. Calm conditions with high overcast and 30 degree temps. By 1:30pm the fish were rising in selected pools and shallow runs I often find risers in, and by 2pm I had taken a couple nice rainbows on a new midge pupa Bucky has been working on this fall. I changed to a zelon midge, one with a high-viz wing, and took 3 more nice rainbows up to 16" before deciding to head home and type this. I'll continue with more on today later in our blog but for now I'd better get to this week's report.

The Madison River below Quake Lake is coming into its winter midge fishing form now. Lots of midges in many selected spots from Raynolds Bridge downstream to Lyon Bridge and the fish are looking up for zelon midges, and subsurface for $3.00 Dips in original brown and krystal, Slough Creek Midge Larvae and Twinkle Pupae too. Now is the time to fish a nymphal imitation of the winter stone nymph and our General Manager (GM) Nymph is killing from November to May. The streamer fishing has been very strong using soft hackle streamers in olive/black and brown/yellow as well as olive woolhead sculpins. Look to the river from Highway 191 downstream to Hebgen Lake for great streamer action using Sculp-zillas and Chee's Streamers in olive or brown and yellow.

The Gallatin is fishing well just downstream of Taylor's Fork and below Big Sky down to the mouth of the canyon. Here you will want a GM Nymph as well as a $3.00 Dip in red and a red #16 Copper John.

The Missouri River is going great guns now for those pitching large streamers along the banks. We like Beck's Bugger, Woolhead Sculpins and Spruce Flies but really, pattern is not that critical as the big browns are very aggressive and attack most any streamer thrown their way!

The Yellowstone River near Livingston, Mt. has been great lately using the same flies as above as well as midge patterns listed above for the Madison River. A large chocolate brown stone rubber legs trailing a Lucent red bead head nymph has worked well too.

Many outdoors folks are chasing elk so you just might have the above rivers to yourselves this time of November!

Until next week, call, email or stop by for current reports, the best in fly tying materials and fly designs and fly fishing gear! We apologize to our Fly of the Month subscribers for being late with this month's fly. Our printer went down and we await a new one.

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