Yellowstone River Fishing Report April 2, 2022

Looking like fairly typical early April spring weather on tap for the week ahead.   Daytime highs in the upper 40s to low 50s every couple of days interrupted with chances of showers and some snow flurries mixed in.   Those cloudier days should herald the beginnings of the spring blue winged olive hatch along with the continuance of midges.   Trout have been active and fishing has been good!  We did go through an unusually warm spell a little bit ago and the river has bumped up a bit from the low flows we saw most of the winter.  With the more typical spring weather, the water has settled a bit.   The ultra low and ultra clear that was 2 weeks ago has changed.  You will see some color in the water but it’s not a bad thing.  A little green can be good.

Mornings, start out nymphing or streamer fishing.  You may find yourself fairly deep to start.   The water temps are good, but they can start out in the mornings on the cold side of things.  Fish will be in the deeper, slower “off speed” areas.  Stonefly patterns along with a smaller midge or baetis dropper fly have been the “go to” setups.  As the day warms, you can start to see fish moving up in the water column a bit and even into some faster locations.   If you are starting to see those baetis or blue winged olive mayflies hatching, you can bet that the fish will be right there with them in the shallower riffles and such.  So continue to shorten up your fly to indicator as the day goes on and then switch up to dry/dropper or just single dry fly as the hatch comes on.  Enjoy the couple hours that it lasts and make those dry fly casts count!   As the hatch slows or bug activity in general slows, you can count on few fish being active and strikes will diminish.  Switching back to a deeper nymph rig or streamers again might put you back on a few more fish in that late afternoon time.

This will be the modus operandi for the coming weeks.   Good luck out there!

Flies to try: Pat’s Rubberlegs in coffee/black or olive/brown sizes 6-10 weighted to get down; Tung 20-incher in 8-12, Marabou rubber legs camo/black or olive size 6-10, Good ol’ wooly bugger black or olive same size 6-10 and weighted.  Run any of those along with a Tung Zebra midge black size 16-18, Tung Zebra olive same sizes, FB PT 12-18, CDC PT 12-18, Prince 12-18, Juju Baetis 16-18, Mirage lightning bug 14-18 are all good bets.   For dries: Para Adams 12-18, Para Purple Haze 12-18, Royal wolf 12-18, Baetis Hackle Stacker 16-20, Baetis sparkle dun 16-20, BWO Indy parachute 16-20, Griffiths Gnat 18-20, I Can See It midge 18-20, Bighorn Cluster midge 18.

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