April 25 Lower Madison River

I partnered up with Chad on a slightly dirty lower Madison yesterday for my first guide trip of the '09 season. We had about 2'-3' of visibility until we reached Cherry Creek, which was dumping a bit of mud and making the right bank of the river chocolatey. Shortly after we soaked the boats at the Warm Springs access, we found our little buddy the baetis hatching in fair numbers and seemed to be present all day. But, as often is the case on this piece of water, very few fish were looking up to slurp those BWOs off the surface. So, we stuck to bouncing nymphs through buckets and runs in search of hungry trout.

If you find yourself on the lower Madison anytime soon, be prepared with flies that will stand out in water with a little stain. San Juan worms, egg patterns, prince nymphs, and lightning bug are your usual suspects but don't forget your sculpin and crawdad patterns.

Pictured above is Tony from California with a little Brown Trout that jumped on a San Juan fist thing in the morning. After I let this fish go I told Tony that It was a 15" fish. This was the first client caught fish in the boat this year and I think my "internal guide measuring device" is a little rusty. He'll be a 15" trout next year for sure.

Ty