Kicking off the early spring with a chucky bow.

Pulling for pigs on a mud line.

Mean muggin for the camera

Maddie with a nice streamer fish to start off a very windy day

Streamers saving a very slow day of dry fly fishing

Josh with a nice fish caught while filming for an upcoming project

Exploring some gin clear water before the snow started melting from the mountains

This fish was a serious moral boost on a slow day.

Travis fooled this great brown out of hiding in small pocket water.

Trout selfie

Warmer weather means more browns on the prowl

Travis product testing a new t-shirt. Appears to be working just fine

Josh stoked for days

The sometimes elusive spring dry fly eat

We now have a handful of new shirts and hats in our online store.  To see more and shop click HERE.

-Zack

The post Spring Fishing 2017 appeared first on Montana Wild.

We simply mark spring as the time when the rivers lose their ice and temperatures start hitting the low 40s. The fish take note and if you can handle cold feet and hands, you’ll most likely land some of your biggest fish of the year.

Spring fishing is a tough bet if you’re not a local considering weather patterns this time of year can vary a ton! Those weather patterns also have a big impact on flows and river temps. If you live here though you’re in luck. Watching the weather will pay off and many beautiful days can be found in February, March and April. Having a flexible work schedule helps a lot as well.

Nymphing is going to be your big producer from February through mid March. If you’re not a purist throw on a worm and another nymph matching a local food source and you’ll be in business. It’s not flashy but it plain works. If you’re feeling a bit bolder, a streamer will pay off big time if you can push through the slow days that exist this early in the year.

Anytime of day, any water type and any retrieve can and will pick up fish but a slow twitch or swing through slow 3-6’ of water tend to pick up the most fish this time of year. As the river temperature starts to tick upward the streamer bite can be off the charts and other than fall this is our favorite time to streamer fish.

Once we get into the last couple weeks of March we start to see the skwala stonefly emerge. This hatch brings the big boys out of hiding and fishing big dries this early in the year is very hard to beat. Expect crowds once the word is out, but if you know where to look you can still have some banner days under the Big Sky tossing a dry and getting some vicious eats.

As we move into April we see some absolutely great fishing across the board and the weather is typically much nicer between spring storms.

Typically runoff starts showing up in late April and early May and from then on we wait until things shape up in June. This spring has already shaped up to be one that we won’t quickly forget and we’re only half way through it. Expect to see more from this spring in the future!

-Zack

The post Spring Is King appeared first on Montana Wild.