Big Horn’s big water year drowning dry fly action

FLY FISHING — Thanks to a year’s worth of rain in May and loads of snowpack remaining in the mountains, flows will be high and steady through the end of July on the Bighorn River in Montana below Yellowtail Dam.

That’s frustrating news for dry-fly fishermen on the popular trout stream.

“When you get hit with a record precipitation event, things can turn around in a hurry,” Dan Jewell, BuRec’s Montana area manager, told outdoor reporter Brett French of the Billings Gazette. “The precipitation events were beyond the most probable scenarios you plan for.”

All of that extra water has filled side and back channels of the river, providing more room for the rainbow and brown trout that fuel an estimated $50 million fishing industry.

“In the long run, higher water will benefit the fish,” said Ken Frazer, Fish, Wildlife and Parks fisheries manager in Billings.

Read on for more details from the Gazette story.

The Bighorn River is so productive that more water means more fish, he added, but there’s a change in what type and size of fish inhabit the river. In higher water, the brown trout do better, he said, but there are also more little fish. The little fish are better competitors for aquatic insects. The result is that trout over 18 inches tend to be skinnier when trout numbers are up, Frazer said.

During drought years, Frazer saw the number of brown trout drop but larger fish were in better condition overall — probably from a high-protein diet of smaller fish that had no back or side channels to hide in.

The higher water also means a different fishing experience for anglers, some of whom travel to the Bighorn River from out of state or out of the country, hire guides, stay at lodges and dine at restaurants.

At 12,000 cfs and higher, those anglers aren’t likely to see any dry-fly action in the near future, said Neil Strickland of the Bighorn Trout Shop in Fort Smith. Fort Smith is near the launch point of much of the Bighorn’s fishery.

“We’ve had a lot of cancellations in the last few weeks because of muddy water,” Strickland said.

The unusual downpour also temporarily isolated the community when the highway bridge near St. Xavier washed out. But the water released from Yellowtail Dam is clear. It’s only the streams entering the river that make it muddy.

With fewer folks on the water and side streams’ inflows lessening, Strickland said the fishing on the Bighorn has been fantastic and uncrowded. But catching trout now requires a different technique. Pulling up to shore and wading is not an option — there’s no bank. So anglers are drifting flies through pocket water and holes from drift boats and rafts.

Strickland said he’s been using what’s called a Teton rig: a bell sinker tied on the end of the line with a couple of flies about 18 inches apart above the sinker. It’s not unlike the drift rigs salmon and steelhead fishermen use in the Northwest.

“It’s just silly, you catch a fish every cast,” he said. “And you don’t have to worry about technique.”

Strickland said it’s a case of anglers playing with the cards they are dealt and adapting to the situation. Other options for river fishing are slim with the high water muddying up the Yellowstone and Gallatin, he noted. Only rivers below dams, like the Madison and Missouri, provide an opportunity during runoff.

As Strickland noted, “There’s fish in that ditch no matter what.”