Upper Madison River Fishing Report

Flows out of Hebgen are sitting at 753 cfs with Kirby reading 51.1 degrees at 5:30 this morning. Those are stable numbers, a touch low for the date but nothing that changes floatability, and the whole fifty-mile riffle from Quake Lake to Ennis is in play top to bottom. The cottonwoods along the lower valley are turning, the crowds have thinned way out since Labor Day, and the river has fully flipped from a morning fishery to a midday one. That 51-degree dawn reading means the fish are not doing much before ten. Sleep in, eat a real breakfast, and plan to fish hard from late morning through late afternoon when the water bumps into the upper 50s. Fishing has been on the technical side, and I won't sugarcoat it. These fish have been looked at, floated over, and fed fake hoppers since June, and the water is low and clear enough that they see everything. The shops in Ennis are saying the same thing I'm seeing: good fish are coming to hand, some genuinely big rainbows and browns among them, but they're being caught by people who fish clean drifts on lighter tippet and change flies when the first choice doesn't work. 4x to your dry, 5x to your dropper. If you're getting refusals on the hopper, that's not a no, that's a size-down. The terrestrial game is hanging on. Warm afternoons still get hoppers clicking in the grass banks from Varney down, and ants and beetles are quietly outfishing the big foam on pressured water. Every year people put the hoppers away too early. Don't. The fall bugs are arriving too. Cloudy days are producing BWOs from midday on, and fish in the slower seams and tailouts are starting to look up for them. The other thing happening is the streamer bite. Browns are getting territorial ahead of the spawn, and the aggression builds every week from here through October. The overcast days in this week's forecast are exactly what you want. It's still early enough that I'd fish smaller stuff, sparkle minnows and single-hook sculpins rather than the giant articulated meat, but that changes fast from here. Access notes: remember the wade-only rules. Quake Lake outlet down to Lyons Bridge is wade fishing only, no fishing from boats, and the same goes for Ennis Bridge down to Ennis Lake. Float fishing legally starts at Lyons. The wade water between $3 Bridge and Raynolds is fishing well for people willing to walk, and honestly the walk-wade angler has the advantage right now because you can slow down and pick apart water a boat covers in thirty seconds. Full rundown of pullouts on the access page. One more thing, since somebody asks every year: the Madison in Montana is open year-round. There's no closing date coming, no season to beat. What you're racing is weather, and late September through October is some of the best fishing of the year here if you can handle a little wind and the odd snow squall.

Tactics for today

Run a hopper-dropper midday: a #12 hopper with two feet of 5x to a #16-18 pheasant tail, fished tight to the banks and along the inside seams, not just down the middle. Mend early so the hopper lands dead and stays dead. When clouds roll in, clip it off and swing a sparkle minnow down and across through the deeper runs, letting it hang at the tailout before you strip it back. Fish every hangdown, that's where the eats come. If you see noses working a slick, a single BWO sparkle dun on a long 5x leader beats any dropper rig. And rest good water. Second passes through a run out-produce first passes this time of year.