We just completed the annual July tour with Dan Delekta and the Tim Miller group. One of my personal favorites and most challenging guide weeks of the year is with Tim Miller and his friends and family in July. This year’s trip started on the Madison, the next two days were on the Missouri below Holter Dam, the next day was on the Jefferson River, then on to the Big Hole River for a day, the Beaverhead River for a day with the last day on the Madison River. I refer to this as the “Whirlwind Tour”; I love to be able to go to a variety of different rivers and be successful on each system and catch fish. This requires a lot of different fly patterns, leaders, and techniques. This is a unique challenge of rowing, driving, stamina, and focus; testing all of the senses. This year Tim brought his brother Brian who was injured in a motorcycle accident with his knee, thigh, and ankle all messed up. Brian couldn’t wade but was fishing start to finish out of the boat. We caught fish on all the different rivers; punctuated by a 60 to 70 fish dry fly day on the Big Hole and an incredible last day on the Madison with nymphs and dries.
This season has seen the third year of a good snow pack in a row; a near record rainfall in June on all the rivers of S.W. Montana. The perfect storm creating the maximum number of fish on all of our rivers and red hot catching opportunities all summer long until winter sets in. With all the rivers having great water levels; the fishing pressure should be evenly distributed throughout S.W. Montana. The Hopper, Spruce Moth, PMD’s and Caddis flies will all be overlapping with in the last week of July; the Perfect Dry Fly Storm.
Dan
