This winter I have been struggling to construct my first mass communication following the 2022 season. I’ve started and restarted this email seven times, failing to contrive the words to articulate my feelings about the 2022 fishing season. For those of you who fished with me, your astonishment at my failure to produce words is understandable. But it is true. I have failed to sumerize the 2022 season in elegant terms, so here is an off the cuff, as remembered, recap.
April – The calm before the storm – April began with some snow in the mountains and your outfitter feeling overly optimistic about the prospects for a good water year, rife with epic hatches and 4 inch long hoppers. The fishing in April was really good. Come to think of it ,the April fishing is always really good.
Early in the month, I was fortunate to fish a long time angler of mine, Mike. Mike and I began fishing together when I was 18 and a rookie guide. He walked into the Trout Shop and announced he, “was looking for The Juice.” The rest is history. Mike likes an adventure and he can flat fish. We decided on two days of fishing, DePuy’s and a float down the East Gallatin.
DePuy’s produced quality fishing for Mike and many others this April. Cloudy days brought strong BWO emergences that lasted most of the day. On brighter days, we employed a number of subsurface strategies and managed quality days of both numbers and size.
The East Gallatin presents a really interesting angling scenario. It’s situated on the edge of the California-fueled-sprawl that is Bozeman with limited access. Floating it changes the game. Through the use of my smaller rafts, we are able to float and fish, as well as access water others simply cannot. The fishing was ok, but that doesn’t detract form the incredible view of the Bridger Mountains, and the seclusion found between the high cut banks, despite the proximity to Bozeman. As the month continued, I saw more action on DePuy’s and my first Stillwater River date.
The Stillwater has long been my favorite river to fish, and I was fortunate to share its summer season with many of you reading this. Like the summer fishing, the spring fishing is quite good. While we dote over the summer dry fly fishing, the spring nymphing is something to behold. This isn’t bobber dogging with a quarter ounce of led, but presenting well tied, intentional nymphs to beautiful structure. Big rocks, slow pools, and sharp edges characterize much of structure we fish to. It’s a wade fisherman’s paradise, and I am already anxiously awaiting the big thaw this March. While we saw a number of rainbows feeding and eventually moving up stream to spawn, we also encountered a number of big browns that broke up typical catch of rainbows and white fish. The coolest thing I saw this April was on the Stillwater with my friend, Tom and his son, Drew. We were fortunate to fish through a massive Mother’s Day Caddis emergence. There were bugs everywhere! And the fish took notice. We hammered fish that day on dries and nymphs. I certainly will not forget this day as it was also the last day I saw the Stillwater River I’ve known since boy hood…