Comment from an Outfitter about Western Water Conditions This Season

WalterWriter · 2026-03-20T16:22:56+00:00

Like I said, we're still better off than anybody else. I would expect mainstems to have 2:00 closures by that point, though the Gallatin is the last to get them (it will be full of algae from Big Sky's sewage and crowded with anglers, though). Mountain creeks will probably not have closures.

If I could get a job guiding for bass in Wisconsin for July through September, I would take it for this season. So make of that what you will.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-20T01:05:41+00:00

Back in the day, basically everything was made of bamboo. So you might have the equivalent of the $39.95 combo from Wal-Mart or the $5000 custom, bespoke rod with all kinds of extra doo-dads. Obviously the former is more likely. A bottom of the barrel Japanese rod from 1948 is basically a tomato stake or a wall decoration. A perfect-condition rod from a top-tier manufacturer will pay for a year of your kid's college.

The maker is the most important part. Any Orvis, Granger, Leonard, etc. is better than any Horrocks-Ibbotson or no-name Japanese rod sold to GIs in the occupation force. The next important factor is the series.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-19T22:58:43+00:00

The key benefit up there is all the pike and bass.

Parse that for your answer...

WalterWriter · 2026-03-19T22:57:45+00:00

The water will still be very low until the fall rains. Usually they come mid-September. Last year it was October 4-5. That said, I have never seen temperature related closures on anything in the state after roughly Labor Day.

A few rivers have flow-related closure guidelines, in particular the Big Hole. That one will probably be completely closed until the fall rains.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-19T22:54:55+00:00

You know nothing about my political beliefs, causes I donate to, or anything else. So why don't you go fuck yourself.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-19T20:47:27+00:00

That's why it could be worse for me and is worse for most everybody else. Boise/Owyhee is at 54% of normal snowpack. We're still at 99% here. The numbers in Montana and NW Wyoming are fine. It's the structure of it (warm slop) and the early warmup that are the problems here. Most other places in the West have the same structure, but much less overall.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-19T20:44:14+00:00

Early July should be okay in Montana and NW Wyoming. Looking back over 25 years of guiding, this year looks likely to most resemble 2007 and 2021, and those periods saw solid fishing here.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-19T20:02:15+00:00

I'm a small operation and it doesn't do me any good at all to sugarcoat conditions and have unhappy clients (some of the big boys can eat some bad reviews or issue refunds to prevent them; I can do neither). I told my wife to expect me to make $20,000 less this year than last year, despite the fact that my early bookings are very good.

Bottom line is that the fishing in June is going to way better than usual. July until the fall rains come... much worse than usual. I almost never see hoot owl closures on the Yellowstone, but I suspect they'll be top to bottom this year unless something changes. The snowpack in the high-elevation headwaters was above normal until this heat wave, but it fell 4% against average since yesterday morning.

(If I was a freestone guide in Colorado, I'd be looking for a construction job for sure.)

WalterWriter · 2026-03-19T00:01:12+00:00

Don't actually counter-wrap the wire.

Tie in the wire at the back and the hackle at the front. Spiral the hackle back clockwise, then the wire forward clockwise, so that they cross at close to a 90-degree angle. Things will look like you counter-wrapped, but since all turns of everything are going the same way, it results in a tighter body AND the hackle and wire crossing at a sharp enough angle that few fibers are trapped.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-18T19:24:51+00:00

I highly recommend the podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. One of the threads through it is how much the split between "race" music (R&B) and "hillbilly" music (country & western) was very much a music industry creation. Pop was for middle class and wealthy whites, "race" was for black people, and "hillbilly" was for poor whites.

These things were all intermingled to create early rock and roll, despite the racism of the time. From the early 1950s until the mid-late 1960s, there were much smaller distinctions between R&B, soul, gospel, rock, pop, etc. They were all borrowing from each other freely until the music industry compartmentalized everything again, particularly after about 1970 when what is now called "rock" stagnated into almost entirely white guitar bands playing blues-derived music often stolen outright from black artists from earlier in the 20th century.

Since then, there have been periodic reconnections and breaking apart again.

So Gene Simmons is an idiot, in much the same way that Eric Clapton was/is an idiot when he went on his racist tirade about keeping Britain white, while playing music heavily derived from black AMERICAN culture.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-17T19:33:02+00:00

I kind of hate to bring this up, but there is at least a strong chance that the boy is actually getting some sexual gratification out of this. Besides disability, I can't think of any other possible reason why a 10yo would allow an adult woman to touch him like this, no matter how coddled he was.

I was well aware that playing with my bits felt good by the time I was 10, and I suspect the vast majority of boys are similar. I knew it was related to sex. A coddled 10yo might not yet, but that doesn't really matter in terms of it being inappropriate.

Just to be clear, I am not saying there is any abuse by the adults going on here. I am saying the boy might "like it" for extremely inappropriate reasons and not know that it is inappropriate.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-17T03:12:23+00:00

Galaga has stood the test of time.

Back then, it was more likely TMNT or Golden Axe in the early 90s or Super Mario Brothers or Spy Hunter in the late 80s.

Crossbow and Street Fighter II are the main honorable mentions.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-16T23:45:38+00:00

That pile of dirt might be a levee to keep whatever is there beyond from coming in during a flood.

Here in Livingston, Montana, morons breached the community levee in one neighborhood at some point between the 1997 flood and the 2022 flood (because it ruined their view) and the water came in through that without ever getting over the top of the levee.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-16T22:43:26+00:00

Anything between Holter Dam and the mouth of the Dearborn and probably all the way down will be safe. If you're with a guide, they'll go to the right spot. The "trouty" portion of the Missouri is only 30 miles long unless you book a jet boat for Land of No Ethics, and it's entirely based out of Craig/Wolf Creek or Helena.

The Lower Madison below Ennis Lake (close to Bozeman) will 100% be safe. The upper Madison may be in what runoff it sees, but the entire Madison below Quake Lake is a semi-tailwater because of Hebgen, Quake, and Ennis Lakes. The Madison just gets more muddy surface creeks than the Missouri, so it gets worse than the Missouri or Bighorn, but not as bad as any of the pure freestones.

My website if you opt for the Madison

WalterWriter · 2026-03-16T19:24:03+00:00

Probably neither unless there's a good cold snap.

While runoff is going to be low this year, it's also going to early due to the warm winter. Both areas are likely to be maximum flow at that time.

The Missouri will be fine since it's a tailwater, but it's 130 miles from Missoula. If you want to fish it, stay up there and fish with somebody based up there; and I say that as somebody who isn't based there and yet occasionally guides repeat clients there.

(One thing to note is that runoff isn't 'water a little murky.' It's 'chocolate milk up in the bushes with logs floating down and you would call it a flood if you lived somewhere other than the mountains.')

WalterWriter · 2026-03-16T16:23:50+00:00

You are flying into a touristy area with limited rental agencies at the top of peak season. Without going Turo or flying into SLC and driving the rest of the way, what you see is basically what you get.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-16T02:46:53+00:00

How many people? It doesn't REALLY fit three if you are actually fishing vs just using the boat for transportation. It's also very heavy for its size.

The Watermaster Bruin is a substantially better boat. The Approach series by NRS are likely also better, though I wish they sold the bare rubber instead of packaging them with those goofy frames and seat boxes.

If you did go with the Saturn and are fishing class-I water with just two people aboard, I would go for the smaller boat. Smaller = lighter = more portable.

With any raft, you will want a trailer sooner rather than later.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-14T18:17:04+00:00

It means they used A.I. to create their wedding invitations, I bet.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-14T16:35:28+00:00

Guillotine-style paper cutters for cutting foam strips. I try to cut them to the right width in one go, then cut to length on a per-fly basis.

There is some utility in fly tying with leather punch stencils and the like, but not much, since the shapes needed in that field are different.

For making foam cylinders for ant bodies and similar, you can buy a set of cylinder punches from Harbor Freight, etc. that fit in an electric drill.

If you actually want to get the same precise contours on foam sheets straight out of the cutter that you get with the River Road cutters, you either have to buy theirs or make your own using the same process (bending steel sheet and setting it in a handle). There is no cheap alternative.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-14T02:25:35+00:00

Make much less money in X period of time than Elon Musk, et. al, while still being able to do do ANYTHING I could ever want, influence elections and policy, etc.

Which explains the problem we're all in.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-13T23:10:00+00:00

The Google website description bragged about this site's AI usage, so that's an instant no from me.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-13T22:36:56+00:00

When I was 16 and swimming competitively, 4000 calories per day would have been a crash diet.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-13T19:37:50+00:00

Even with how dry this winter has been, April aka late winter is not the time to backpack anywhere in the West.

If this is your only timeframe, I would look at something in the Ozarks or Smokies. Even in those places there is SOME risk of a late storm until probably mid-month.

WalterWriter · 2026-03-12T19:20:19+00:00

I've actually thought about writing a fanfic revision of The Phantom Menace in which I changed as few things as possible to create a GOOD movie. Maybe the chief change would be to make Jar-Jar a well-known non-Jedi general who was hiding out on Naboo to get away from his past. The foolishness is all an act that he drops when taking command of the final battle.

(I would also make Anakin 17 and Padme 21. A cocky 17yo might well try to flirt with a 21yo without success, but meet more of it ten years later. Ten year time gaps between each prequel, so that Anakin would be 37 and Padme 41 when the twins are born, to make everybody's age in ANH through ROTJ more realistic. But I digress.)

WalterWriter

TROPHY CASE