February Fishing on the Bittterroot River

Well in trying to post some photos of the fishing we have been having in January and February, I accidentally deleted the original blog. Good ole computers! There is a good saying that I live by that goes, "Sometimes the best thing you can do with a computer is turn it off and go fishing!" Anyway, we continue to have some really good winter fishing conditions on the Bitterroot River. As a matter of fact, yesterday (Feb 12) was 50 degrees! Being that it got that warm, I had to venture down to the rio and check on the Skwala nymph migration and maybe exercise a trout or two.

After turning over a few rocks, it was obvious that the nymphs have begun their migration from the middle of the river to the banks. In one run, there were about 5-6 Skwala nymphs clinging to every rock I turned over. Now before you get too excited, we should not see any adults in earnest for at least three weeks. That being said I have seen years where we were fishing dries the first week of March. You can usually set your watch to the middle of March for fishing dry Skwaklas and the peak of the hatch is usually around the second week of April.

Now the question becomes how do you know when the adult Skwala will emerge? Unlike the nymph, which starts it's migration from the middle of the river according to light cycles, the adult gets it's cue from water temperature. As soon as the water temps start getting to the magic number of 40-42 degrees the adults will come out to play. During the Skwala hatch you will not seeing tremendous numbers of adults as you do during other stonefly hatches, i.e. Salmonflies, Golden stones, yellow sallies, etc. Unless you have a trained eye, chances are you will only see a few during the day. However, you can bet your ass that the trout see them and are stoked to have the equivalent of a T-bone steak floating down the river after eating breadcrumbs all winter!

Now that I have got you all wound of for fishing it is time to take a deep breath a re-read the above section on the hatch. That being said get ready because it is just around the corner and pray for more snow in the high country. I will leave it at that and will post another blog after this weekend regarding the state of our snow pack and the general health of the fishery currently on the Bitterroot River. Until then, have a great weekend and good fishn'!