I keep a close eye on this website this time of year:

Montana Snotel

The high precipitation months here in Montana are April, May, and June. I haven't seen this sort of snowpack across Montana since the late 1990s. Back in the mid to late 1990s, fishing the Missouri River, for example, was very tough until the water releases dropped and that didn't happen until late July.

I remember nymph fishing out of a driftboat with 14' leaders and AC Delco sparkplug-sized split shot to get the flies near the bottom. Dry fly fishing was very sporadic until the fall. The best tactic was to pound the banks with streamers. Wade fishing was suicide.

When the water levels finally dropped, there was standing water everywhere. By late afternoon and early evening the mosquitoes were like something out of a Sci-Fi movie.

The long range weather forecast is calling for above average precip and below average high temperatures.

Personally, I'm pushing all the small dry fly hackle off my tying bench and breaking out the big stuff to tie streamers. If you've never fished big runoff water before, I'd be happy to tell you how we did it back then when we last saw it here in Montana.

Looking to be the same in Wyoming.
Tailwaters and stillwater, here I come.

I've been needing to work on my stillwater skills for a while now...I guess this will be the year to do just that.

Carp are just another 5-10 lb fish that puts in 100 foot runs in 4 seconds

are you talking about the summer temps below average or the winter?

I know we've had issues with lots of winter dust covering the snow in Colorado, which makes the snow darker, and causes it to melt much quicker. So more snow, in that scenario doesn't mean a longer run off.

The forecast I saw was March through May.

Right now it looks like most of the Missouri headwaters are just slightly above average.
Isn't that right around where they were last year?

Unless we get a lot of rain I think runoff should be close to normal in the three forks. Normal being how it was in the 90's.
I don't think we'll see really late river clearing though I'm guessing the Yellowstone won't clear until mid to late July.

It's so nice to see normal snowpacks again.

If you study this site: Montana Drought Monitoring you'll see that this is the first time since the late 1990s that the State has been officially drought free the first week of March of any calendar year since 1999. So we've not only got >Avg snowpack, we've got somewhat saturated ground which hasn't happened since 1999. That means that while some of the melting snow will further saturate the ground, it will more quickly begin to reach saturation point where it runs off instead. If we get Avg or > Avg precip and Avg or < Avg high temperatures, we'll see something we haven't seen since 1999.

And while for several years during the past decade or so that we've been able to wade fish the Missouri River below Holter in June and early July, that isn't likely this year.

While I can't know what will happen, considering the current snowpack, lack of drought conditions of the soil, and the forecasts for the next few months, I'm predicting the fish populations will balloon this year on the Missouri, and the river will get a really good scouring, but that the fishing will likely be postponed greatly from what we've seen the past years since 1999.

That's jumped up a bit since March. The Missouri headwaters and mainstem are still above average snowpack.

They are drawing down Canyon Ferry Reservoir in anticipation of 2.2 million acre feet of water going in between now and July. The reservoir right now is only .5 million acre feet low.

Flows out of Holter are 165% of normal, so if you are headed for that part of the Missouri you'd better have a boat.

Some of the rivers are just starting to turn color and rise as the weather is finally warming and the snow is melting. Rain and warmer temps could spike flows and cause widespread flooding.

Yeah, I was actually thinking about this thread the other day. I take it all back....

I don't think any of us were expecting this spring to turn out this way. I'd have to say it's the $hittiest spring I can ever remember with snowpacks between 130 and 150% of normal in May from a seemingly endless storm cycle.
I doubt the Yellowstone will really clear until August which, if memory serves me correctly, was how it was in '97.

I think this summer our float tubes are going to be worn out up here in Montana. The snow pac in the Musselsehell river drainage is 150 percent of normal. If anybody has some good spots for float tubing need some new ideas.

Montana's Fish Wildlife & Parks department has closed the Smith and Belt River due to high water, flooding, debris, and likely the death of a woman last week on the Smith.

If you have a launch permit, you probably already got an email from them. If not, you might want to check with them.

Click - Smith River Closed

The Yellowstone is 5 times its normal flow right now at Sidney. The Bighorn was running at 8500 and crested at 32,000 about 36 hours ago downstream of Hardin....

And runoff has barely started. That's what 7 inches of rain in two days will do.

Some impressive numbers coming out of the east right now....the highlights...

Musselshell at mosby - highest ever recorded 1981 - 5600cfs - right now - 17300cfs and thats down from well over 20k yesterday and the measured the discharge yesterday so the gauge isnt off.

Beaver Cr near saco, a trib of the milk - highest ever recorded 1986 - 241cfs - right now - 1300cfs and rising

Pumpkin Cr near miles city, a trib of the tongue - dropped quite a bit since the wknd, but when I was there it touched 10000cfs - the mean flow for that gauge at the time was 3.4cfs and the highest ever recorded was in the neighborhood of 1500cfs. Thankfully for mc, its dropped by 80+%, but holee cow!

There are several other impressive numbers, like the bottom of the stone as blackotter mentioned, which is double the highest flows ever recorded in 1978. That rainstorm over the wknd kicked our rear ends but good.

BLackfoot was out of its banks yesterday between OVando and Lincoln. Nevada Creek was out of it's banks too. Little Blackfoot was choco milk and still in it's banks, but I doubt that will hold for long.

10 mile creek in the valley is about out of it's banks, same with little prickly pear.

Tough spring to be a fish.

The Bighole has been fishing well though. We were on it Thursday and Friday.
Didn't see any caddis but we didn't go any lower than silver bridge. It's on the rise again but if the weather stays cold I think it should start dropping again soon. Just in time for the crowds this weekend.
I may try and hit it up again next week if it stays fishable. The caddis should be out by then.

FWIW:

The Missouri below Holter Dam normally peaks in mid-June with a mean flow of ~9500 cfs.

Today it is 15,100 and that will only go up. I'm predicting it will peak around 22,000 cfs.

Back in 1997, with flows out of Holter just under 25,000 cfs, a friend and I decided to see if we could catch any fish on the river. We were both very experienced rowers and knew the river very well.

We did a float that was the equivalent of what we'd do in four day-long floats (FYI - we put in at the WC bridge and took out at Pelican). The river was smoking fast.

We chucked buggers right up to the banks and when we thought our streamers were more than 4 feet from the bank, we'd pick them up and put them back. We caught a lot of really nice trout, but by the time we put the driftboat on the trailer at the takeout we were both seriously sore from fighting that heavy current all day. Dropping the anchor was a waste of time and dangerous. We beached the boat a few times to take a break and pulled the boat up and threw the anchor around a tree. Stepping into the river would have been suicide.

There were a few pretty hairy situations. There is a very large rock formation about a mile downstream of the Craig bridge that goes down into the water. There was a huge, bus sized, whirlpool that was ~ 4' deep. I didn't see it until we were almost right on it as the rock formation blocked my view. I could feel the hydraulics pulling me toward it. I thought I was going to snap the composite oars and I just barely missed getting sucked into it by turning the stern hard away and into another current line which pulled me in a different direction.

Silver Bridge = Pennington Bridge????

Silver Bridge is just above Divide bridge. It is also sometimes referred to as the Powerhouse FAS.

So, if I'm reading this all correctly, the highest recorded flow ever at Sidney on the Yellowstone was 159,000 cfs June 21 1921. Right now it's at 172,000!!! Wow.

With this latest storm, the Bighorn drainage snow pack went from 140% of average to 201%.

The Smith/Judith/Musselshell went from 220 to 257.

I sure hope June is a cool month also.

You must be looking at something different from what I'm seeing. We're at 110,000 cfs right now, and definitely didn't come anywhere near 172,000.

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv?site_no=06329500

http://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/mt/nwis/pea...amp;format=html

No, I was looking at the same thing. I've been using the USGS site for many years. I don't understand what happened. The gauge yesterday when I wrote that was at 172,000. I'm not losing my mind. I actually had two windows open and went back and forth to make sure I was writing the right figures. I noticed last night when I looked at it that it was only 110,000.
They have something marked as "measured discharge" Did they re-calibrate?
When I noticed that last night Glendive was at like 135,000 now it's offline. I'm assuming they weren't reading correctly or matching up with another method of measurement.
Strange.

Just out of curiosity I e-mailed a question to the USGS in Helena and within minutes got this response;

Good morning Nathan,

Yes, you are very observant. At Sidney the stream discharge was changed owning to our field crews visiting the gage, physically making a stream discharge measurement, reworking the record based on their field findings, updating the stage-discharge record, then posting the correct data onto our web page. Reworking the record and posting the correct data onto our webpage is not uncommon, especially at the high water flow we are currently experiencing. For that reason you may have noticed our PROVISIONAL statement near the top of each hydrograph page http://waterdata.usgs.gov/mt/nwis/uv/?site...060,00065,00010

We apologize for any inconvenience this causes. We do strive to keep the most current stream discharge data posted on the web but Mother Nature always has the last word. Channel conditions change at higher stream flows resulting in the need to rework the record. Thank you for writing. To confirm what is being posted on the web at Sidney, latter today (or tomorrow) our field crew is revisiting this gaging station and making a new discharge measurement. Changes they find will help us better define what is happening at our Sidney gage. Once we receive their field data information we might again update the web page with the correct information. I hope this helps. mel


Nice of the guy to respond. I told him/them to ignore me if they were busy, I was just curious.

They were out checking alot of the gauges since the wknd. They are rarely so important and many are completely submerged and possibly damaged or in need of re-calibration. I saw that several gauges reading huge numbers were recalibrated more than once this week.

The Army Corps of Engineers starting holding back some water in Canyon Ferry yesterday. It raised the level of the reservoir almost a foot in one day! If you've ever seen Canyon Ferry you know that's a LOT of water. It's still 18 feet low, but at this rate and given the weather forecasts, it won't take long to fill it.

They've lowered the flows out of Holter at the same time, maybe to help the folks downstream in the Dakotas and beyond.

There are flood warnings all over Montana and they still haven't recovered the body of the Yakima, Wa woman who drowned 10 days ago on the Smith River.

Canyon Ferry Reservoir on the Missouri River will be full either late today or tomorrow. It's come up 18 feet since Memorial Day weekend. That's 61,000 acre feet. For those familiar with 11-mile reservoir in Colorado, 11-mile's total capacity is 97,000 acre feet. Canyon Ferry has a 3-foot flood pool, but at this rate that will only delay releases out of Holter for a few days.

The Missouri River below Holter is now at 16,600 cfs. Normal is 6860 cfs. The inflows are 23K at Toston, but another 2K from other streams = 25K cfs. The Corps will soon have to match outflows to inflows. So the honeymoon fishing on the Mo is about to be over unless the snow melt winds down and that will depend on the weather.

The meteorologists are saying there is a high pressure ridge building in western Montana. That means less rain and higher daytime temps which = faster and greater snow melting. But, they are still predicting < Avg high temps and > Avg Precipitation for the period of July through September.