Whole lot of fishing, not a whole lot of fish.

When we decided to make this year all about fishing, several famous trout waters came to mind, Yellowstone, North Platte, Gallatin, and of course the Madison.  These are rivers that according to history are what dreams are made of for fly fishing trout fishermen.  Being new to all this, we were not completely clear on exactly what the primo times of the year are for each one.  We hit the North Platte just a little late, but still did well.  We hit the Yellowstone a bit early as the water was still high and we almost missed our float there due to muddy water, and as it turns out we hit the Madison a bit off schedule as well.  We are now in a little town called Ennis that is centered on fly fishermen.  It is a really cute place with bars and restaurants, shops, etc, and 3 fly shops.  Its population is 890!  But understand the Madison runs right through it, there are probably 5-6 river access points within 5 miles, and a plethora of fly fishing guides and outfitters.  

Some cool sculptures in town

Everyone here talks about fishing, the very nice campground we are in, Ennis RV Park is filled with fishermen, almost everyone that stops in, is here to fish the famous Madison.  In fact many of them are here from when the park opens in April until they close in October.  To fish.  It is very cool.

A shot of the river with 2 sandhills flying over

Look close and you can see how clear the water is

Heading into the river

I don't want to bore all you non-fishing folks, but trout for the most part are voracious eaters, but very temperature dependent.  And their fare varies as the year progresses.  If the water warms up a lot, think late summer, they get a bit lethargic and don't eat much. The converse is also true, very cold water slows things down also, but you need to remember they do still eat.  In spring and early summer there are different "hatches" of aquatic insects coming off the water, these are their smorgasbord.  These insects, mayflies and caddis for the most part, are completing their life cycle of going from a nymph, a creepy crawly guy from under and on top of the rocks in the water, go up to the surface and emerge as a flying insect to mate and die to start the whole cycle over again. Trout feed on these throughout their cycle, but when the hatches occur they are moving and presenting themselves and the trout love it.  You as a fly fisherman can fish with flies that imitate these insects at different times in their struggle to make it into the air.  You can fish nymphs down deep in the water, as we did on the North Platte, or as dry flies which float on the surface imitating the insects as they ready and dry to make that flight off the water.  As the season progresses through late summer and into fall, there are fewer hatches, so the trout, when the water is cool, move on to terrestrials, such as grasshoppers, ants, etc, huge trout will even eat mice!  

Even the art work is about fly fishing!

So right now on the Madison things are a little slow as the transition from hatches to terrestrials with warm water especially in the afternoon have slowed things down somewhat.  Jan and I have hit it hard, but other than having one fish on the line, and several bites, we have not been successful, as have most of the other anglers we meet.  One advantage to this is as things slow down here before it makes its resurgence later in the fall, is there are very few fisherman.  You almost have this big beautiful river all to yourselves, this is one of the most heavily fished rivers in the US, and that also makes the fish extremely wary and if they've been around for awhile pretty damn smart about what they eat.  Also as I mentioned before it is fire season out here and the smoke has been thick.  This is the reason we have very few pictures right now, the scenery here is fantastic, if we could actually see it:-)  

We also got an opportunity to wade a little different than we had before, with the warm temps, it's mostly in the 80's during the day, and the warm water, relatively speaking, it makes wading in our waders pretty warm.  And we noticed that the majority of the fishermen we saw were fishing in shorts.  But the river bottom is covered with rounded rocks that are slippery and the current is swift so you really need your wading boots.  So we got some neoprene booties that take up the thickness of your waders, so you can still wear your boots and your shorts!

We have just had several days of rain showers which have helped get rid of some of the smoke.  It was a welcome relief.  So now we can see again!

Rain showers all around

The excellent view right from our campground!

This is our last day here, but we have already decided we will be back next year.  We'll try to hit the timing a little better and we want to do a float trip here.  The campground is nice, as I said, large sites, plenty of room, close to the water and town, and we just found a very good meat market that is a local legend, Deemo's Meats with great selection and dynamite home made jerky!