Spring is here and the weather and river conditions on the Bighorn could not be better. The water is crystal clear and the flows are still low and slow. Weather temperatures for the next week look to be peaking up around the mid 60’s with the occasional spring storm moving through.
Blue Wing Olive Mayflies love the warm clear mornings and cloudy rainy afternoons. Something about this combination of weather makes them pop out of the river like popcorn. Finding the perfect seam line or riffle is easy to do. Look for trout heads rolling around like boiling water. Unlike the Trico Hatch, the trout will not wait for the dry flies but will rather target them. The Blue Wing Olive Nymph is much larger than the Trico Nymph and the trout will actively feed subsurface on emerging nymphs. Be sure to throw some sort of Baetis Nymph pattern accompanied with a Pink Sow Bug or the Ray Charles.
The spring snow melt has not yet begun but fortunately, the mountain snow pack is low, meaning there should not be huge water flows. The BOR may bump the river a little bit, but it shouldn’t last long and it shouldn’t be that big of a bump.The Bighorn River is shaping up into classic form for the Spring '19 season.
The water temperature is still very cool due to a frozen reservoir most of the winter season. The cold water makes the trout very lethargic and consequently, they don’t want to work very hard for food. An angler should concentrate his efforts in the deep slow water. Trout don’t strike nearly as hard either so pay very close attention to the indicator. A lot of times a simple tremor means a big hungry Rainbow is sniffing your fly. Not all the big deep holes are holding a lot of trout. The holes they choose to group-up in seem to change every year. If last year's honey hole isn’t producing, don’t chalk it up to poor fishing. Go find another deep slow hole or another until you have some success, and then stay there! Where there is one feeding trout in the spring there are always more.
We’ll leave you with this. These are the best spring fishing conditions we’ve seen in quite a few years and we’re really looking forward to the 2019 Fishing season!
Happy Spring Fishing from Forrester’s Bighorn River Resort!