Gunpowder River High and Clear


The Gunpowder River is flowing at 321 CFs and is 60 degrees F. The upper river is clearing and dropping nicely. Streamer sink- tip techniques should move quite a few fish in these flows. A better bet if you’d like to hook and land a few would be to seek out the flat water and spend some time fishing Olives and midge emergers in the #18-22 range. It’s not to late to fish a large hopper-and dropper rig leaping frogging the boulder pools and covering more water. We’ve found a lot of new folks fishing right on top of each other in the past few weeks so be sure give everyone a stretch of water to themselves. Fly fishing, after all is not widely known as a group sport. A good rule of thumb is to yield to anglers fishing upstream. That is–a dry fly presentation won’t spoke fish nearly as bad swinging a streamer through a pool. If you can throw a rock and hit another angler it’s likely that you are too close ask as a courtesy which direction they are fishing and leapfrog around and continue fishing. Sadly, the lower river below Bluemount and the confluence of Little Falls is still too high to safely fish at 518 Cfs. The above photo from Gene Howson shot Monday shows leaves in full color along the river corridor, clear water and a hopeful drift.