By Mike Loebl
With the cool weather we’ve had this May and the early coming of the third Saturday in May, the Montana Trout Opener snuck up a bit on all of us. Regardless that it felt too early in the season, the truck was packed up last night for a foray to the Madison before work on the 15th, Opening Day. Some years Opening Day has a night before Xmas feel, but today’s Opener just seemed like another day of fishing, especially after getting a late start and then seeing mostly full parking lots at Raynold’s Pass Bridge. After a winter and spring of very uncrowded fishing, the opener brings anglers out from just about everywhere. But the fishing is always very good and the Madison has plenty of great water to spread everyone out, so the few extra folks are of little consequence.
Driving downriver, I found some water that wasn’t getting fished and got wadered up. The weather was perfect and Domino, my German Wirehair, was impatiently ready to fish. The river is a touch low and is yet to be tinged with run off. Conditions are just about perfect. The Madison’s rainbows rewarded me for my past experiences, readily eating the flies they often do during the early season. Good drifts in most of the deeper riffles were pounced on by fish. Rock slicks predictably didn’t put out many fish. As the river gets more discolored, they will hold greater numbers of trout. Only one fish was dark from spawning, most were bright and fat for their length which was certainly a good sign that the fish did well this winter. Domino was excited for each fish, even the sole Mountain Whitefish that came to hand. After just shy of two hours of fishing, I had caught a satisfying amount of fish, Domino was in need of warming up and we called it a morning. I left the Madison excited for the day we had shared and for the season to come.