07/16/2024
Last night I was sitting around camp with some fellow fly fishers and they were bemoaning the quality of the fishing: The water was to low, the water was to high, the water was to warm, I should have gone into Tetons. NO, you should do your research!
I did mine and it has payed off. Now I understand that sometime when you can get out is driven by your work/family/social constraints. But even if you have to put in your “leave request” a couple of months in advance you can still make it for the most likely best time period.
I may have a bit of a competitive advantage. In a previous life, read as working years, I was an environmental scientist with advanced degrees in fisheries science and water resources engineering. But l just used information available to all of us.
Do you look at USGS stream flow monitoring sites? Not just for data for the last 7 days, which is the default, but graphs of the last several years. Do you know that at some sites not only is flow measured but temperature and/or precipitation is recorded? Or in states where irrigation is important a state agency likely monitors stream flow.
In the west snow pack is critical for predicting water supply information. Have you ever look at USDA SNOTEL snow pack data? It can be viewed at a basin wide level but also at a site specific level. The Upper North Platte Basin average might be only be 60 percent of long term average but the snow accumulation at the Mt Zerkel site, which is a measure of snow pack in the Encampment watershed might be significantly different from the basin wide average. If you compare the correlation between snow pack at Mt Zerkel and long term flow rates at the USGS gage on the upper Encampment you can predict the peak runoff and prime fishing levels with good accuracy.
What about WebCams? Most state departments of transportation have real-time WebCams. Find the ones near where you want to fish and use them as a surrogate of USDA SNOTEL sites.
The only excuse for not being on the stream under optimal conditions is your life schedule won’t let you!
