Fall has finally come to the Bitterroot valley with the first rains of September. A Very hot summer with little precipitation was getting tense as summer was coming to an end, but we finally got some relief with heavy rain storms pass through on the eleventh and twelfth. At the moment it is sitting at 852 CFS, a nominal jump from 566 on 9/10 prior to that were sitting at 559 CFS on the tenth from 616 CFS at the start of the month. Temps have come down quite nicely as well, with highs finally back in the high fifties and nightly lows in the low fifties and expected to continue dropping nicely as we get closer to winter.

The first cool rains of September have kicked off our early fall hatches quite nicely. The terrestrial bugs are still present, though they will rapidly dwindle as the nights get colder. After the first frosts of fall the hoppers are usually entirely gone. Tricos are actively hatching off, with the duns and subsequent spinner fall being the reliable pattern fishing the mornings. As the sun gets overhead and the water warms the Tricos hatch will slow down. The BWOs, Hecuba, gray drakes and mahoganies will begin to emerge mid-morning and continue into late evening. Late in the evening and into the night October caddis will begin to hatch, while they’re still quite thin right now, they’ll get become more commonplace as the season progresses. We just saw our first adults flying around this weekend. The October caddis hatch is one of my favorite hatches as it can make for some very exciting fishing skating a caddis fly in the late evenings.

Streamer fishing is finally kicking off again as well! Cool rising water has the big mature fish feeding actively and searching for meat. Any bump in the flows will have fish moving up to feed, and that spike of water we had on the night of the 11^th would have been a great afternoon to be getting after it. In a few weeks the browns will begin running upstream to spawn, and that can be some of the best streamer fishing all year. Braidy sections of the river and deep rapids will hold groups of moving fish as they move on the route to spawn. They’ll be looking to put a feed bag on, and you might be surprised at the size of the streamers they’re willing to take!

Nymphing is always good in the bitterroot, though with the volume of bugs hatching right now they’ll be eyeballing the surface more than the bottom of the water column. Cracked back perdigons, glass bead Tricos, or any pheasant tail pattern will absolutely get fish though, and it can help to fish a little higher in the water column, especially as insects are actively emerging.