The Blackfoot is extremely low right now, sitting at 370 CFS down from 473 on 8/15. We cannot stress enough that the river is extremely skinny at the moment. Just about any floats should be done in a raft, unless you don’t mind scraping the bottom of your hard boat. You should also expect to be doing some pulling and portaging on much of the river. It’s still very hot as well with afternoon highs in the high sixties to border of seventy and nightly lows in the high sixties.

Terrestrial patters are still the move, with hoppers being very thick in the lower section now. Usually, the hoppers will largely disappear with the first frosts of the year, though ants will continue to be active until there’s snow on the ground. Curiously the glitter ant has also had very good success in the upper Blackfoot as has been reported on rock creek. Tricos have been coming off in the lower sections as well as some Hecuba. Smaller caddis are still present in the evenings and we should see October Caddis pretty shortly.

Nymphing is always consistent, and a reliable move when the fishing gets tough. Small perdigons in natural colors in the top two meters of water on sunny clear days and larger dark colored patterns on more overcast rainy days is our recommendation. Though fishing has been good, and most of the time you don’t necessarily have to resort to grinding out the day on the nymph to put fish in the boat.

Streamer fishing has been slow with the hot low conditions, and I would largely write off streamer fishing in the lower section, just too dang skinny to need it. The upper sections can have some good action, but the hot and low conditions still make it a grind. Think small flashy patterns fished fast and shallow.