Milesnick Spring Creeks
The spring creeks outside of the Milesnick property are on private land with no public access or fee fishing.
A Season of Hatches
The Milesnick Ranch fishing season follows the Montana trout season, which runs from the third Saturday in May through November 30. With Dave Kumlien’s help, I’ve made the following outline of the season’s significant hatches (see hatch chart). Interestingly, the spring creeks and the East Gallatin do not appear to have scuds or cressbugs.
Midges are one of the first flies on the water, but they are not often significant on either the creeks or the river. A pupa pattern can take some fish.
A spring Blue-winged Olive (Baetis) hatch comes off on the creeks and the river in May, but the river is high and muddy until runoff ends in late June or early July.
Next comes a #14-#16 olive-brown caddis hatch on both creeks and the river. Caddis hatches occur from about early June until mid-September, and they are especially strong in late afternoon and evening.
The river has some golden stoneflies in early July, but you will not see them on the creeks.
Pale Morning Duns start hatching in late June and continue through August. The hatch usually begins around 10:30 A.M., and the spinners fall in mid- to late afternoon to evening, depending on the weather. The PMD hatch is one of the streams’ most important hatches. It rivals the fall Baetis and the tremendous Trico hatches.
Tricos start in late July and run through September if the weather is decent. The Trico duns come off in large numbers by about 7 A.M., and the spinner fall occurs around 10:30 A.M. Some days you can look out over the stream in the morning and see a silver ribbon of Trico spinners bouncing over the water. Fish feed on the #18-#22 Tricos hard when they fall; it’s a faster cadence than you see during other hatches, making the fish easy to spot. Often you can fish spinners well into the afternoon, because dead spinners pile up in backeddies and bankside pockets, then break away and float downstream, like little cookies for trout. The East Gallatin has a great Trico hatch, too, and its fish are easier to catch than the spring-creek fish.
The fall Baetis hatch starts in mid to late September and lasts into November. These insects are smaller than the spring versions, #18-#20 rather than the #16 in spring. The fish really get going on the fall Baetis, especially during overcast weather with little wind.
Terrestrials work throughout the summer, but surprisingly there aren’t many grasshoppers, so hopper patterns don’t work well. Beetles, however, are very effective, and a small black deer-hair beetle will take sippers that won’t eat anything else. Ants also work well, but not as well as black beetles.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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