Upper Madison February 6th, 2010

Fished the upper madison between Hebgen and Quake lake yesterday. We got out around 11am and hiked out to quake. Not a good idea if you doing have skis or snowshoes. Snow was about 2 feet deep and drifts about 3 ft. Not much luck out by the lake besides two decent rainbows. Went about two miles upstream after that and did better. Fished a dark scuplin #6 with a rootbeer midge #18 and produced some fish. Caught a pretty nice brown, and had a chunk of its tail bitten/ripped off. Could be a Bow since they are becoming pretty territorial right now before spawn, but also could be a bird of prey. I saw the largest bald eagle of my life yesterday, and could very well have been that sucker. To my surprise, all fish taken on the streamer today, hit it right when it hit the water. My train of thought would be these fish would hit it on the dead drift. Maybe a bow would hit like that due to prespawn, but a brown? Who knows. All the rainbows we caught were looking about full spawn so its going to come soon that you will have to be wary of the redds. Air temp was about a 28 degree high and water was 36 degrees. Flows were pretty good for this time of year, and with all that snowfall we have, its looking to be a great summer fall here in SW Montana.