As of June 25th Grey Reef was just bumped to 2000cfs. This is excellent but so was 500 and 1000cfs. Fishing has been so good, so fun…it’s hard to articulate. The article below is from our newsletter that we sent out a couple of weeks ago. Still true. Dry fly, streamer, nymph rigs, dry/dropper, carping, wading, bushwhacking, adventuring, floating, dive bars, ice cream cones from a country store, cocktails on the deck of the marina, historic and cultural sites, wildlife…this is big country…let the memory haunt you, rather than the what-if.

Don’t Let Them Steal It
They are stealing your joy. The media doom-and-gloom surrounding the low snowpack in the western US has created unnecessary negative impacts on angler’s plans for fishing the 2026 season. Most of the outfitters in the Rocky Mountain West have had incredible spring fishing and we can comfortably say that the spring of 2026 has been our most fun and diverse fishing we’ve had in our nearly 3 decades of guiding fly fishers in Central Wyoming. It has, without question, taken the top position and it’ll be a thing of lore for many years to come.

This doesn’t come in spite of our snowpack, but because of it. The North Platte River has been pretty quiet due to several reasons. The first is that folks have been scared off by the news. The second is that all 100 miles of the lower North Platte River system have been clear and fishing and excellent, top to bottom. By excellent, we mean frequent and eager eats on dry flies, streamers and emerger nymph rigs. This phenomenon has dispersed anglers across a wide swath of the region, rather than compacting them into a shorter stretch of river. The third is that we’ve had recent regulation changes that haven’t been favorable to some anglers…like the new requirement to fish barbless and prohibitions on pegged-bead rigs. We don’t and never have fished barbs or pegged beads so these regs are nothing but positive for our program.

The freestone rivers in Montana, Utah, Idaho, Colorado and Wyoming are now entering runoff and that naturally puts a little damper on fishing. Once they come back down they should return to a great experience for a while. Many of the rivers will likely have some struggles as we move into sustained warmer air temperatures but it would be a disservice to yourself and those experiences to balk prematurely and to not discuss the options and realities with those outfitters or regional experts.

Grey Reef and Miracle Mile are tailwaters and always have a different story because of our geography and the volume of stored water in the system. We are isolated from runoff because the large reservoirs capture those molecules tumbling out of the Snowy, Sierra Madre, Wind River and Laramie Mountain Ranges. Runoff settles behind dams and then released in a controlled way that jibes with demand downriver. Count ‘em, 5 distinct tailwaters and 100 miles of the North Platte River are fed consistent and cool water all year-round.

Spring moisture and the metric “they” don’t mention: No doubt you’ve been bludgeoned by the snowpack graphics that look pretty dismal across much of the west, but they don’t post a graphic of the precipitation totals over the same duration. If they did, you might not feel as worried. We are extremely blessed in the grand scheme and the big snow event from last week was huge for the North Platte River. Large accumulations of heavy and wet spring snow in all of the mountain ranges that matter to us. The Snowys got 30”, South Pass got 24”, Casper Mountain received 24”. The kind of snow that got snowmobilers to drag their mountain sleds back out of storage, cross country ski trails to get a fresh groom and backcountry skiers out to harvest very late season powder.

Don’t think that we aren’t concerned. Things might get a little spicy later in the summer but the sky is still exactly where it is supposed to be. We’ve been through situations with dry winters and started past seasons with much less capacity in the reservoirs. A year or two later, we have record snow and reservoirs are recharged. Our flows have remained low and the fishing has been pretty staggering. We are scheduled to see a bump in flows in the next week or two. This will reduce water temperatures and get fish feeding in even cooler parts of the river.

What can angling enthusiasts do to get their fix? First, take a deep breath, then make a call and discuss it with someone who has real experience in the region you are researching. Second is to maybe rethink what a fly fishing experience is to you. The culture has shifted to a leisure activity with little tolerance for potential adverse weather. We get it, but that shift is robbing many of the best experiences on the water. Oftentimes, a low-pressure event supercharges the fish and they are short-lived. The most desirable weather doesn’t always align with the best fishing but it almost always aligns with the most river traffic. Our situation is a little different but you can mostly take that to the bank. Afternoon summer thunderstorms are more consistent than low-pressure events in April and October. The point is that there is a bunch of great fishing to be had in 2026 and many great places to do it. Don’t let them steal your thunder, get on the phone and have an actual conversation with outfitters in your target region. The broad, generalized low snowpack information we’ve been fed does not apply across the board, nor does it exclude really fun fishing trips in 2026.