As often happens, the sunshine and the spring-like forecast brought about a shift in my mindset from enduring the remainder of winter to getting things opened up for the start of the spring season. Right on cue, Mother Nature shut me down this morning with another dumping of snow.

Thankfully the temperatures are holding steady and it looks like the remainder of the week will bring a return to an abundance of sunshine, highs in the 40’s and a resumption of spring preparations.

I decided yesterday that today would be the start of having the shop open every day so that is the reason for another day of watching the snow fall but it’s just one more day. Tomorrow we turn the corner and it looks like we’re headed for more seasonable norms just in time for the official arrival of spring just one week from today.

As you might expect, the talk has definitely turned to the water forecast for 2019. As the snow continues to pile up the Bureau of Reclamation has adjusted flow predictions upwards though nowhere near what we saw last season. The latest “most probable” projections look favorable with spring flows in the 7-8K range with a peak around 9K in June. Max probable shows a jump from 8K to 12k from April to May with a June peak just over 12K while the Minimum probable shows things holding about where they’re at through the spring season with a peak of around 6K in June and back around 4500 CFS for the rest of the season.

What does it all mean? As per usual, it means that we’ll get what we get, there’s not much we can do about any of it, and while an extremely wet spring could change the game from where we sit now we’re still liking what we see.

As far as the snowpack goes, we are well below where we were last season at this time so we see no reason to panic. Wading conditions may not be ideal if we hit those most or max probable projections but it’s a ways out yet. We’ll wait and see what happens.

As I proclaim every spring when I start writing these water reports we have no way of knowing what’s going to happen. The experts are making informed decisions and we trust what they are saying but the bottom line is that Mother Nature will always have the final say.

What we do know is that there will be water, there will be fish, there will be bugs and we will be fishing. Beyond that, our crystal ball is as clear as mud but I’m still expecting that we’re setting up for what could be one spectacular season on the Missouri.

For the time being this is what you need to know. Spring weather is coming. Several of the ramps have been cleared including Wolf Creek Bridge, Craig, Stickney and Mid Cannon so it is indeed GO TIME.

Reports from the last couple of days have been good to great. Detailed report to come but suffice it to say that the fish are eating. Traffic is light (for the moment) but that’s all about to change.

We had a couple of cancellations for this weekend so if you’re itching to get out on the MO’ and want to make a weekend out of scratching that itch give us a call.

Make the Missouri River (and Wolf Creek Angler) Busy Again!