Fly Fishing the Madison River in July 2023

We just completed our second week fly fishing the Madison River in July 2023. I hope you were able to see my post about our first week. If not, you can find it HERE. We had a terrific time, but all good things must come to an end. The next stop on this year’s fly fishing road trip will be Yellowstone National Park.

The fishing slowed down on our second week. We continued to cast Improved F and IOBO Humpy flies because they were so successful during the first week.

The last two days I decided to mix it up a little and tied on Arrick’s Parachute Ant, a fly we’ve used with success in previous years.

I caught my last two fish on this ant pattern.

Here is a nice Rainbow Trout that ate my IOBO Humpy.

We only fished around Lyon’s Bridge and around West Fork once each. The rest of our fishing was either upstream or downstream from $3 Bridge.

The river flow was a little higher, but a few fish were still rising during the last hour or so.

We caught a few of these smaller trout during the second week. Interestingly, we didn’t hook them the first week.

I found these Midges on the rocks many nights. These images are from our last evening on the river.

And a closeup of these size 20 or 22 flies.

We were lucky to catch a few big Brown Trout in the 18 – 19 inch range.

The Brown Trout gave us a great fight in the fast water. Here are a few more images.

While writing this post and looking at all my images, I was amazed to see most of the trout caught in the second week were Browns. Sure, several Rainbows were landed, but the larger fish we caught were mostly Brown Trout.

To say we had a terrific time is an understatement!

Our last sunset on the Madison River.

Enjoy…go fish!