Spring: The Best Season for Trout Fishing

Most people seem to fetishize summer: warm, languid days dripping sweat and sunshine; nights like 70s basketball shorts.

Not me.

At least not when it comes to trout fishing. Summer certainly burns in the hearth of nostalgia—I liked the freedom that came with aestival vacation as much as the next kid—but given the choice, I’ll take spring fishing over summer. If you’re a trout angler, there’s really no comparison.

Of course, the best time to fish is now, whenever “now” happens to be. Seasons are temporal and cyclical, and we fish when we can. Spring, however, is special. March smolders with opportunity, April burns with bugs, and May explodes. If you've wasted the past few weeks pining for cookouts and cornhole, you’ve been wishing away some of the best fishing of the year.

Spring brings a fleeting window of perfection that shifts from place to place and year to year—a moving target of warming temperatures between winter and runoff. This, my friends, is the sweet spot: Warm enough to vanquish the ice, clear the valley snow, and stir up the bug life without triggering melt in the high country or headwaters. Its unpredictability is part of the appeal. Hit it right and you’re in for the best fishing of the year, but you need to hurry. Once the heat comes in earnest, prime fishing transforms into turd soup. 

The magic of this window is partially due to river stability and clarity, but also because the slow increase in water temperature causes trout to begin feeding more aggressively and spreading out. While it’s cool to know that 90% of the fish are stacked in a handful of deep slow pools all winter, that also limits your options for where to fish productively. As the water warms, plenty of fish remain in those same deep slow pools, but they start to spread out. Best of all, though, they start EATING, seeking out food instead of opening their mouths for whatever passes. Warmer water means increased metabolic needs, more active bug life means more abundant food, and the hormonal shifts in spring spawners mean a greater caloric intake. 

While my favorite flies to fish are small, drab dries, my favorite flies to tie would fit right in on Liberace’s Christmas Tree. I don’t know what it is about opening a box and having my face light up like Vincent Vega’s that brings me so much joy. Perhaps I’m easily amused. Whatever. If you like shiny objects as much as I do, then we both have something in common with spring trout. Bust out your tinsel and flash, because it’s a celebration! The most productive fly in my box for much of spring is a bright red Gamakatsu Octopus hook wrapped in a thin strip of florescent red Edge Bright. Dirty? Maybe. Effective? Incredibly.

Maybe worms aren’t for you, that’s cool, the same principles apply to just about any fly you fish. Rubberlegs tied with brown and copper chenille crush on rivers with stoneflies. (There’s something about brown and copper.) Lightning bugs work on some fisheries, like the Madison, year-round, but they’re consistently effective in the spring. Ever tried a prince nymph with Flashabou wing? You should, but only between March and May. After that, they scare more fish than they catch.

Of course you do, unless you’re a hardcore Euro nympher or streamer junkie. No judgement, I just confessed to loving a blinged-out dirt snake. While some rivers, mostly tailwaters, see midge rises throughout the winter, the bug party usually starts in March and gets better from there. When baetis join the midges, trout start looking up in earnest and some of the bigger fish begin to poke their noses up. While they’re called March Browns, I don’t actually see very many March Browns in March. They mostly come out in April. After that, the mayflies just get bigger and bigger until they peak in early summer with drakes or Hexagenia (depending on where you live).

Our namesake stonefly, the skwala, comes out to play in the spring across most of its range. Except in California, where they hatch in the dead of winter. While Skwalas, like spring flows, can be inconsistent and difficult to time, caddis are pretty darn predictable. Once the water temps hit the low 50s (53 degrees, to be exact) Grannom caddis emerge and swarm. While this usually happens in mid-May (hence the name Mother’s Day caddis), bugs don’t own calendars, and that perfect water temperature window varies depending on location and weather. 

Spring brings out a menagerie of insects, which offer a cornucopia of food options for the fish. They’re eating all across the water column, from substrate to surface, so you have a good chance at catching them in whatever manner you prefer: dry flies, nymphs, or streamers.

As I have written in the past, I think the fall streamer thing is bogus. Can you catch big fish on streamers in the fall? Absolutely. Is that the best time to do so? Not in my experience. The best streamer fishing I’ve found, both in terms of size and numbers, comes in the late spring. Runoff usually happens in waves. The weather warms and sends down a pulse of snow melt that spikes the rivers. Then, cooler conditions reclaim the landscape and shut down the high country thaw. This specific weather pattern can trigger the streamer bite. River levels come down and stabilize but remain higher than average, forcing fish to congregate along the banks, both the little ones and the big predatory ones. When the water goes from brown to green, it’s on. This window might only last for a day or two, so pay attention.

Unlike Eric Carmen (RIP), I do want to be all by myself, or with a handful of chosen co-conspirators. On all but the most popular Western trout rivers, early spring still offers a good chance at solitude. As the days pass and the weather warms, you’ll find more and more vehicles at the parking lots and pullouts. Thankfully, spring brings moody, unsettled conditions, and days like that put off a lot of fair weather fly fishers. People fear inclement weather. They’d rather have terrible fishing in shorts, than banner fishing in waders and underlayers . 

That brings me to the final reason why I enjoy spring—I like cold fishing days. Brutal, dead winter cold, when your guides ice-up every third cast and you slice leaders against shelf ice, can be rough, but spring cold really isn’t that bad. With the right gear, you can fish very comfortably in 40-degree weather, even rain. And there’s a certain satisfaction, a charging of core fortitude, that blooms when your extremities tingle for a few hours. Cold weather snaps me into focus, whereas heat turns me into a puddle of sloth. Plus, whiskey tastes better when you’re cold; it’s like a sweater for your insides.

Summer is coming, soon enough, but spring is quickly skipping out. Do yourself a favor and go fishing, right now. Before you know it, runoff will descend. After that, crowds will arrive. Spend August exploring the high country . The next few weeks likely offer some of the best trout fishing you’ll see all year on the major rivers.

Miles Nolte is the lead storyteller at Skwala. Before that, he cohosted the fishing podcast Bent, wrote the Angling Column for Gray’s Sporting Journal, and worked as a fly fishing guide for 15 years in Montana and Alaska.