The water · live
Right now,
on every river
I care about.
Flows straight from the USGS gauge network, refreshed every time this page loads. The verdict beside each one is mine, not theirs — a number is only useful once someone tells you what it means on that particular river.
Prime — go now
Fishable — worth the drive
Runoff — do not bother
Too warm — closure risk
Road or season closed
Station readouts
Snake Riverabove Jackson Lake at Flagg Ranch, WY · USGS 13010065
- Discharge
- —
- 24 hr
- —
- Water temp
- —
Loading
Last loaded — · Streamflow data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. · provisional data, subject to revision · gauge IDs verified 2026-07
When to go
The window is narrower
than the season.
Twelve months across, one river per row. This is the part no gauge can tell you — it folds in runoff timing, water temperature, hatch windows, and whether the road in is open at all.
Prime — go now
Fishable — worth the drive
Runoff — do not bother
Too warm — closure risk
Road or season closed
The white outline marks the current month. Runoff dates shift by two or three weeks year to year with the snowpack, so treat a prime block as a starting hypothesis and check the live flow above before you load the truck.
Why these thresholds
- Yellowstone River
- Big water on a 2,615 sq mi drainage. Average annual peak is about 16,800 ft³/s around 8 June, and minimum daily flows average roughly 650, so the fishable band sits low in that range. Below 1,200 the fish stack in the deep bends and wade access gets thin.Prime window 1,200–4,000 ft³/s · 1,290 mi one way
- Blackfoot River
- Runs around 1,300 ft³/s in late July and four to six thousand at spring peak. Hoot owl closures are routine here in August — check the Montana FWP restriction page before you commit to the drive, not at the put-in.Prime window 700–2,000 ft³/s · 1,410 mi one way
- Snake River
- Average annual peak is about 6,700 ft³/s around 26 May, dropping to an average annual minimum near 240. Road access is the real constraint rather than the flow — everything upstream is shut until the plows get through.Prime window 400–1,800 ft³/s · 1,520 mi one way
- Colorado River
- Draining 17,849 sq mi, so it moves a lot of water and warms up fast. Mid-July sits around 1,700 ft³/s. This is a shoulder-season river for me, not a summer one.Prime window 1,800–6,000 ft³/s · 1,560 mi one way
- Colorado River
- A tailwater below Glen Canyon Dam, so flows follow a release schedule rather than the weather. Cold year-round, which is why this is the one row on the chart that is prime in January.Prime window 8,000–14,000 ft³/s · 1,980 mi one way