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River Clark Fork (Montana) — one of the area's fishing spots. About 227 km long. The town of Missoula is nearby. A smart bite calendar — moon phase, atmospheric pressure, and weather combined into an hourly fish-activity forecast for the coming days.
Clear: 37–55 °F
The bite is moderate — fish feed in short bursts. A thunderstorm is possible: activity rises before the front and drops after.
Best time — 07:00–08:00 (dawn bite) and 20:00–21:00 (dusk bite).
Work the cover — snags, weed edges, hole entrances; retrieve the lure with pauses. The water's cold — fish it more delicately and slowly.
The water's turning murky — go with bright, noisy lures: small jig or minnow bait. The water's cold — work the lure slower than usual.
Bring a warm jacket — it's noticeably colder on the water than on shore. A thunderstorm is possible — bring a rain jacket, and pack up at the first rumble of thunder.
An average day — best chances during peak windows.
The computed water temperature is around 49 °F — colder than the 57–75 °F comfort range for Black crappie: the fish conserves energy and takes more cautiously.
Black crappie works the twilight: the peaks are pinned to sunrise and sunset — their times are in the sun-and-moon card above.
Pressure is flat: it moves no more than 0.03 inHg over the day, so the weather isn't shifting today's bite.
One more input — the moon's feeding windows: within their hours the score sits higher than across the rest of the day. The window times are in the “Solunar feeding periods” card below.
September is an average month for Black crappie here.
These are the same values the bite curve above was computed from. How the forecast works
Drizzle · feels like +42°
The day is 3 min shorter than yesterday.
Sunshine hours count direct sun only — cloud cover cuts it, so it is shorter than daylight.
The windows are set by the moon's transit and rise, and the forecast above already accounts for them: within these hours the bite score sits higher than across the rest of the day, while the day's overall level still comes from the catch-calibrated model.
What are solunar periods?Measured river conditions are available for Clark Fork: current gauge height, streamflow, and water temperature when reported by the source.
USGS gauge Clark Fork ab Little Blackfoot R nr Garrison MT, 3 mi away · measured 2026-09-02 16:45 · data source · provisional data, subject to revision