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Flathead River (Montana) — a popular fishing spot. About 116 km long. The town of Polson is nearby. Here you'll find a bite prediction — when fish are active and which hours give the best chances, adjusted for weather and pressure.
Cloudy: 43–57 °F
Saturday, September 5
The bite is moderate — fish feed in short bursts. Pressure is rising — activity tends to be more subdued.
Best time — 07:00–09:00 (dawn bite) and 20:00–22:00 (dusk bite).
Work the cover — snags, weed edges, hole entrances; retrieve the lure with pauses.
In clear water, natural colors work best: small jig or minnow bait.
Bring a warm jacket — it's noticeably colder on the water than on shore.
An average day — best chances during peak windows.
The computed water temperature is around 50 °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
Partly cloudy · feels like +41°
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 Flathead River: current gauge height, streamflow, and water temperature when reported by the source.
USGS gauge Flathead River near Polson MT, 13 mi away · measured 2026-09-05 01:50 · data source · provisional data, subject to revision