All mayflies are beautiful, but especially so to the fly angler’s eye. That all mayflies feed and fatten trout makes them, to that eye, more beautiful yet. I may have a favorite, and that favorite could change, but each Montana mayfly is surely the favorite...
Tom Rosenbauer can get any uncle excited about a small stream. Alvin Dedeaux can teach you how to almost look cool when you’re chasing bass. Kelly Galloup can demonstrate knocking out a 10-inch trout with a 12-inch streamer. But to my knowledge, no fly-fishing personality...
Water, no matter if it’s at the beach, running through a creek, or even in a puddle, is as fascinating to kids as it is to anglers. They’ll play in it all day long if you let them — splashing, digging holes, making channels. Joseph...
The Refugee Ocean by Pauls Toutonghi (Simon & Schuster, $27.99) is the kind of novel for which the form was invented. It creates sweeping, lush worlds, fully inhabited by its unforgettable characters. It spans continents and lifetimes with careful detail and balance. It leaves the...
Thomas E. Minckler has dealt in rare books, manuscripts, photographs, ephemera, and art for much of his life. His 2023 book, Montana: A Paper Trail, is a historical narrative that guides readers through the 19th century of the Northern Plains, Rocky Mountains, and early Montana....
Upon walking through the front doors of the Simms headquarters in Bozeman, Montana, a passion for angling is immediately apparent: It permeates the very building. There’s the latest merchandise on display, an entire wall filled with best-in-the-business awards, and a brief history of the company...
Among America’s most renowned luthiers, Montanan Ren Ferguson has made custom guitars for The Beatles, The Stones, Tom Petty, and Emmylou Harris, just to name a few. But recently, he’s used his hands to craft a heralded instrument dedicated to the stars of the trout...
Some might find it strange that one of my favorite trout streams flows through a burned-over canyon. I first visited Roaring Lion Creek in mid-July 2019, almost three years after a wildfire engulfed much of its basin. It was a cool and cloudy day, with drizzling...
I am featherlight, tossed like confetti into a brilliant blue sky, jostled about on the velvet wings of thousands of birds — tundra swans, herons, snow geese, northern pintails, marbled godwits. I roll from one downy back to another as we soar in harmony toward...
We’re a couple dozen miles down a rolling, dusty, backcountry road that shadows the Greys River in western Wyoming, and I can’t find the dream pool I want to fish. This uncertainty has my 15-year-old daughter stressed out. “Dad? Are we lost?” she asks for the...