WHEN LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION for the remodel of their new home, Jim and Beth Hageman knew there was no better influence than nature — especially because their recently purchased property was located right on the Madison River near Ennis, Montana. [caption id="attachment_11640" align="alignleft" width="271"] As avid...
IN LIVINGSTON, MONTANA, barely a stone’s throw from the Yellowstone River, a handful of fly-fishing craftspeople are at the forefront of a burgeoning movement, creating handmade, utilitarian works of art. Boats. Rods. Flies. Not unlike the pioneering farmers of the farm-to-table movement, these men and...
THE BIG HOLE RIVER has its start east of the Continental Divide in the Beaverheads, bubbling up from a complex of high-altitude rivulets and runs, snowmelt ponds and puddles, before flowing 150-some miles toward its confluence with the Jefferson River. Along the way, the Big...
[caption id="attachment_11328" align="alignright" width="210"] brown drake, Silver Creek, Idaho[/caption] SO HERE'S A THOUGHT: If you’ve taken up fly fishing, the trajectory of your progress — the map of your success — runs large to small. You start out on the riverbank, checking in sort of nonspecifically...
SOUTH OF THREE FORKS where the graveled Madison Road winds past cattle ranches, horse farms, and residences, there’s a unique, unmarked fishery at the Cobblestone Fishing Access site. Commonly known as Darlington Spring Creek Ditch (its original name was Darlinton, after the family that once owned the...
WHEN MY WIFE AND I CRESTED THE FINAL mound of trail approaching Gneiss Lake in Montana’s Tobacco Root Mountains, the beauty of the jagged granite walls briefly halted us. Below, concentric circles of slow-rising cutthroat trout pocked Gneiss’ surface, and the click-clack of bounding mountain...
THUNDER BOOMED AND LIGHTNING STRUCK the valley below. Rain strafed the exposed granite ridge in windy gyres, but only briefly. Remnant water drops glinted on the chalet windows — fool’s gold in the setting sun — and a deceptive rainbow appeared to the west over...
ANYONE WHO HAS FLOATED Montana’s Smith River surely has heard of Tenderfoot Creek, one of the main tributaries flowing into the legendary trout stream. Many anglers have waded up the Tenderfoot from the Smith, in hopes of landing a native westslope cutthroat or a big...
BACK IN MY EARLY 20s, when I was living in Big Sky, Montana, I dabbled in fly fishing. I knew enough to tie on flies (albeit slowly) and catch small (tiny) trout on the West Fork of the Gallatin River. Every time I did, I’d...
I was 14 or 15 years old when my father, Burl Jones, created a wildlife museum. This was a couple of miles south of Livingston, Montana, off Highway 89. Dad was on his way to an applauded career as a bronze artist, and had just...