I avoid crowds, rather than seek them, when fly fishing. Yet there I was, standing on the timbered, rocky banks of the Yellowstone River for the trout opener in Yellowstone National Park. After my guide, Marty Mononi, had floated me down the upper South Fork...
My dad taught me to look under stones. He counseled me on the different bugs that cling to the rock’s surface, as well as those that dart from beneath the disrupted rock and drift in the stream’s cloudy current. He informed my observation, pointing out...
The chief problem for the grasshopper, in terms of its status among fly fishers, is the mayfly. The mayfly — delicate, slender, standing quietly on a river, the soft peaks of its full wings angling high — is the insect that, to trout-stream fly fishers,...
When you drift down the Yellowstone in a wooden boat, you know it: The momentum is different. There’s a glide through the waves instead of a pull. On a July afternoon, it can smell like the trunk of a sun-warmed cedar. A wooden boat sounds...
We gaped from our cabin deck as thunder roared and lightning stung the high peaks of southwest Montana’s Gravelly and Madison ranges, 10,000-foot monoliths like Sphinx and Helmet. Rain strafed our roof — a deluge unseen in months — dousing intense July heat and wildfire...
In 2019, diverse stakeholders including agencies, guides, outfitters, landowners, businesses, and community members gathered to form the Flathead Rivers Alliance, a nonprofit organization that has since led collaborative efforts to safeguard the future of Montana’s Flathead Wild and Scenic River system. The organization’s mission is...
“You could ride in the morning, or sit in front of the cabin, lazy in the sun, and look across the valley where the hay was cut so the meadows were cropped brown and smooth to the line of quaking aspens along the river, now...
With a nearly imperceptible disturbance of the water’s surface, the fly disappeared. I quickly and firmly — but without too much force — lifted my rod upward with one hand, while pulling in some line with the other. The line went taut and I could...
Decades ago, I drew a coveted Shiras moose tag for the mountains north of Cooke City. A friend and I headed uphill by vehicle until I thought the habitat looked right, and then packed into a nearby lake. Most lakes on the Beartooth Plateau contain...
It was the second week of October, just on the edge of turning weather. A cold rain had arrived a few days earlier, taking down leaves all over town. Rows and rows of damp brown mounds dotted the street gutters like small mountain ranges. The...