Posts by Anthony VonRuden

While we are pre-hopper madness and spruce moth mayhem, there is still some fine fishing to be had for the adventurous angler. It’s the time of the season when fish in the riffles will rise to just about any attractor…but which attractor they’ll rise to is an algorithm you have to solve each day. Maybe […]

On the heels of Missoula’s gluttonous June fishing, July is a spectacle in and of itself: clear water, rising trout, and plenty of dry fly opportunities. Our river system is fishing well from top to bottom, and while flows are dropping steeply, we are in a far better place than we were last year at this […]

Fishing’s been good…to great…to as fine as you’ll ever find, here in Western Montana over the course of the past week or so. Most anglers fishing with us last week rebooked for the same dates next year. We’ll keep the light on for you! Clark Fork River: Even in the sun this river held a strong […]

If you haven’t been on the water in Missoula lately, your excuse had better be good. After a brief heat wave, we have settled back into a wet, seasonable window that has the fish going gangbusters. Our boats in the past four days have seen blanket hatches of mayflies on the Clark Fork and strong […]

What an amazing month of fishing we’ve had this May, both locally and on the Missouri.  Three pushes of runoff sent us over the Pass to the Mo’s dry-fly-eating trout, and three steep drops in flow produced some downright amazing (and solitary) Missoula fishing.  Being able to analyze the fluctuations in flow and capitalize on them, […]

Someone once told me: “Normal is nothing more than a setting on your washing machine.” So far, to put it simply, it’s been a strange spring in western Montana. Summer was upon us, with caddis hatches thickening by the day, and then it retreated–so much so that yesterday on the Missouri felt like early March again, […]

Up go the flows again… Which means we’ll probably head over Rogers again for more of the Mo’s dependable hatches and rising trout. But…our guests also caught another magic Missoula window last week complete with dropping flows and dry fly fishing. “More of the same,” isn’t a bad thing when you’re talking 3-4ft of visibility and dropping […]

The river flows keep going up, up, up — but soon enough they’ve gotta turn down. Will you be here? If you are, you might experience some of the best fishing of the year, like the kind we had last week on the upper Bitterroot, Blackfoot, and Clark Fork just downstream of Missoula. The stellar […]

It’s gonna be one of those weeks in Missoula — if you’re not watching the USGS Water Flow Gauges, you might get a cup full of bad river sauce. The warm weather, in other words, has bumped the flows and they’ll likely keep bumping, though not blow a gasket if the nighttime lows stay cold. […]