Fly Fishing the Missouri River

​While in Montana I had the extremely fun experience of fly fishing the Missouri River near Craig, Montana with Headhunters Fly Shop. In mid- April, the weather in Craig can vary greatly between warm spring weather and cold winter conditions. On this day we had snow, wind, and rain. Challenging conditions, but the upside is we had the river mostly to ourselves. I had fished here before in October 2019 and was part of a YouTube video series about fly fishing the river when I was working for Gig Harbor Fly Shop in Washington. During that first trip we did a lot of streamer fishing and nymphing, and I particularly enjoyed stripping streamer from a drift boat so I was hoping for more of the same during this visit. My guide Kurt told me that the streamer fishing should be pretty good but the Skwala hatch was happening and we had a good chance at dry fly fishing during the day. I have a great 4 weight Sage Trout LL that I love to use for dry fly fishing and I was excited at the prospect of testing the rod on the larger trout that the Missouri is famous for. We started our day with streamer fishing. I have a Sage X 6 weight that is a great trout streamer rod, and we found our first brown trout of the day using a white and silver conehead streamer. The streamer fishing that morning was a bit tough and I missed a couple of strikes before landing my first fish. The takes were very light possibly because the fish were slightly lethargic due to the winter like conditions. Later in the morning we began dry fly fishing with a Skwala imitation. We fished the slow seams near the banks and had very little success for the first while. We got our first hit before we saw a single fish feed on the surface. As the day went on we saw baetis hatching and began to see fish feeding on the surface. From there the dry fly fishing only got better. More and more large fish began sipping the Skwala and a couple of times, larger fish had my 4 weight bent right to the surface of the river. Dry fly fishing can be very technical on the Missouri River with casts often needing to be withing a foot of the bank or getting a drag free downstream drift to feeding fish. I had an opportunity to experience success doing both. On one such occasion where the fly needed to be placed on a slow seam up against the banks I saw a slow eat on my Skwala and found myself in a fight with a beautiful 20 inch brown trout. I also found myself in a couple of instances where we anchored above feeding fish and I had to make a downstream cast then stack mend without moving the fly. The use of a reach cast also helped me find some success as it helped me position my line upstream of my fly without needing to mend. Despite the weather this day turned out to be one of the best dry fly days I’ve had in a long time. I ended up landing about 20 trout over 16 inches. If you are interested in or planning to visit Craig for some fly fishing I highly recommend checking out Headhunters Fly Shop, and make sure you practice you casting before you go. It will make a huge difference in your success if you do.