Great Falls: Best Place to Fish in Montana
There are 1763 cool places to fish in Montana, and I've been lucky enough to fish a percentage of those spots (absolutely no information given so far). This past weekend I spent on the Bitterroot near Darby and then down by Stevensville, a very well known spring skwala hatch, and surprisingly we had very little company on the river and lots of skwalas. It was great: read about it there.
Last night, Brian (our distribution manager) and Alfonso (our Field Marketing person) slid out of work 15 minutes early and headed towards our favorites sections of our local Great Falls water. Within about 20-30 minutes you can be on 3-4 different trout streams from our work parking lot. Great Falls gets a tough reputation from people who don't know, and I suppose I should want to keep it that way. People say its so far from the mountains, and that there is nothing to do. That's false, and last time I fished either Bozeman or Missoula (both epic trout towns... And I am MSU alumni so I'm familiar), I was on a 45-60 minute minimum drive to anywhere I was fishing. Those towns are great, but I have some pride in where I live and I have fun teaching other people to fly fish so I never mind running in to new anglers on Great Falls rivers. I'd rather have the opportunity to teach them what I've learned so they approach the river and the fish with good ethics.
Probably for a number of reasons, but I'd like to think I've has some influence in Al and Brian's fly fishing energy, I was invited by them to go fish last night. Received the green light from my family, and was stoked to go. Nice all day, until 4:45, then it rained bobcats and wolves (cats and dogs). I never clean my truck, and again, I found this to be a giant benefit as my rain jacket was still in there. Al and Brian suffered the consequences. The really cool thing was we fished a section I hadn't been fishing, and realized I had just got invited to fish water literally 25 minutes from the front door of where I work by Brian and Al, and it was great. Chalk that up to increasing my % of cool spots of the available 1763 I've fished. Thanks for sharing fellas!
The point is, if you ask me, Great Falls, Montana is the best fly fishing in Montana. Probably I feel this way because I know it well (but still learning). I love it here because these are my home waters, and I have pride in them, and I have pride in knowing them. I like sharing what I've learned from them so that others can enjoy fly fishing as much as I do, and eventually share that knowledge with someone else. It's my favorite place to fish because it gives me the most opportunities to be out on the water, more so than any other place.
Last year I moved back to Great Falls and I'm learning where some of the good spots are. With that said there are places to fish in every direction of town some taking about 45 min to get there. Lately though I have been able to fish not more than 10 min away from my house here in town. That really works out if I wanted to hit the water for a little after work before the sun goes down.
Next time you are in the area make sure to drop by the North 40 Fly Shop here in town and get the scoop on what direction to head. They always have some interesting things to know about what is working and where. If you like send them an email in advance to get some ideas of where you might want to go when you get here. Either way I'm sure they would like to talk fish with you.
Hope to see you soon!