Montana Angling Company

Stillwater days are all float trips with the option to wade through the day, run in rafts with fishing frames down a swift river littered with boulders that give its wild trout their structure. The company books them well ahead, because the river is only floatable at certain levels and the drive from Bozeman is long enough to mean early starts and late evenings. It puts the prime window at the first of July to the middle of September, with salmonflies and golden stones into mid August and hoppers from August onward. The Jefferson, which forms at Twin Bridges where the Beaverhead and the Big Hole meet, is fished from drift boats with wading available on every float, over April blue winged olives, July stoneflies and hoppers into mid August, for wild rainbow and brown trout.