There is a stretch of the Missouri River below Holter Dam that does not look like a trout stream. It is wide, slow, and sweeping, meandering through a dry, grassy valley toward the town of Cascade. There are no tumbling rapids here, no deep, boulder-strewn pools. It looks like a river meant for catfish and carp.
But beneath the surface of that slow, methodical current lies one of the greatest trout fisheries on earth. The cold water released from the dam creates a massive, fertile spring creek, holding between five and seven thousand trout per mile. They are heavy, broad-shouldered rainbows and long, predatory brown trout, and they are some of the most difficult fish to catch in the state of Montana.
To fish the Missouri is to submit to an education in humility. The water is flat, the currents are complex, and the fish have all the time in the world to inspect your fly. They will not tolerate drag. They will not tolerate a sloppy cast. They demand perfection.
The Technical Water
The Missouri is a river for the dry-fly purist. It is a river where a man can spend an entire afternoon casting to a single, rising fish. You must use long leaders, often twelve or fifteen feet, and fine tippet, down to 5X or 6X. You must present the fly so that it drifts exactly at the speed of the current, without the slightest hint of unnatural movement.
When the Pale Morning Duns hatch in July, the surface of the river comes alive with the subtle, sipping rises of feeding trout. It is a quiet, deliberate kind of fishing. There is no blind casting here. You locate a rising fish, you study its rhythm, you position yourself, and you make the cast.
And when you finally hook one of these fish, the fight is not over. The rainbows of the Missouri are famous for their strength. They will take you deep into your backing, running hard across the wide river, using the heavy current to their advantage. A man must be patient, and he must trust his knots.
The Seasons of the River
Because it is a tailwater, the Missouri fishes well all year. In the dead of winter, when the freestone rivers are locked in ice, the Missouri runs clear and cold. On a calm afternoon in January, the midges will hatch, and the trout will rise to them. It requires cold hands and fine tippet, but it is a way to break the long winter.
Spring brings the Blue-Winged Olives, a reliable hatch that produces some of the most consistent dry-fly fishing of the year. But the true glory of the Missouri comes in the summer. The PMDs dominate July, followed by the Trico spinner falls in August.
The Trico hatch is a spectacle of micro-engineering. Millions of tiny, size twenty-two mayflies blanket the water in the early morning. The trout line up in the foam lines, mouths open, sipping the spent spinners as they drift by. It is maddening, exacting work, trying to track a tiny speck of a fly among thousands of naturals, waiting for the right fish to take it.
The Missouri is not a river for beginners. It is a river that will expose your flaws and test your patience. But when everything comes together—when the cast is true, the drift is perfect, and a heavy brown trout slowly tips up and inhales your fly—there is no finer feeling in the world of fly fishing.
Open-source photograph