Our good buddy, esteemed colleague and Scott Rod Rep.  John “Modobi” Dobson has brought home the hardware from Islamorada.  Congratulations John!  Check out the details as reported by the Florida Keys official website.

Montana Man Wins His First Backcountry Fly

ISLAMORADA, Florida Keys — John Dobson of Manhattan, Mont., caught 92.25 inches of redfish and snook while fly-fishing in the Florida Keys to win the Backcountry Fly Championship that ended Feb. 26.

Tournament anglers competed to catch the most inches of snook and redfish on fly. Rules mandated that only one catch of each species over the two days of fishing could be counted toward an angler’s total inches.

Dobson earned the title of grand champion angler fishing with Captain Drew Kleine of Islamorada, and also caught and released the tournament’s largest snook, measuring 29.5 inches. Dobson’s second snook was 26.75 inches, and his redfish were 17.5 and 18.5 inches.

Chris Maroney of Stuart, Fla., was awarded runner-up angler for scoring 70 inches of fish. He fished with Miami Captain Mick Hutchinsson.

Mark Cockerham secured the largest redfish at 30 inches with Captain Mark Gilman. Both are Islamorada residents.

Twenty-three anglers caught 10 snook and 22 redfish over two days.

Dobson Shows off the Goods!

Sweetwater’s own Turd Ferguson took home the Simms Shoot-Out Title on Friday night at the Ellen Theater in Bozeman. Turd along with filmmaker, Beattie Outdoor Productions  wooed the audience and fellow competitors with a revealing account of Turd’s life and fishing skills. The Shoot-Out competition was fiercely contested between four team of guides, anglers and filmmakers, all charged with producing a six minute film in a matter of just over two days. The winners of the competition won a nice stash of cash along with, of course plenty of Simms products and Galvan reels. Turd’s crew took home the gold by one vote. The votes were all submitted by text message.  Sweetwater guide Aaron Hansen only learned how to text during the last minute of voting and may have very well proved to be the difference maker. This now makes it two years in a row that the Sweetwater team has a major presence at the Simms Ice-Out event. Last year our crew  led by Scott Schumacher won the now discontinued Fish Bowl.

Special thanks to Turd,  RA Beattie, Austin Trayser, Clark Smyth and Simms for the laughs.

Fly Fishing Mystery Theater from RA Beattie on Vimeo.

Please join us in celebrating the greatness that is Steve “Sweet Cheeks” Wilson.  The winner gets a dozen crappy flies.

Did you ever dream of being a fishing guide in Alaska? Well our good buddy Joe did, and now he’s living the dream at the Copper River Lodge.

In this installment of “So You Want To Be A Fishing Guide” Joe Hyde shows his young guide crew how to clean a composting toilet. Joe is a fearless leader, he makes sure to show his crew that he’s not afraid to do the dirty work and thus ensures he will have something more important to do when it comes time to repeat the progress in August.

Thermopolis, WY.

You may have heard about the derailment of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train into the Wind River just south of Thermopolis last week.  Two locomotives and four freight cars derailed on Wednesday afternoon after slamming into a boulder in the Wind River canyon.  One locomotive and one freight car slid 60 feet down the bank and were partially submerged.  BNSF estimated that 3500 to 7000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled into the river.

When you’ve got a bunch of hazmat in a blue ribbon trout stream and need a jet boat and an expert jet boat driver, who ya gonna call?  Sweetwater! Sweetwater’s jet boat and operator, Scott Schumacher were contracted by the Whitewater Rescue Institute of Missoula to help with the clean-up efforts and biological assessment.  Scott was down helping with the effort for two days — shuttling clean-up workers and biologists, placing containment booms, and removing diesel fuel from the Wind and Bighorn rivers.  With the wreck being in the canyon and having some serious whitewater to negotiate, he also got to see some wild shit, including the sinking of the other jet boat helping BNSF.  Luckily, no one was hurt (other than the jet boat driver’s pride.)  Way to go sweet co!

After intercepting BHK’s first NZ field report of the new year we decided to send our very own Hey Joe Hyde down south to see if indeed NZ trout fishing doesn’t suck ass or if BHK had finally figured out how to use Photoshop…

Hey Dave, Brad says you’re looking for NZ fishing porn.  Here’s today’s catch!  It’s been pretty amazing so far….Brad knows his shit, and the fish (for the most part) have been accommodating.
Anyway, here’s some more pics, and we’ll send you the one of Brad’s 12 pounder tomorrow!

How are things in MT?

Joe