Allrighty then… Give us your best shot and the winner will get some high quality Sweetwater schwag. Extra points will be given if you can name either or both of the motards in this picture.

Hey Zach, can we get a few more of these?

As July winds down to a blurry end, shop Joey’s around the great state of Montana are busily restocking the crap out of Morrish’s Hopper. According to the USDA, swarms of grasshoppers will soon descend upon us like Locusts and destroy everything in their path. Now I’m starting to wonder if I ordered enough flies. No worries, our good buddy Zach Mertens at Idylwilde will surely come to the rescue if things get dire.

We’re glad to see that the security cameras in the Murray Bar are being put to good use. Bejeebus, someone got bored this winter.

In the next couple of days, you can expect to see this somewhere on the Yellowstone.

No, this is not another New Zealand porn shoot. This is local boy James Anderson and the giant brown he landed on the Yellowstone last week. While we were flailing around with bobbers and dry flies, James, in true John Holmes style, put the meat on the table. Fortunately for Mrs. Brown, James is a sensitive, noble angler and she was released unharmed. Congratulations, James!

More at Jame’s MDCH Blog.

The Yellowstone begins to change. First green, then olive, then brown then hopefully back to olive. Underneath its foam lines and riffles lies THE biomass, millions of Brachycentrus occidentalis (Mother’s Day Caddis). They are becoming restless in their little homes and with that comes restless trout. Soon the bio-mass will be released, and all hell will break loose until runoff comes to wash it all away.

Every year it’s the same. It slowly works its way into my psyche like a bad habit. I find myself staring at the river longer and longer, watching the Yellowstone slowly brew up its annual feast of bug soup. I begin to twitch a little. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I can no longer look at the bobber, or if I’m just tired of listening to the Serbian kid go on about how he only fishes during the week and hasn’t fished a nymph all spring. All I know is that Caddisflies mean two things: that winter really is over and I can now fish dry flies to big, gluttonous trouts. I will skip out on work and make excuses to my wife with the well polished justification that my binge will soon end and I will repent come high water.

Our very own Lynn Donaldson talks about getting your eat on via the back roads of Montana in a recent Travel Montana campaign.