A week ago, I got the chance to fish the upper Madison with Joe Dilschneider of Montana Trout Stalkers. The fishing was challenging but we landed a nice brown and I let a couple others off the hook early. It was a great day on the river with typical June Montana weather.

I don't get out on any river very often these days so it was especially nice to get a taste of the outdoors.

The reason I'm writing this post though is that Joe was telling me about the Madison River Foundation on our trip. I knew of their existence already but that was about it. They are a relatively small organization still but they leverage their size well by doing some great local projects to keep the Madison one of the great fisheries in this country.

Our Mission

We will endeavor to preserve, protect and enhance the Madison River ecosystem for the mutual benefit of wildlife and all people who use it by employing professional expertise and advocating worthy public policy to ensure the future well-being of this valuable resource.

I hope you'll take a moment to browse their site, and if you have ever experienced the joy of fishing the Madison, I hope you'll give a little back and become a member. It takes a lot of effort to keep the valley a world class fishery and any support helps.

Thanks

The weather has been a mix of gorgeous and rainy here in SW Montana. I took the boys down to the Yellowstone yesterday to throw some rocks and sticks in the water and do some general exploration. We tried a poorly marked access that I'd never been to just south of town and the River was running high but fairly clear. I was pretty surprised at how fishable it looked (managing a 3 and 1 yr old next to high water seemed like enough to occupy my attention so I hadn't brought my rod).

This brings up the idea of River Reports. There are several sites out there that provide river reports posted by shops. Another site, for SW Montana at least is more of a community generated system for reporting. I met the other day with Dustin from Hatchopedia.com and we had a great conversation. Their site allows any user to submit reports and pics for their home waters. With more reporters for each river (vs. just one for other sites), their reports tend to be much more up to date. If you are looking for water and fishing conditions or have some info to share, go check them out.

This post has nothing to do with fly fishing. I was just stumbling around in an old harddrive (I have about 16 on my desk with about 20 terabytes or so) and I found this short vid on pet Bobcats we made my first year in grad school. Its pretty interesting visually if nothing else and we tried to be as objective as possible. That said, these cats are very cool up close though I personally probably wouldn't own one as a pet. Enjoy. (oh and the first couple seconds is just sound so hang in there a bit)

Well, the next few weeks of posts are up because I'm skipping town. I'm heading east and then North to film polar bears for Polar Bears International. Its a pretty exciting opportunity. I'll have email access though, so please keep the comments and questions coming and don't forget to check out the HD Downloads at our store. For a free sample, check out Bob Jacklin's Green Rockworm pattern in the previous blog post or just click HERE.

We have a busy month ahead of us in September. Next week we will be filming over in the Twin Bridges area again, the next week Mike heads to the Fly Fishing Retailers Show in Denver while I do some freelance work in N. Dakota, and then the following week, we'll be filming with Mark Petitjean in Bozeman. Then its straight back into the "edit bay" where the real work starts. I'll try to put up some photos from the shoots.

We'll also be bringing some new aspects to the site (if we stay on schedule) and running at least one more contest.

Oh yeah, and we'll continue posting new patterns every week.

Happy tying

-Henry