The Best Fly Fishing Yellowstone.com Staff
We are a couple of lucky guys who live in Bozeman, Montana, about as close to fly fishing heaven as one can get in the world today. We are minutes from the Gallatin River, an oft overlooked gem in south central Montana, and two to three hours from many legendary rivers in the West, including the waters of Yellowstone National Park, the Madison, the Yellowstone, the Missouri, Henry’s Fork, the Big Hole, the Big Horn and the Rock to name a few.
We certainly don’t claim to be the end all / be all of Yellowstone fly fishing – there are hundreds of men and women who are the true experts about Yellowstone fly fishing – the guides, shop owners and managers, and lodge owners and operators who are hip deep in fishing operations every day. On most days we probably aren’t fit to carry their gear - but we do share with them a genuine passion for fly fishing, the great outdoors, Yellowstone National Park and its rivers, and the West.
We should also say right off the top that we don’t own a guide service, an outfitter service, a fly shop, or a lodge. Lots of good fly fishing web sites are run by people who have a vested interested in the business end of fly fishing, and we visit those sites often. By not having a fly fishing based business to support, we can be very objective about conditions and services around the state.
Our goal with Best Fly Fishing Yellowstone is to provide a vehicle to bring the insights and wisdom of these real life experts together in a format that shares practical and up to date fly fishing tips, news, trends, and happenings. We think we have put together a pretty unique web site to do just that.
There are lots of good sites about fly fishing in Yellowstone on the web today. We wanted to create a site about Yellowstone fly fishing that was not just a list of static pages that are written once and infrequently or never updated.
Our premise is that fly fishing is always changing, as are seasons and conditions on a given river. April this year and last year were very different, and as we write this page today we are looking at a hot, dry summer season that may rival any seen in quite a while. (As we prepared this page in late July of 2007, the Park is as dry as it was in the summer of 1988 – you know what happened in those conditions.) You need fishing and river information that reflects those variables, and we want to help you get it.
So after much effort and many hours of research, writing, coding, and creating, here it is. Take a look at our page How Best to Use This Site for more of an explanation about how to take best advantage of our site.
The next logical question might be – So who the heck are you guys?
There are two of us who are the primary site managers….
Jake is a Montana native, born in Billings though he’s lived in several locations around the state. He spent his school years in the Flathead, working on the family horse ranch between Kalispell and Columbia Falls, very near Presentine Bar on the main stem of the Flathead. He caught his first fish on the Snake River in Wyoming at age three, was casting his fly rod by age five, and won the adult division of the Flathead County Fair fly tying contest at age 12 (a creative array of salt water flies). He has fished throughout the West and in the salt along the Texas coast. When not fishing, skiing, climbing, reading or writing, he is a partner in a web design and marketing company based in Bozeman. He’s pretty handy with a camera and Photoshop, and likes to do a bit of real estate investing.
Mark grew up somewhat disadvantaged in a non fly fishing family in Texas, chucking hardware as a young boy fishing with his family along the Texas coast. It was not until in graduate school in Salt Lake City that he met a friend by the name of John Whitehead who introduced him to the fine art of casting a fly rod. He became a fanatic, fishing at every opportunity, tying flies, and then building rods by the end of his second season. His first Montana fish was caught on a fly in 1985, and he has since gone on to fish hard and even do a bit of guiding on several rivers around the West, including the Missouri, the Smith, the South Fork of the Snake in Idaho, and the Green in Wyoming and Utah. Retired early from his primary career, he now is a partner in a web design and marketing company, and enjoys fishing, hiking, skiing, reading, writing and cooking. He couldn’t help not being born here, but first moved to Montana in 1988.
Jess claims Montana as her home state, having spent more years in this great state than in any other. She grew up in the Flathead, running a boarding and training equine facility during her high school years. While Jess’s real passion is dressage and the pursuit of upper-level equine sport in the international scene, she does find some down time to spend on the river. She has been fishing since the age of two and loves the solace and escape that the rivers of the West provide. When she is not in the saddle or on the river fishing, Jess works as a partner in Dry Fly Media and pursues commercial real estate investing (hey, you have to pay for those horses somehow!) She also works part time at a Bozeman outfitting shop.
We usually drive Jake’s partially restored red 1983 red CJ 7 jeep to the rivers in the Park to fish – stop by and chat if you see us. See you on the river……
