Fly Fishing Insider Podcast
A full season of fishing travel works best when it is organized around fewer, longer stays. Moving camp is the real bottleneck - packing a truck, unpacking and re-acclimating eats time and bandwidth - so booking two solid months in one basecamp beats chasing a new region every couple of weeks.
Mike is the angler and filmmaker behind the Fly All SZN YouTube channel, who spends the year traveling to fish and film mostly public water.
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Why is the Driftless region good water to start a season on?
The Driftless region - northeast Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota - works as early-season water because it holds a lot of fish across a lot of small streams and is less restricted by the calendar than western water. That makes it good training wheels for a newer angler who can see fish feeding around them, while still supporting technical sight fishing for anglers who want it. A spring trip there ran into late-winter conditions rather than spring, with snow still on the ground, low water and a tough big-streamer bite.
Why does Arizona grow such big brown trout?
Arizona's lower-elevation trout water has become a crawfish fishery, and the browns and smallmouth feeding on them get large. The crawfish are abundant enough to pick up by hand - on one backpacking trip into a canyon, torches at night showed them everywhere along the shallows, big enough to fill a hand. Fish there respond to big streamers fished almost like poppers, which is not something the usual trip research would tell an angler before they arrive.
What native trout can you find in Arizona?
Arizona's high mountain streams hold Apache trout and Gila trout, small native fish in small water, which is the opposite end of the spectrum from the crawfish-fed browns lower down. The Gila trout story there is complicated: a native trout in one drainage was wiped out, and because managers at the time worked from visual surveys rather than genetics, that drainage was later restocked with Gila trout from New Mexico. Access to these streams is the real barrier - most are guarded by canyons with one way in and one way out, and monsoon thunderstorms can turn that into serious trouble.
Where do you fish in Idaho when the main rivers are blown out?
When the Henry's Fork is running high, a wading angler is better served by the spring creeks that come off the back side of the Yellowstone country nearby. Spring creeks hold their clarity and fishability when big freestone water does not. That timing also caught the tail end of the salmonfly hatch, with bugs the size of small birds coming down the canyon at night and birds working them in the air.
How do you avoid crowds fishing in Montana?
Montana has a reputation for crowds, but the state's population density is very low and the pressure concentrates in predictable places. Visiting anglers fish the main flows in the main sections, and most of them are there for a western-style dry fly window that occupies only part of the day. Getting up earlier, staying out later, or walking a bit further than the next angler is usually enough - and because these are not fragile micro-creeks, being the second angler through a run does not ruin it. Below a dam, where the water is deeper and harder to approach, there are often almost no anglers at all.
How do you fish for bull trout?
Bull trout are migratory and behave like phantoms, which makes locating them the hard part - they hold under logs and downed trees, and a spot that looks empty on the first glance can have five fish stacked in it. Once located, the fishing is close-quarters and heavy: a big streamer, a heavy rod, and a heavy tippet, dropped in and worked out from under the wood, with a strip set and a fight that turns immediately into damage control to keep the fish out of the timber. A fall trip north into Canada is built around bull trout following kokanee runs down out of the reservoirs.
What safety gear should you carry fishing in remote canyons?
Bear spray and a firearm cover different situations, and remote-canyon travel is where that distinction shows up. Bear spray has proven itself in a real encounter, but a mountain lion is the animal that causes more concern, because a cat tracks and stays out of sight rather than announcing itself the way a bear does. One Arizona canyon trip ended with a mountain lion crossing the line of sight twice while the angler was stripping out line to cast. Range time and familiarity are the point of carrying anything at all - it is a tool with a narrow application, not a substitute for awareness.
Key takeaways
- Book fewer, longer basecamps in a travel season - packing and unpacking a vehicle costs more time and energy than the fishing does.
- Fish the Driftless in early spring when western watersheds are blown out; it works for both beginners and technical sight fishers.
- Tie or buy crawfish patterns before an Arizona trip, and fish big streamers aggressively for browns and smallmouth.
- Plan Arizona canyon access around weather - many streams have one way in and out, and monsoon storms can flood the system fast.
- When a big freestone like the Henry's Fork is high, move to nearby spring creeks rather than losing the trip.
- In Montana, fish early or late and walk past the obvious access; below-dam water is deeper, harder to approach and rarely crowded.
- Fish bull trout with a heavy rod, heavy tippet and a big streamer, and check under every log - they hold in tight cover and stack up.
