Montana is home to some of the best fly fishing for trout fishing in the world. However, most of the trout people target are not native to the state. In this episode, Marcus and Michael are targeting the native west slope and Yellowstone cutthroat trout.
#flyfishing #cutthroattrout #montana
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Please please keep making theses Anyfin Goes videos 😃
Bonneville toy with the lure too, they follow a long way like striped bass. I can feel the vibrations of them near the spoon sometimes. Then they suck it in and dive, or t bone it. Or just swim away. I hook half on the outside of the mouth, also like stripers. None on a fly yet.
Excellent job on this video and thanks for the info on “hybridization “ in the rivers. I did not know that. Much appreciated for sure. Thanks!
Not a big angler here, but loving the Anyfin Goes series. Keep up the excellent work!
Glad you are enjoying it! Thanks for watching!
Another great anyfin goes. Marcus was cracking me up with those intros of the fish species
😂 “they just take up space!” Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the reminder to get out there!
You go it! Enjoy!
I love these fly fishing videos, fly fish all summer, hunt all fall. I pretty much only fly fish in drainages that only have native cutts, just me. Considering what we have done to our rivers I am so happy we still native cutts. Michael, if you get rid of the dropper your 70% caught on the droppers goes away, 100% are caught on the dry!
HAAA Thanks for watching Mike! I like those odds!
Thank you Michael and Marcus well done great video You two do such great video work God's Blessings to you all on all your adventures
Thanks Perry! We aprechate you for watching!
Well done and nice footage! Any anglers looking for pure cutthroat need only to look for natural fish barriers like waterfalls on a headwater tributary to have a good chance at a pure cutty.
Thanks for the comment and the tip!
That was fun to watch . Thanks !
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for the history lessons, love this series. Thank you!
Glad you enjoy it Wayne! The guys worked hard on it! Thanks for watching!
Fantastic video, really enjoyed the extra information on cutts.
You got it Mike!
Excellent video! Colorado is trying to restore native cutthroat (Green back i believe).
Throwing flies on the Missouri is something I've done only once, and got into a couple of tanks of a Rainbow. I'd like to go do it again one day. Rainbows taste best cooked in a camp fire. I've got a little 3/4 weight (6' if I recall) made by Prairie Drifter in Boulder, MT with a reel I snagged up at Cabelas. Can't remember if it's a Sage, or a White River... it was a middle of the road piece though. Fun little rig to do battle with a 16" rainbow with. The rod builder is Mike Briganti. The rod transaction was great, sweet little fly rod.
Heck yeah man! Thats sweet!
This is a nice, informative video with many valid points in favor of protecting native trout. A major barrier for native trout restoration is the warming water, which results from our current climatic situation. Put simply, humans are overpopulated and the most invasive. The german brown trout is often villainized, but they are often times the only trout that can live in the marginal water that exists today. The struggle fishery managers have is to determine when native trout restoration is just not feasible and to focus their limited resources on the species that succeed in the disturbed conditions of most of the riparian habitats.
Thanks for the info Buster and thanks for watching!
The climate is in constatnt change, always has been and always will be thus the 25+ ice ages earth has experienced (that we know of). Those who believe the climate should never change are delusional
great content
Thanks Lisa! Glad you enjoyed it!
I hit a high mountain stream, no bigger than 3 feet wide and crushed some huge Yellowstone cutties! Beautiful red checks on them too!
Go on you!
The big W Wilderness areas in Idaho have great populations of cutts. I caught a 19" (measured) cutt 15 miles from the end of the road.
Thats amazing!
another banger
Glad you liked it!
Nice video, and storytelling. There are a lot of factors contributing to cutthroat decline, with climate change and water management acting as something of "master variables" that cascade into the effects you discuss such as nonnative competition, predation, and hybridization. The recent redefinition of the Waters of the US that eliminates Clean Water Act protection for ephemeral streams is another major blow, as these are often headwater reaches that contribute greatly to basin wide water quantity and quality. Call your representatives!
Thanks for the comment! Lots of good info there!
You try throwing on a worm 🪱 ? 😂
Hey guys and gals…yes I know I can research and I have a ton. BUT… If YOU were gonna give me 5 things to help a guy get started fly fishing what 5 pieces of advice would you give? Lifetime hunter and fisher etc….just want some solid advice in an area that I’m a cherry in…specifically equipment and technique.
Hey Luke! Michael here. I’ll give it my best shot here. Some of this depends where you live, what you are fishing for. In a river or lake etc. So I’ll generalize. 1. Just go do it. Don’t stay home. Go out any chance you can. You don’t need top of the line gear. Invest more in time on the water. Also commit to it. Don’t bring your conventional gear if you’re wanting to learn to fly fish. I spent way too much time trying fly fishing only to pick up my spin rod half way through my fishing session when I first stared. Once I left my conventional gear at home and only packed my fly stuff was when I made strides forward. 2. Practice casting in your yard before you go fishing on a river. Ideally a yard with no trees so you’re not getting hung up all the time. Leaning to cast with bushes and overhanging limbs is not the best. 3. Don’t be intimidated by fly shops. They will be your best resource for information for your area and have all the things you need. Maybe go on a guided trip? 4. Dry fly fishing/popper fishing is really cool and all, but fish mainly feed subsurface so it’s a good idea to learn how to nymph/fish subsurface. In all applications, drift is king in my opinion! 5. Learn your river systems/Stillwater fisheries. Learn what the prey base is. Is it a free stone or a tail water etc. That will help with knowing flies/forage you’re imitating! Give it a shot, it’s a fun way to fish! Very rewarding!
@@Fresh_Tracks Right on! Thank you for your response!! Just what I was looking for! I truly appreciate it! Take care brother.
If the things you are saying are true then why can we only keep 5 trout with only one over 18 inches ? I live in montana for 33 years now. And the only thing that changes is the cost of my fishing license. Please respond and teach me if I am wrong. THANK YOU FRANK FROM MONTANA.......
Not sure exactly what you're asking, but the standard limits are set for the sake of simplification. Some systems could handle much more harvest, other systems can be over harvested. That, and most of our rivers are no longer suitable for the native cutthroats so they manage for rainbow and brown trout which people love fishing for so much so that it contributes a ton of money to Montana's economy. Regulations in a lot of areas are more of a cultural thing to keep anglers happy, rather than what the resource could handle.
Ummmm. Photos of trout make me hungry. How's fishing with worms going in Montana?
One might want to remember that invasive species bring a huge amount of revenue to Montana's economy. In fact without ring neck pheasants, Hungarian partridge, turkeys, rainbow trout, brown trout, and brook trout you guys might not even have a job. I guarantee that if cutthroat were the only trout to catch in Montana it would get a big yawn and not many people would go to the effort to bother to fish for them. Same goes for the upland bird hunting if all there was in eastern Montana was sharptailed grouse it wouldn't get much attention at all. While I agree that native species need to be preserved, frankly, many of them are pretty boring to catch or hunt. On the fish IQ scale cutthroats don't exactly present much of a challenge. Pretty dumb fish compared to a mature trophy sized brown or brook. I lived, worked, hunted and fished in Montana for 25 years. I fished for cutthroats when I didn't want to work very hard. I do not like the idea of destroying huge fisheries just to put cutthroat trout back everywhere. Focus on a few quality places rather than trying to put them in all their original habitat.
Michael here. Thanks for the comment and your perspective! I agree with you, we were simply just trying to explain how we got to where we are. I think it's important to preserve native fish. But I also do spend almost my time chasing rainbows, browns, walleye, and smallmouth all of which are non native. Well I guess that the walleye deal might be up for debate. But our goal here is to just talk about the fishery. Thanks for watching!
@@Fresh_Tracks Like I said I think most of us want to preserve the native fish, but not at the cost of destroying every body of water to do so. Montana is a fisher-person's paradise. Trust me when I say that the cutthroat are not the main reason why. Montana also has one of the greatest trophy sized, mind blowing big, gigantor rainbow fisheries not only in the state, but in the entire North American region. I would hate to see a place like that be limited to only bull trout, cutthroat, and tiny red banned rainbows. I have personally seen Montana's FWP destroy a number of places where I used to fish, just to put struggling cutthroat trout into those areas. I get what they are trying to do, but it doesn't always work.
@@huntzz21 We are not trying to advocate for "destroying" huge fisheries, I am sorry if that is the message you heard in these videos. We are trying to advocate to keep the minuscule native populations viable. You know as well as I do, that it is virtually impossible to restore the vast majority of our fisheries to native populations. Most of the the work FWP is doing is removing tiny brook trout, to restore tiny cutthroat. Yeah there are a few spots that had some big trout that now have some less big cutthroat... but in the scheme of total distribution of trout species, non-natives occupy WAY more than cutthroat. In a previous episode, we did talk about how much rainbow and brown trout contribute to the economy, but in this episode we simply wanted to show the cutthroat some love, because it rarely gets any... after all it's just a "dumb" fish only worth of "big yawn" 😂
@@MarcusHockett 😁
Great channel , I spent last June and july in yellowstone fishing ,what a dream come true , cut throat were amazing ,and a bucket list fish ,, the browns were the best fighting browns I've ever caught.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching!