Beginner Fly Fishing Trips in Yellowstone Country

We are often asked “Do you take beginners?” Our answer: “Absolutely!” Probably 20% of our clients have never fly fished before. Montana and Yellowstone Park beginner fly fishing trips are a great way to get started right.

This region hosts a wide variety of places to fish, from tiny creeks to huge rivers and lakes. This makes it easy to find something that’s right for beginners. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for a first step on a lifetime fly fishing journey or just want to try it once.

Note that previous experience fishing with conventional tackle does not really help when it comes to fly fishing.  As such, potential clients with previous experience with conventional tackle count as beginners when it comes to fly fishing.

Pricing? What’s Included? What Should We Bring?

Beginner trips generally cost the same amount as all other trips of the same type. These rates are given on the introduction to our guide service page as well as the specific pages for each type of trip. One guide can handle one or two guests. More guests means more guides.

Rates include flies, tackle, transportation from your lodgings or a prearranged meeting point, water, soft drinks on request, and lunch on full-day trips

Rates do not include fishing licenses, Yellowstone Park access fees (if applicable), private water access fees (if applicable), wading gear, or alcoholic beverages. Wading gear may be rented from local shops (we can usually pick it up for you) if required. Old sneakers work fine on many beginner wading trips. Most summer floats don’t require wading gear at all.

The guided trip packing list page will give you a good idea what to bring. We’ll also send out a detailed itinerary when you book that lets you know exactly what you’ll need for your specific trip.

What Will We Learn on a Montana or Yellowstone Beginner Fly Fishing Trip?

• The elements of tackle: rod, reel, line, leader, tippet, and flies
• Rigging and the basics of caring for fly tackle
• Introduction to fly fishing knots
• Line and rod handling basics
• The standard overhead or “back” cast
• Basics of reading water: where fish are likely to live and why
• Basics of approaching the water: how to sneak up on fish, where to stand, and how to wade to avoid spooking your quarry
• Drift management basics: making your flies behave like real insects or baitfish
• Recognizing the signs of a fish striking, often both with dry (surface) flies and with subsurface flies
• Setting the hook and playing fish
• Basics of unhooking and releasing fish without doing additional harm
• Extreme basics of aquatic insect entomology and fly selection based on conditions and season

Depending on how quickly members in the party pick up the above, trip duration, and trip type, we may also cover the following:

• Line mending and other more advanced elements of drift management
• More in-depth discussion of aquatic insect entomology, some discussion of baitfish behavior
• Tactics to retrieve snagged flies
• Introduction to roll casting (an additional cast) and possibly other advanced casts
• Safe wading basics
• Reviving exhausted fish before release

What Else Will We Experience on a Montana or Yellowstone Beginner Fly Fishing Trip?

Most beginners are visiting the Montana and Yellowstone area as part of a general vacation. They care just as much about the scenery, geology, animals, and so on as they do about the fishing. As such, with beginners we tend to focus on “the extras” as well as the fish.

Therefore some combination of the following are also included on our Montana and Yellowstone beginner fly fishing trips. What “extras” are available depends depends on the season, where we fish, and (in the case of the animals) pure dumb luck.

• Wildlife watching and photography
• Hiking, both on and off-trail
• Waterfall viewing, including of falls not visible to most visitors
• Geyser or hot spring viewing, including of lesser-known springs and vents
• Discussion of area history and archaeology
• Berry-picking in season
• Animal antler and bone, and interesting rock and petrified wood collection (outside YNP) or viewing (inside YNP, where collection is banned)
• Beautiful mountain, canyon, and prairie scenery
• Whitewater thrills

Top Montana and Yellowstone Beginner Fly Fishing Trips

The remainder of this page gives some details about the top trip options for beginners.

At the bottom of each section, click or tap the link button if you’d like more information above each specific trip type mentioned to jump to the relevant page on our site.

If you’d rather just skip the rigamarole and talk to us about the best options for you at the time of year when you’re going to be here, give us a call.

Walk & Wade Trips (Almost Year-Round)

Public waters in the northern part of Yellowstone Park and near Livingston, Montana provide a wide range of fishing opportunities, scenery, and experiences. Options are available for walk & wade trips year-round except during the May-June spring runoff. Even midwinter fishing is possible.

Walk & wade trips seldom produce as many large fish for beginners as float trips, but they offer more opportunities for personalized instruction. As such they are probably better for setting anglers up for future success than float trips. They also generally offer more “other stuff” than float trips. These options include wildlife viewing, off-grid hikes and scenery, etc. They certainly aren’t as relaxing, however.

Both full-day and half-day options make sense during the June through September peak season. From October through May, half-days are better. Full-day trips give more opportunities for hiking and shedding crowds. Nowadays crowds can be heavy on beginner-friendly fisheries within a mile of the road.

These trips usually take place on rough and tumble streams in Yellowstone Park or on the Yellowstone River outside the park. We fish many specific destinations depending on client interests, where clients are staying, and what’s fishing well.

Destinations for our standard walk & wade trips suitable for eager beginners range from tiny creeks to alpine lakes. Tactics, the fish we might catch, and the scenery and animal-viewing options available all vary as well. This makes walk & wade trips our most flexible trip option for beginners. While the rough, boulder-bottomed streams fish best, we can fish gentler water if members of your party can’t handle rough stream banks.

Meeting times for these trips will range from 6:00AM to 9:30AM on full-day bookings, depending on the time of year and where we’re meeting. Half-days between 6:00 and 11:00.

River Float Trips (Late March through Early October)

Fly fishing float trips on local rivers are our most popular trips overall. They provide the most fishing time relative to travel time, great scenery, and maybe some whitewater thrills. They also produce both good numbers of fish and big ones, even for beginners.

That said, they offer less opportunities for beginnerss to learn a wide range of techniques and are much faster-paced than other trips. They can also be overwhelming for younger and smaller kids.

The float-fishing technique most-suited to beginners is called “indicator nymphing.” This involves floating a strike indicator (glorified bobber) with a pair of subsurface flies imitating insects or baitfish. Because these flies typically produce the largest trout on all rivers, and the most trout overall over the course of a season, this is probably the single most effective fly fishing technique in general. Out of a moving boat, it’s also the easiest technique, since the guide can often maneuver the boat so that clients don’t have to cast as often or as accurately as with other techniques.

On the other hand, float-fishing with indicators is often considered the most boring method of fly fishing (until you hook a big fish). Also, the guide does much of the work in getting the flies into position with this technique. Therefore clients don’t learn as much as they do on walk-wade trips. In addition, the casting involved with this technique tires many beginners quickly, since the flies, strike indicators, weight, and even the rods used on floats themselves are much heavier than those used on most beginner walk trips.

Most beginner floats run as half-day trips, though full-days make sense too. Just make sure to tell your guide if your arm is getting tired and we’ll let you know when to reel in and just enjoy the scenery for a while. On float trips we drift over both good areas and bad ones, and we’d rather you fish the good spots. Depending on the time of year and whether we’re running a full-day or half-day, we’ll want to start between 8AM and 1PM.