Your guides Kash Lovec and Don McCue are a couple of fly-fishing fanatics! Not only do they live here on the Yellowstone River, they fish the Yellowstone every chance they get, twelve months out of the year. Kash and Don have been on the river under every imaginable condition from the Yellowstone National Park boundary way down river to Columbus, Montana. That is well over one hundred river miles!
Kash Lovec is a Montana native who grew up fishing the rivers and mountain streams here. Having Livingston, Montana as his home puts Kash right in the middle of the Yellowstone River. When you combine growing up here with over five years of guiding you have someone who knows the Yellowstone River and the surrounding waters as well as anyone.
Don McCue grew up in Pennsylvania and began fly-fishing before he was ten years old. (That is over thirty years experience, but who is counting at this point?) Living in central Pennsylvania gave Don easy access to some of the best trout water east of Montana. Penn’s Creek was his “home” water for many years along with the fabled Letort Spring Creek. Through his association with several fly-fishing organizations back east Don began teaching fly tying and fly-fishing while he was in high school. He did his first guiding back east on Penn’s Creek, Martha’s Vineyard and the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts.
Don first moved to Montana right out of high school and although he went back to Pennsylvania for college he always knew he would be back in Montana someday. It took longer than planned, but Don returned to Montana seven years ago and has never looked back. The past five seasons saw Don wearing grooves in the Yellowstone River with his drift boat. With well over one hundred days each year on the Yellowstone since returning to Montana Don knows the Yellowstone River pretty much rock by rock from the top to the bottom. You will be hard pressed to find anyone who will work as hard to get you into fish.
In addition to Don and Kash we have a group of friends and fellow guides that we have fished and guided with many times available to fish with us when we have a large group. These are guides and friends that we would have our friends and family fish with. So, if you have a large group, rest assured that everyone in your group will be with a guide that truly knows their stuff.
Having such an intimate knowledge of the Yellowstone River over such a long and varied stretch enables us to not only customize a day, or multiple day, trip for you, it also allows us to adjust to just about any unexpected situation. There are many factors that can influence what section of the river to fish. Weather of course is potentially a huge factor.
Throughout the spring and summer isolated thunderstorms in Yellowstone National Park can send a wall of mud (we call them mud plugs) down river. Our constant monitoring of the conditions and our network of friends in the fly fishing world enable us to anticipate and respond when a mud plug is heading down the river. Mud plugs take approximately 24 hours to get down to Paradise Valley from the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park. A second source of mud is the Gardner River, which enters the Yellowstone River in Gardiner, Montana. (That is not a typo, the Gardner River is spelled without the “i” and the town name, Gardiner is spelled with the “i”. This is from an old misspelling way back in the very early days that just carried over.) The Gardner mud takes much less time to reach Paradise Valley and often this mud plug is much more difficult to predict.
Whatever the source of the mud plug if one catches you on the river the fishing is for the most part over. That is why it is very important to keep a watchful eye on the weather situation in Yellowstone National Park and to have the experience to be able to dodge those mud plugs.
If you have ever been to Montana one of the first things you learn is that occasionally the wind blows, just a little. (Ok, it can be downright windy at times.) All of us have our limit on how much wind we want to fish in. Our vast experience and knowledge of well over one hundred miles of the Yellowstone enables us to head to another stretch of river to get away from the wind. The wind direction and geology of the area and good old time on the river enables us to make an educated guess as to where to go to minimize the wind. Of course there are days when there is no escaping the wind. When those days come along we will assess the situation day by day. It is rare to have to actually have to cancel a day of fishing altogether over the wind.
Personally we do not like to fish on a crowded river. Much has been written about how crowded the rivers in Montana can be. The Yellowstone River can be crowded. More accurately, certain stretches of the Yellowstone can be crowded. For whatever reasons many guides and outfitters like to float the same stretch of river, day in and day out. This makes certain stretches of the river much more crowded than others. Which is great for us! Often times if you are willing to spend a little time driving away from the crowds you can be on a stretch of river just about all by yourself.
With well over one hundred miles of river to fish we will do whatever it takes to make your time fly fishing in Montana memorable. By staying flexible and being more than willing to go the extra distance we can often turn a potentially “bad” situation into an amazing experience.
