Experience Montana’s small streams in a whole new way.

The classic wooden Ausable River Boat or Longboat, as it is often called, has it’s origins on the storied Ausable River in Michigan. Over a century ago this design was found to be the perfect craft from which to throw dries to picky, spooky fish in the flat and clear waters common to the area of it’s origin. These same characteristics; it’s ability to travel in just inches of water in tight quarters without spooking fish, also makes it an ideal craft for many of our smaller, lower gradient streams.

Many of these smaller streams in the vicinity of Bozeman are lightly fished due to both they’re size, usually too small for either a drift boat or even small raft to effectively manuever without spooking everything in the vicinity and the fact that access to much of the water is very limited due to great distances between access points. As a result of the light fishing pressure combined with a heavy spring water influence, these smaller streams sometimes have fantastic dry fly fishing even during the height of the season when most of the fish in the larger rivers can only be reached by deep nymphing under an indicator.

Many guests describe fishing from the Ausable as a very intimate experience and I feel that is a great way to describe a day fishing from this boat. Rather than being surrounded by a grand landscape dominated by our justifiably famous Rocky Mountains your vistas aren’t usually further than a few hundred yards and dominated by the bank-side grasses and willows. By shrinking your presence to the size of your environment you become less threatening to it’s denizens and thus it’s not uncommon to come very close to the deer and other inhabitants of these river corridors. I’ve literally had trout continue to feed within a foot or two of the boat.

This is usually close quarters fishing with a light rod and small to medium sized dry fly so plan on bringing your 8′-8’6″ 3 or 4 wt. rod to get the most out of your day fishing from the Ausable. An Ausable River Boat trip is only offered as a full day trip, and availability is very limited. If you are interested, please contact us for more details.

One or Two Anglers: $600
Three Anglers: Not available on Ausable River Boat trips.