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Executive Angler
Madison778cfsGreen2,180cfsHenry's Fork96cfsYellowstone1,190cfsSnake277cfsMissouri3,070cfs
The Madison River running low and clear below Three Dollar Bridge, Montana

OCTOBER 11 · MONTANA · 778 CFS

198 Rivers, 162 Flies, and Hatches

Late August on the Madison — the water is low and the hoppers are up.

The photograph is Three Dollar Bridge. The number in the eyebrow is the gauge, not a guess.

Three Dollar Bridge · 778 CFS · Oct 11

The reference

Open a line.

  1. Rivers

    Open     198Flow, hatches, access, and the regulations that actually apply.

  2. Flies

    Open     162The recipe, the sizes, and what each one is imitating.

  3. Places

    Open     53Where to go, and the rivers that make the flight worth it.

  4. Field Notes

    Open     24Reading water, gear that earns its place, and technique.

On the water now

All rivers

Field note

This week's read

Fly fishing box management and setup

gear

The Fly Box Tier System: How I Actually Organize My Boxes

Most anglers organize fly boxes by pattern type — dries here, nymphs there, streamers in the back. That's wrong. Here's the 3-tier system I actually run, built around probability of use under real fishing pressure.

May 5, 2026

The plate

All 162 patterns

Plate I
Twelve patterns from the library, as specified.
Size and imitation from the record.

Where to go

All destinations

The journal

Keep the record the water can't keep for you.

Sessions, flies, and the days you actually fished — yours, and no one else's. Nothing you log is published, ranked, or shown to another angler. It costs nothing.

Keep a journal

What we don't do

  • we never publish your spots
  • we never publish your counts
  • there is no leaderboard here