Complete Fly Fisher

05/29/2026

Paul is a CFF regular who bookended his recent stay with these two fine specimens. The Day One bruiser is a 21" brown caught on the Big Hole, and the Day Five tank is a two-footer caught on the upper Beaverhead, just below the dam. Streamers did the trick for both fish.

The man really knows how to make an entrance. And an exit!

05/29/2026

"To step into this river is to step into something larger than yourself. Wading the Big Hole asks you to slow down. To pay attention. To notice things you had forgotten you were capable of noticing — the rhythm of a cast finding itself, the way a trout rises through water so clear you see the take a half-second before you feel it, the sound of current moving over stone in a pattern that has been playing here long before there was anyone to listen.

And when you're not wading, you're drifting. As you drift down the river at the pace the water allows, the worries you carry in your daily life slip away into the current and the rocks, and the wind and the water wash something clean in you. Time stops because it simply doesn't matter anymore."

- Complete Fly Fisher: The Story (link in comments)

Looking for YOUR cabin on a Montana trout river?
Now booking: end of July, mid-late August, September, October!

05/26/2026

Like the wind, the tides, death & taxes, some things are just inevitable. Like Big Fish Amy earning the nickname our guide Kelly bestowed on her a decade ago, on her first trip to the lodge.

Here she is yesterday on the first day of her 2026 trip. Her husband Jon is no slouch in the big fish department, but Amy ... she's a force of nature!

05/22/2026

"Evenings end the way evenings are supposed to end — around a table, with a meal that feels earned, and stories that don't need embellishment because the day itself has been the story. Outside, the sky comes on the way it does where there are no city lights for sixty miles in any direction — slowly at first, then all at once, until the Milky Way is the brightest thing overhead and you remember that this is what the sky has looked like the whole time, everywhere, only most of us forgot."

- Complete Fly Fisher: The Story (link in comments)

Looking for YOUR cabin on a Montana trout river?
Now booking: end of July, mid-late August, September, October!

05/21/2026

"Mornings don't begin with an agenda. They begin with light — the kind that comes slow over the mountains, touches the cottonwoods first, then works its way down to the water as if the whole valley is waking up together. You'll have coffee in your hand before the world has fully arrived, and somewhere in the second cup, the day will have already done something to you that the rest of your year hasn't been able to do."

- Complete Fly Fisher: The Story (link in comments)

Now booking: end of July, mid-late August, September, October!

05/20/2026

"Maybe it was a scene in Taylor Sheridan's new series about Montana. Maybe you long for something authentic and real. Maybe you're looking for a place where your dreams of what Montana should be are surpassed by what actually is. Maybe it was the quiet between words — a feeling you couldn't quite place, the sense that somewhere out there, something was still moving at the pace it was meant to, and that you'd been moving too fast for too long.

In the Big Hole Valley, you'll find early light moving across a river, mist lifting off the water in slow ribbons, a line cutting through the current just right."

- Complete Fly Fisher: The Story (link in comments)

Looking for YOUR cabin on a Montana trout river?
Now booking: end of July, mid-late August, September, October!

05/06/2026

"The Complete Fly Fisher is the only place in the valley where you’ll find five-star dining. And it’s one of the few places in the world where you can disembark from your raft just 25 feet from the dining room, or enjoy tenderloin gyûdon while a moose strolls past the window ... while eating crispy Hudson Valley duck confit, I watched an osprey dive from a tree, grabbing one of the trout rising in the side channel. But the osprey didn’t get to enjoy his meal. Two bald eagles accosted him immediately, and eventually robbed him of his dinner."

- Fly Fisherman magazine

Rare openings NOW for late May/early June and late June/early July - both PRIME fishing windows on the Big Hole!

more info at link in comments

04/21/2026

The fly shop just got its annual spring glow-up and is almost ready to roll!

Open beginning May 1. Hours 10:00am - 3:30pm, but may vary. Check the sign near CFF entrance on Hwy 43 to confirm.

04/20/2026

"At 6,000 feet in elevation, the upper Big Hole runs through one of Montana’s highest and most scenic valleys. There’s no shortage of vistas, but the Complete Fly Fisher lodge sits in perhaps the single most desirable location along the river ... Here, the river cascades toward the lodge’s huge dining room windows, deflected at the last moment by an island covered with giant cottonwoods and bordered by a willow-lined side channel."

- Fly Fisherman Magazine (link in comments)

Dates available in early and late July - prime dry-fly fishing windows on the Big Hole!

On the Big Hole River, The Complete Fly Fisher is the premier all-inclusive fly fishing lodge and outfitter guide in Southwest Montana. Five star dining and luxury accommodations; private cabins and fully guided drift boat fishing. Rainbow, Brown & Cutthroat trout on the Big Hole River, Beaverhe

04/17/2026

"Late May is a good time of year to target the big browns that come out of deep holes and start hunting along the banks. The “Big Hole troll” is an unusual streamer technique...
Guide Kelly Kimzey showed me the “Big Hole troll,” and we had a terrific afternoon on a cold, rainy May day when we drew strikes from slabby browns lurking behind just about every downed tree, boulder, and sod clump along the bank."

- Fly Fisherman Magazine (link in comments)

Dates available in May and early June on the Big Hole River - prime streamer fishing (and a good chance for big dry flies)!

📷: 32-inch brown caught on streamer, June 2023 (Kelly Kimzey, guide)
📷: Chris Russo

On the Big Hole River, The Complete Fly Fisher is the premier all-inclusive fly fishing lodge and outfitter guide in Southwest Montana. Five star dining and luxury accommodations; private cabins and fully guided drift boat fishing. Rainbow, Brown & Cutthroat trout on the Big Hole River, Beaverhe

02/26/2026

"When they make my gravestone, I want that fish on it!"

Link in the comment section takes you to the "complete" story.

📸: Chris Russo