Hiking to the next zone

Josh wrangling a cicada eater from a backcountry zone

Starting the day off with a one hander

Zack hooking up and about to get schooled by a backcountry brown trout

What a specimen. Caught in a creek only two rods lengths wide.

Long, wet hikes were the name of the game in the backcountry

Front country sunrise

Hatch of the day boys!

Josh with his biggest brown of the trip and life

Exploring a wild, tiny creek with big browns

Zack with his personal best and the biggest weight fish of our trip

–Zack Boughton

The post South Island Brown Trout 3/3 appeared first on Montana Wild.

With $2,000 in cash we quickly re-invested in camera equipment and kept making fishing films.

Good times and a reminder that Rooster is a short dude haha!

It wasn’t but a few months later and Rooster called me and said “Get your butt over here with your camera, the salmonfly hatch is stupid good!” Fortunately I believed him and a couple days later I’d witnessed the best of the salmonfly hatch and laid down some amazing footage that would soon become Bearback Rider.

A few more years went by and we talked about making films but it always fell through either from a schedule or funding standpoint.  Finally, Rooster wanted to follow up with our first film and make BENT 2.  I was all in and a few phone calls later and it was on the books.  This would be a short two day film shoot and we hoped the magic would still be there.  Dave Priebus showed up in fine form and as always the fishing in SW Montana never disappoints.

We hope you enjoyed the film.  If you ever want to book an awesome guided trip in Montana definitely give Rooster and the fine folks at The Stonefly Inn a call (406-684-5648).  A special thanks to the great folks at Hatch Outdoors and Simms Fishing for their support of the project!

–Zack Boughton

The post BENT 2 appeared first on Montana Wild.

Headed into the abyss, and hopefully home to many big brown trout.

NZ flats tugger

Headed out in search of kingfish

Kahawai headed back to go smash baitfish

Target spotted. Clear water made it easy to see fish but harder to catch.

Teamwork as Zack tries to bring a brown trout to the net.

A medium sized backcountry brown. A hell of a fighter though.

The longest and arguably the prettiest fish of our trip to NZ.

Josh making light work of a bank side brown trout.

This day we got worked for hours until Josh picked the right bug and flawlessly drifted it until this brown took.

Chasing brown trout in big water meant a slip was inevitable.

Got him netted baby!

Small guy but big engine.

1st fish after the heli drop. Stoke was HIGH

The backcountry was amazing but the fishing was tough!  Coming that late in the season meant that the easy to see fish were insanely spooky and picky on flies.  We all got into beautiful fish but our hookup to sighting percentage was definitely in the single digits.  Finding fast water and taking extra time to try to spot fish in that water made things easier as it seemed these fish hadn’t been pressured as much.  Be looking for Part 3 soon.

The post South Island Brown Trout 2/3 appeared first on Montana Wild.

Months of preparation both researching maps and also flies. The final organization takes place just days before we leave.

Travel was about 14 hours from Bozeman to NZ. Not bad considering we were leaving winter and headed to brown trout paradise.

Flying in and seeing river after river made what once was a dream now a reality.

Day 1 on the river and this was Fish #1. Life was more than good!

Next Level Stoke

Zack’s 2nd fish of Day 2. We started the trip off hot and thought this was going to be the daily occurrence. Rain had bumped the creek and a streamer sealed the deal on the hike out.

We soon found out that we were going to see unusual amounts of rain for this time of year. Blown rivers, wet gear, and minimal dry fly fishing made some days tougher than others.

Fishing on the front of an impending cyclone. Beautiful water but no fish this day.

Dry fly eater after almost a week of down time. Rivers clear fast after big rains and a risk to hike deep into the backcountry paid off.

Upriver in search of more hungry browns.

Trails in New Zealand don’t always exist even though they are supposed to. Having wet feet is pretty much a necessity even when there is a trail. Fortunately the rewards are always worth the effort.

Cicada smasher. We missed the best part of the hatch but still found a few eager to look up and take the big dry fly.

Written by Zack Boughton

The post South Island Brown Trout 1/3 appeared first on Montana Wild.

You’re probably thinking “Ok cool, but how do I get entered to win?”, and the answer is simple. Follow the three steps below, and tune into Montana Wild’s Instagram story on Friday March 9th to watch us pick THREE WINNERS.

Step 1: Watch SKWALHALLA on iTunes.

Step 2: Leave a review on iTunes with your thoughts on the film.

Step 3: Keep your fingers crossed, knock on wood, and patiently wait until March 9th.

Prize Packages:

Winner #1: Large Simms Slick Jacket.

Winner #2: Smith Dockside Glasses, Yeti Rambler, and a Good Altitude Trucker.

Winner #3: Smith Dockside Glasses.

Watch SKWALHALLA on iTunes

Still not fully convinced? Check out the official trailer, and get stoked on SKWALHALLA.

The post Score big on new gear with SKWALHALLA. appeared first on Montana Wild.

Still not quite convinced that SKWALHALLA is worth your time or money by now? Check out the official trailer below, and see for yourself.

Shop our selection of Hats, Tee Shirts, and Apparel HERE.

The post SKWALHALLA is LIVE appeared first on Montana Wild.

The failure of this campaign probably was a result of quite a few things.  Starting the campaign over the holidays meant people had and were spending their hard earned money elsewhere, we also had less than a week to plan and create the Kickstarter which was just a necessity given our time and hunting season lasting till the end of November.  With little time to plan the campaign it was tough to convey what the funding would actually go towards.  The reason we wanted to raise $12,000 was to fund the actual production of a film given the guidelines of our Kickstarter campaign.  A five part web series and a film released through iTunes, Amazon, and Vimeo On Demand would have cost well in excess of $12,000.  Permits for commercial filming would have cost in excess of $350 per day in NZ and trying to capture a 5-6 week trip would have been a costly endeavor.  Add in music licensing which would have been thousands and then paying a 3rd party to upload to iTunes and Amazon and we are pushing 10K easy.  Then add in our time and extra expense to take time to film and properly document our trip each day and then spend weeks to edit and you can see that it is a costly project.  A few haters had a good time claiming this was just a way to fund an extravagant trip to NZ.  That’s false as we will still be going to NZ on our own dime and no we aren’t trust fund babies, we do in fact work like everyone else for our money.

With that said we will no longer be filming Bucknasty Browns as outlined in our Kickstarter campaign.  The chances of us doing any filming outside of some personal shots is slim to none.  That brings me to my final point, if you do in fact value our fishing films and want to continue to see us create more we NEED your support.  If half our followers rented our film SKWALHALLA we would be planning a LOT more fishing films.  Right now that’s far, far from the case despite over 20K views of the trailer in the first week.  And as you can read HERE, that film took us three years and was funded 100% out of our own pocket to try to give our fans something they’ve yet to see and get them stoked to set foot on the river with fly rod in hand.

The content landscape is quickly changing but without fan support our content delivery which includes lots of free content will be diminished.  The market will dictate our actions and right now it’s shifting in ways difficult to predict.  If you have comments, advice or input related to this or fishing films in general we’d love to hear from you.  And again, thank you to those who have supported our projects, the Kickstarter and future films and projects!

–Zack Boughton

The post Bucknasty Browns II Kickstarter Follow Up appeared first on Montana Wild.

Want to see more Bucknasty Brown trout eats? Support our Bucknasty Browns 2 film by clicking here: BUCKNASTY BROWNS II

We are 25% of the way to our goal and really would love your help! If you enjoy our films, now is the chance to lend a hand and bring this film to life. You can help with as little as $5 and you can pre-order the film for $10. Thank you to all who have supported the film so far and have a Happy New Year!

The post Top 10 Bucknasty Brown Eats appeared first on Montana Wild.

Shop our hats used in the film, by clicking on the images below.

The post SUMMER HYPE – Video Launch appeared first on Montana Wild.

Kicking off the early spring with a chucky bow.

Pulling for pigs on a mud line.

Mean muggin for the camera

Maddie with a nice streamer fish to start off a very windy day

Streamers saving a very slow day of dry fly fishing

Josh with a nice fish caught while filming for an upcoming project

Exploring some gin clear water before the snow started melting from the mountains

This fish was a serious moral boost on a slow day.

Travis fooled this great brown out of hiding in small pocket water.

Trout selfie

Warmer weather means more browns on the prowl

Travis product testing a new t-shirt. Appears to be working just fine

Josh stoked for days

The sometimes elusive spring dry fly eat

We now have a handful of new shirts and hats in our online store.  To see more and shop click HERE.

-Zack

The post Spring Fishing 2017 appeared first on Montana Wild.