Missouri River (Craig Stretch)

A spring creek with a flow gauge in the thousands.

The Missouri here is a tailwater — clear, cold, and biologically rich water released from Holter Dam roughly 30 miles upstream of Cascade. The 35-mile reach from the dam downstream to Cascade, with the tiny town of Craig at its heart, is one of the most productive trout fisheries in North America by sheer biomass and fish-per-mile.

The water fishes like an enormous spring creek. Hatches are predictable and dense: midges all winter, BWO in spring, PMD and caddis through summer, trico carpets in late summer, hoppers along the banks, BWO again in fall.