Montana's Incomparable Smith River Adventure
Words by Greg Thomas
Back on Montana's Smith River
I didn’t know what to expect this time around. I’d floated Montana’s Smith River twice, once back in the 1990s and again in 2013, but in 2026 there would be more restrictions, and the river’s booming popularity meant, undoubtedly, like everywhere else in Montana these days, we’d see more people and encounter some heavily pressured fish.
Changes.
In the 1990s you could take dogs on the Smith; you could use established outhouses at each of the river’s 29 designated campgrounds to conduct your daily constitution, some with commanding 360-degree views that, surprisingly, ended up being a highlight of the trip; and you could kind of take your chances with bears-in-camp encounters because you didn’t need a bear fence or bear-proof coolers.
Bring dogs on the river now and they’ll be extradited. Don’t have a fence around your coolers or locks on those lids and you’ll be tarred and feathered. Don’t pack out that evil, black plastic bag of poop, as you are now required to do, and you might be banned for life.
So, when a friend texted and said, “I drew the Smith permit,” I was a bit conflicted. Should I jeopardize my opinion of the Smith from the untamed days and join him for a late spring float, or did I want to pass on it and coolly say, been there, done that?
In the end I threw in with a mixed crew of couples, a few floating-and-camping-first dudes, and a couple more who were fishing-focused. I hoped for the best and was, at the very least, interested to see how things may have changed on Montana’s most desirable float.
Central Montana’s Smith River winds a circuitous path from the put-in at Camp Baker near White Sulphur Springs to the takeout at Eden Bridge southwest of Great Falls, amounting to roughly 60 miles of relatively tame but trout-filled water. The river winds through lush pine and fir forests, twists between miles of stunning yellow-orange limestone canyon walls, and spills into wide-open rattlesnake country near Ulm. To call it beautiful is an understatement.
Fishing is almost secondary to the scenery, but the river offers rainbow and brown trout and they can grow to good size: the average rainbow runs about 12 to 14 inches; browns are slightly larger on average with some pushing past the 20-inch mark. During our float down the Smith we caught mostly rainbows in the 10 to 13-inch class, which made a lot of sense.
Earlier this year I spoke with Adam Geik, central Montana fish biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.
“Last year (2025) we saw a ton of seven-to-nine-inch rainbows, and our research section near Camp Baker was the highest we ever recorded,” Geik said. “Those smaller fish probably hatched in 2023 when we had good water conditions.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with the browns,” Geik added. “They are down but it’s hard to say why. It’s probably related to water issues but overall the fishery is doing pretty well, and it’s been pretty consistent over the past 15 to 20 years. We still see some pretty good fish, including browns up to 22 inches. The farther downstream you go the more browns you’ll see. Outside of last year it’s about 50/50 rainbows to browns in the canyon stretch. Up by Camp Baker it’s more rainbows.”
Those rainbows and browns, no matter where you find them, feed on a variety of productive hatches, including skwala, golden, little yellow, and pteronarcys stoneflies, also PMDs, caddis, and a sometimes-legendary emergence and spinnerfall of brown drake mayflies. The fish are opportunistic, too, and key in on terrestrial insects during summer and fall. Grasshoppers, ants, beetles, spruce moths and wasps are all in play. In addition, as we learned during our float, they’ll slam cicadas when those sneaky bugs are present.
Partly because it offers exceptionally good fishing, the Smith is no secret and hasn’t been for a half-century. In his book, Montana Fly Fishing Guide: East, published in 1996, John Holt wrote, “Unfortunately, by late May, even on the wilderness stretches of the river, the solitude has been transformed into a riotous mélange of canoes, rafts, driftboats, bikinis, halter tops, and tipsy aggregations of beer-sodden yahoos.”
Holt has a knack for bringing out the worst a stream has to offer, but others felt the shift years ago, too. In Mike Sample’s classic, The Angler’s Guide to Montana, published in 1984, he writes, “During prime floating season of late June and early July, floaters descend on the Smith in veritable armadas. The Fourth of July weekend brings out peak numbers. Swifter canoeists annoy the slower rafters. Unoccupied campsites become scarce.” He adds, “Many out of state people would still consider the Smith a wilderness experience, but spoiled native Montanan’s have begun to find it crowded.”
I’m not sure what to think about those takes. I guess, like anywhere you fish these days, you make what you want of it whether the river is crowded or not. In my book, Fly Fisher’s Bible: Montana, 2006, I quoted outfitter Mike Geary who said, “(The Smith is) the best combination fishing, camping and floating trip in the Lower 48. There isn’t anything that compares with it. There are only two public accesses, and they are separated by 61 miles of limestone walls. People talk about trips on the Gunnison and Salmon (rivers) but they don’t have the fishing we do. This is the best.”
I remembered feeling that way each time I got off the Smith, even though the fishing on my first trip was a total bust--the river blew out the first day and we didn’t find a fish for the rest of the trip. The second trip took place in July, salmonfly time that year, and we caught nice trout on dry flies from the put-in to the take-out.
It didn’t take long to know the Smith hasn’t changed that much. After the typical chaos at the launch site where we made last-minute checks to make sure we hadn’t forgotten any gear and then removed some non-essentials that wouldn’t fit in the boat, we pushed off and let the stress wash away with each mile.
We camped at Rock Creek the first night and that’s where I learned I was not surrounded by early-risers. Which is also when I had to remind myself that the whole trip wasn’t just about ME. I’d get up, poke around camp, find a patch of morning sun and write in my notebook, then grab the rod to see what I could find. A couple hours later the camp would stir, someone would make coffee, followed by someone making a big breakfast. After breakfast and after the dishes were done, people would break down tents, roll up sleeping bags and pads, and reload boats. We’d usually get out of camp just before midday. By that time, an armada of rafts and kayaks would have passed our camp, which means that an armada of rafts and kayaks would have already floated over the heads of every trout in the river before we had a chance at them. In retrospect, I should have fished into the wee hours and taken some seriously long hikes the following morning, looking for fish that were either returning to their lies after being pummeled all day, or feeling safe and hungry after a fleeting nighttime grace period.
Even so, the fishing wasn’t bad. In fact, I think most people who floated the Smith that week, June 19-23, were perfectly happy. Solid PMD hatches were followed by some amazing brown drake activity. And one day, under overcast skies, the brown drakes, which are matched by size-10 imitations, came off in droves. At the same time brown drake spinners, having hatched the day prior and mated, now fell and dimpled the surface like rain. I rowed through the entire event but had fun watching my boatmate, Dan, land one 12-incher after another. He threw the streamer, too, and had lots of looks, but the fish weren’t entirely sold and mostly turned from the fly at the last second.
I don’t know if anyone landed a trout over 18 inches during our float down the Smith but one of the “kids”, Conor, rowed into camp one night, just before dark, spewing superlatives, claiming to have had “the best day of fishing EVA.”
He ran up to the campfire and said, “We must have caught 50, and two were 22 inches, and one fish came up and tried to eat the big fish we had on. I didn’t know there were fish like that in this river.”
I said, “Show me some pictures,” and he produced his phone and a couple shots of some pretty hefty browns.
I hemmed and hawed, frowned and said, “Fifteen inches at best,” knowing those were the types of fish I’d wanted to catch. He, of course, said, “Whatever GT,” before I asked, “On streamers?”
Conor said, “No. On a big, nasty, black dry fly.”
Say what? What big, nasty dry fly do you speak of child? We only saw two salmonflies the entire trip. Certainly, they weren’t eating those. I said, “Let me see that fly, Conor.”
He replied, kind of sheepishly, “Uh, I lost it and don’t have another.”
Conor is an outdoorsy, ex high-school wrestler, with a lean, carved look. When not studying in college he spends most days patrolling the bottomlands for mushrooms, or cruising the forests for deadheads and dropped antlers, or rowing the rivers with his father and friends, picking off trout at a pretty good clip. His parents say he burns the candle on both ends, which was the case on the Smith.
I said, “Conor. Where’d you get that fly?”
“Well, you know that guide-girl on the river?”
“Yeaaaa, Conor, I’ve seen her,” I said.
“She gave it to me.”
I looked over at Conor, shirtless and hammering down on his second ribeye of the night and thought, Ah, the power of youth and six-pack abs. I remember those days but had to admit, at north of 50, there was no way I could have flexed my way into one of those flies. Some things ‘aint fair.
The fly in question was a cicada and the next morning we found a bunch of them surrounding camp. As the sun rose those cicadas started clicking, and shortly after launching our rafts, we saw those bugs sprinkled on the surface. Unlike the night prior, apparently, the fish weren’t on them. We tried dark bodied stonefly imitations, ants and beetles . . . everything in our boxes, to no avail. Whatever happened up in the canyon stayed in the canyon and the fish simply weren’t eating cicadas on the lower end of the river, out in the grasslands.
On our last day of the float Dan missed a couple big fish that boiled out from under an irrigation pump. We saw rattlesnakes and bull snakes and about nine-million sheep, and when we reached the takeout and waited for the rest of our crew, I took stock.
Was this the same river I’d floated before? Technically, yes. Was the fishing as good? Better than my first trip, not as good as the second, but that was mostly related to those late starts each day and not having six-pack abs nor one of those “special” cicadas. Were there more people on the water? For sure. But every single person we met was courteous and friendly.
Was it a memorable trip? Well, a lot happens in five days spent floating down a river with no cell service, no YouTube, no Instagram, no X. The entertainment was right there in front, not floating through air. There were the regular antics--Dan got drunk one night, howled at the moon, sang some sketchy David Allen Coe, and needed someone to walk him to his tent, which meant he also needed someone to set up his tent. I spent the early mornings fishing around camp and got some cool time with a black bear that was munching lush, green grass just 15 or 20 yards away. We watched a father and son connecting on the river, sharing laughs while studying that incredible scenery pass by. I didn’t see one mosquito the entire trip, but I did spot some incredibly juicy rib-eyes and all the accoutrements and threw down on those slabs of meat two out of the four nights. When I got off the river I felt like the world had slowed down a tick. Can’t put a price on that.
I wasn’t ready to drive back to White Sulphur and launch again, if given the opportunity, but this I knew: I’d surely put in for a 2027 Smith River permit, and I very well might be floating that river again, next year, one way or another.
Which all sounded great . . . until a few days after the trip when I spoke with Conor’s dad who said, “Conor’s back on the Smith rowing a gear boat for that outfit.” Which meant, Conor had flexed his way back into paradise, right alongside the “guide girl” and probably wouldn’t pay for another “magic” cicada for the rest of his life.
Floating Montana's Smith River: Logistics
You'll find everything you need to know about applying for and purchasing a Smith River float permit on the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks website.
Smith River Shuttle
You have two primary options when it comes to getting your vehicle from Camp Baker to Eden Bridge. One of the most established providers is Smith River Shuttle, a trusted service that transports vehicles while you enjoy your trip down the river.
Start the Trip Right: White Sulphur Springs & The Spa Hot Springs Motel
If you're driving in from Billings, Bozeman, Missoula, or elsewhere in Montana, consider arriving the night before your launch. Staying in White Sulphur Springs can be one of the highlights of the trip.
The town offers restaurants, groceries, fuel, and ice. The Spa Hot Springs Motel combines comfortable lodging with access to natural hot springs pools. A good dinner, a soak in the springs, and a restful night's sleep make for an excellent start to a Smith River adventure.
Smith River Watercraft & Minimum Flows
The Smith River is highly dependent on runoff and seasonal flows. In high-water years, the river can accommodate rafts, drift boats, canoes, kayaks, and paddleboards. As flows drop, particularly after mid-June, larger boats become increasingly difficult to maneuver through the river's shallow riffles and rocky sections.
- Drift boats generally become challenging below 350 CFS.
- Rafts generally become challenging below 250 CFS.
- Canoes generally become challenging below 150 CFS.
Always verify current conditions before your trip:
Current Smith River Water Levels
Current Smith River Water Levels (USGS) as measured below Eagle Creek near Fort Logan MT
More Smith River Information & Articles
Below are additional resources to for trip planning, hatch timing, fly selection, and river logistics: