One of the last remaining strongholds for Arctic railing in the Lower 48.

One of the three forks to the Missouri River and the headwaters of the Missouri River.

The Big Hole has been known for many years as a special place for Montana, fly fishing,

and in recent years we've heard about some of the declines in brown trout populations.

Today we have one of

the key players who is working to find a solution to these changes. And after this episode, you

will have a clear understanding of what it will take to turn this around. This is the Webfly

Swing podcast where I show the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best

resources and tools to prepare for that big trip and what you can do to

get back to the fish species we all love Brian Wheeler executive director of the big hole river

foundation is going to take us into all the issues around the big hole river and trout

populations you're going to find out why and how water quality is the key here and what we

can do to get things changed. We also find out

why he submitted a petition to the state of Montana to get this stream listed for protection

and what the bugs can tell us about water quality in a river. Plus, we're going to hear about

his love for boating and boating the canyons and this epic 200 mile over 200 mile grand canyon trip he did

with his wife we get that story today as well here we go man doing some of the hard work out there

bhr f dot o rg how you doing bhr f r g how you doing bh dh dh thanks for having me yeah thanks for

thanks for doing this today this is going to be a good chat. We've heard a lot about you guys over the years. We've done some episodes on The Big Hole. Right now, we're currently doing an episode in a series on the Missouri because we're heading out there fishing this fall in October with on to Mark Lodge. And we're pretty excited for that because I think we're going to get some good dry fly action and get into all that. But today I wanted to really talk about some of the things that you're working on with the big whole river foundation. But before we jump into that, maybe take us back a little bit. I'm not even sure if you do any angling or fly fishing or anything. But first you know are you into any of that and then also

we can talk about kind of your conservation background uh sure i mean short answer is yes i that's why

i moved to montana colorado previous to that and east tennessee previous to that i grew up in

northeast ohio where opportunities were pretty limited um so i kind of chased that around in the 20s, early 30s part of my life.

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