In these strange times it’s nice to be able to escape to the rivers.  It’s a calm reminder that the water is still flowing, and that mother nature is moving forward unrelentingly even as things seemingly appear at a standstill elsewhere.  We’ve had some gorgeous spring days here in Missoula, with temperatures reaching the mid 60’s last week.  The sunny days were followed by a winter storm this past Saturday that brought with it perhaps our largest accumulating snowfall of the entire winter season.

The sunshine last week caused a bit of snow melt and local waters began to rise and take on some color.  With the cold weekend weather and cool cloudy days in the forecast, the rivers should begin to stabilize and clear-up quickly this week. Thankfully here in Montana we are still allowed to recreate outdoors under our Governor’s stay at home order, and some members of team MRL have been enjoying a few floats here and there with family.  The spring fishing has been good to great, and we are looking forward to the summer season.

Here in Montana our stay at home mandate is currently effective through April 24th.  We are keeping an eye on updates to see if that will be extended into May and are planning accordingly.  The COVID-19 forecast seems to be changing daily, however, we are still cautiously optimistic about the summer season and are taking new reservations.  With the current situation we have adjusted our cancellation policies for our spring trips, offering to roll deposits to a future date or providing full refunds for short notice cancellations.  We will continue to adopt these new policies for trips later in the year if needed.  Hopefully this will be in our rearview mirror before summer arrives, and we can return to normalcy and enjoy time spent on the water.

Wishing all of you good health and tight lines!

 

Sheree Baxter

General Manager