I love to fish.....
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...and I fish the Missouri year round.
My love affair with the Missouri River started in the fall of 1982 when I moved to Helena from Billings, MT to start a new job. I met another fisherman my first week in town, and before I found a place to live and unpacked the rental moving van, we were out wading in the Mo!
I began my guiding career in 1995 working with several established outfitters on the Missouri, Smith, Blackfoot, Big hole, Madison, and Yellowstone Rivers. I started my own outfitting business under the name of David Payne Outdoors in 2002, focusing strictly on guiding clients of the Missouri River.
I've been fortunate enough to have fished the Missouri River going on 42 years and still look forward to every day I get out . While I've seen a lot of things over the years and, people have come and gone, I'm still mystified by a lot of things on the Mo'. The truth is the longer I fish this river, the more I realize what I don't know,
A lot has changed on the Missouri River since I first fished here., both technically and socialy. Changes in fishing gear, clothing and techniques has definately changed the sport and social media didn't exist in 1982. I refrain from catagorizing the changes as "good" or "bad", because with each change, there is an upside and a down side. Change is what it is, and our task as humans is to adapt. We're atop the food-chain and we have that ability as a spieces.
In a lot of respects the river is fishing as well as it ever has-especailly with the quality of the fish. Oh, and the fish haven't changed. They're not influenced by blogs, YouTube training videos, or occupy time watching TikTok. And they don't care what we experts like for their food menu. The fish simply do what they've done for thousands of years and that is avoid predators and eat the food that is readily availalble to them. And for that I remain sufficently humble and eminently thankful....
The Boats.....
My boats are all hand-built and look conspicously similiar to those produced by the master Paradise Valley craftsman Jason Cajune of Cajune Boats. That's because they are products of his plans and ideas-at least the first boats were.
I built my first boat in 2003 from a Montana Boat Builder's (the original company) kit. My original idea was to build a boat to be used as a guide boat, then sell it used at the end of the season. I then would plow the proceeds from that sale into a new boat for the next year. That plan worked well for the most part and eventually I built every model that MBB offered plans for. In 2017, I branched out to build crafts from my own designs.
Boat building for me has never been, nor will ever become a real commercial venture, but rather just a passion for wooden boats. I love to build them and use them.
