The Beaverhead is a tailwater that doesn't act like one — narrow, twisting and brush-choked, it comes out of Clark Canyon Reservoir and winds down through ranch country toward Dillon as a tight, willow-lined ditch of a river that happens to be stuffed with large, sullen brown trout. The cold, even release from the dam grows them big; the close banks and the snags make getting one out a different problem entirely. The water is clear and weed-rich, the bed gravel and silt, the current pushing hard against undercut corners where the good fish lie tight to cover. The character is intimate and a little claustrophobic — overhanging willows, blind bends, not much room for a backcast. Wading is awkward in the soft margins and brush, and much of the Beaverhead is fished, sensibly, from a boat.

Wading: Soft margins, snags and tight willow banks