Float Tubes for Fly Fishers

I remember my first float-tube experience like it was yesterday. A friend took me to Craig Mathews’s Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone, Montana to rent a tube for the morning’s fishing on Hebgen Lake. The gulpers there were as entertaining as promised, but the real delight was found in floating weightless in between sky and earth while casting a fly rod.
But float tubes aren’t just for vacations and distant destinations. As the interest in warmwater fly fishing and in personal fishing craft grows, many fly fishers are discovering that the humble float tube can carry them to places and fish that always seemed just out of reach. This week California kayak guide Rickey Noel Mitchell tells us how to get started choosing and using a float tube for lakes, ponds and even rivers.