The Salmonfly Project will hold Bug Fest, a free public event built around aquatic insect identification and ecology, at Three Dollar Bridge on the Madison River on July 25, 2026, from 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. MDT. The Missoula-based nonprofit is pitching the afternoon as a way to reconnect anglers with the bugs their fishing depends on, at a point when the group says awareness of hatches and insect life stages has slipped as fly fishing has drifted away from matching the hatch.
The concern behind the event is not only educational. The Salmonfly Project points to a measurable decline in aquatic insects across the Rocky Mountain West — a decline it links to the health of the trout, fisheries, and local economies that ride on those hatches. Bug Fest is the group’s attempt to put that problem in front of the angling public rather than keep it inside monitoring reports.
The event runs four hands-on stations, each covering a different part of the insect life cycle and each running on repeat in roughly 45-minute blocks so anglers can move through at their own pace. At the Nymph Station, participants collect, sort, and identify nymphs and learn the emergence timing and behaviors that make them available to trout. The Drifter/Emerger Station covers drifting nymphs and insects in mid-emergence, and how both influence how trout feed. The Adult Station moves to identifying adult insects and reading on-water clues to help with fly selection. The fourth activity is a set of fly-tying clinics: the Salmonfly Project’s release names Craig Mathews, Rick Wollum, and Kelly Galloup among the tyers working hatch-specific patterns to help anglers think through their boxes.
Instruction across the stations comes from professional anglers and entomologists with the Salmonfly Project, with the day organized around basic identification and the differences in life stages and behavior among the Madison’s major hatches. The group states the goal plainly — helping people become better anglers and better stewards of the water they fish.
Bug Fest is free and open to the public, supported by Patagonia, Fulling Mill, the West Yellowstone Foundation, Big Sky Anglers, Galloup’s Slide Inn, Montana Fly Company, Map Brewing Company, the Madison River Fishing Company, and Yellow Dog Flyfishing.
The Salmonfly Project is a Missoula nonprofit that works on conserving salmonflies and other aquatic insects through research, monitoring, education, and restoration, in collaboration with anglers, birders, scientists, and conservationists. Full event details and registration information are on the group’s Bug Fest 2026 page.
