About TroutZoola

“Some days you catch trout all day, some days you catch a few. Try to enjoy both.”

– Brooks Jessen

Brooks Jessen
Guided Fly Fishing

I’m Brooks Jessen, a Montana fly fishing guide and outfitter. I was lucky enough to have been born in Ennis Montana to the parents of school teachers. My early memories consist of crawling up what seemed like vertical mountain roads with my dad in his jeep. We logged countless miles away while exploring hidden mountain lakes and streams infested with trout. At the age of four, I caught my first rainbow trout in the Madison river in the year of 1972.

Guided Fly Fishing - Bitterroot River - Brooks Jessen

Hunting, a life long passion.

Growing up in the Rocky Mountain west leads to a hunting/ subsisting lifestyle. One of my first memories as a small boy was helping my dad drag a mule deer buck he shot back to our jeep through pine groves in waist deep snow. I also remember coming home to my Mom’s homemade elk stew. Even though it was almost 50 years ago I can recall the happiness and warmth our family experienced as we sat next to the wood stove and enjoyed this delicious, gracious supper that maybe only hunting families can appreciate.

Across the Prairie…

In the late ’70s my parents moved to North Dakota to teach school. There my dad and I took advantage of the abundant lakes and rivers full of walleye and northern pike. I bow hunted white-tail deer on the Missouri river bottom. With abundant wetlands and prairie, I could often be found trouncing about with my 16 gauge browning shotgun on my shoulder and my dog by my side. Fish we caught, upland birds, waterfowl, and white-tail deer was our daily diet.

Back to Big Skies.

With Montana being my first and true love and visiting every summer and winter holidays, I finally had the opportunity to move back in 1988. In 1995 I attended the U of M in Missoula studying wild life biology and geology but mainly I fly fished and chased elk with my bow in the Big Sky state.

A Mission: Guided Fly Fishing

In 2001 I began my professional career in guided fly fishing and hunting. After floating thousands of miles down the Missouri, Blackfoot, Clark Fork, Rock Creek and the Bitterroot rivers and memorizing trout hiding spots for the last 20 years or so, I feel accomplished in my job. For many years I would log over 150 float days annually with guests from early March through November.

I have a wonderful wife from Ronan MT, and two ambitiously outdoor oriented teen age children. We spend as many days as possible hiking, hunting, fishing, picking morels, and exploring rivers. I feel the most important aspect of our lifestyle is having the ability to spend quality time together with our dogs and hopefully outside in this extraordinary place we call home.

Rivers We Fish