Clayton grew up on Yellowstone National Park’s east slope, exploring the rugged wilderness, cold trout streams, and vast expanses of sagebrush country fishing for wild trout. The wild country of his youth shaped his passion for protecting the lower forty-eight’s last true wilderness and the need to ensure that the next generation can still cast for native cutthroat in the American West. With a fly rod in hand since nearly the time that he started walking, he has been fortunate to spend his life exploring some of the West’s greatest trout streams.

From his home in northwestern Wyoming, Clayton spent a few years in Laramie studying the environment and public policy. The Snowy Range and North Platte River provided a needed break (and in more than one occasion – alternative) to the classroom. A brief stint back east for graduate school sent him running back to the mountains and big blue sky – the only place he can imagine calling home.

Fly fishing is more than a sport to Clayton, it is the common thread that connects a community of passionate, hard working westerners who share a love for epic hatches, wild trout, and great stories of big fish told over local brews. Once you get off the beaten path, the West opens up to a magnificent wild landscape and the eclectic and engaging people that call this place home.

Clayton now works as a lobbyist and community organizer for a statewide conservation and family agriculture group in Montana that aims to protect the state’s water quality, family farms and ranches, and unique quality of life. He spends his days in Montana’s Capitol speaking out for our need for the clean, cold water and working landscapes that sustain the state’s great trout fisheries. On the weekends and evenings you can find him just down the road on his home water – the Missouri River – on the oars of his drift boat and casting to rising fish.