Law School can be a stressful and tedious undertaking. It can be an all-consuming journey that eclipses the social and personal lives of students seeking a degree. Many students accept this reality and resign themselves to a painful three-year march through an endless sea of reading cases and drafting papers. The law students who take part in the University of Montana Fly Fishing Society, however, reject that proposition.
Established in 2022, our Club set out on a mission to take full advantage of the world-class outdoor opportunities around Montana. The club was founded by a group of students who shared a love for fly fishing and spent their time outside of school fishing together on many of Montana’s streams and rivers. These students, despite their diverse backgrounds and professional aspirations, shared a similar set of values: conservation, appreciation for the outdoors, a love for fishing and a fundamental need to escape the long hours spent under the fluorescent lights of the law library, opting instead for fresh air and better views.
The club developed a mission, to spread the gospel of the sport of fly fishing, to get our classmates to pick their eyes up out of their casebooks and laptops so they might see the beauty of the state around them. Soon enough, interest in the club grew.
We began engaging with other clubs on campus, organizing river cleanups, learn-to-cast days, fly-tying nights at local bars, volunteering with the WestSlope Chapter of TU, and of course, going fishing together. We started to see new water, to catch new fish, to make new friends, to become better anglers and better people.
Our club believes that there is no better form of stress relief than standing hip-deep in a cool stream, or rowing downriver with the sun on your face, casting and talking and forgetting about the world for a while. When we’re out there, we don’t really talk about school, and that’s part of what makes the club such a valuable opportunity for the students who take part.
Across the country, law students bond over shared experiences of academic-misery, and we can do that too, but I don’t know anywhere else in the world where a law student can take a final, walk out of the doors of their school and immediately hop on a raft to fish for the rest of the day with their peers.
We have the University of Montana to thank for that opportunity, as well as TU’s Costa 5 Rivers program. So, for that, we say thank you—for helping us get out there, our experience at this wonderful school would not be the same without this amazing club and this life-changing program.
We’ll see you out there,
Gage Griffen
President, The Fly Fishing Society at the University of Montana School of Law
