Brant received his BA and MA in linguistics from the University of Oregon. As a graduate student teaching undergraduate courses, Brant learned that teaching was his true calling, and that teaching would be the thread that connected his academic life to a career in fly fishing.
In 1983, Brant moved to San Francisco to become the director of the Orvis West Coast Fly Fishing Schools. Most of these schools were conducted in the Napa Valley, the Lake Tahoe area, and in southern Oregon. In 1985, he left the Orvis schools to join Mel Krieger as co-director of Mel’s new school program and sales manager for Club Pacific, a fly fishing travel service. Mel had been a long-time mentor and Brant had first worked with Mel as an instructor in the Fenwick school program while Brant was still an undergraduate.
In 1987, Brant settled in Livingston, Montana. Livingston offers a mix of eclectic fishing opportunities—from the Yellowstone River to the Paradise Valley spring creeks to the streams of Yellowstone Park—set in an amazing landscape at the meeting of the mountains and the Montana prairie.
In his first year in Montana, Brant wore many hats: substitute teacher, restaurant cook, technical writer, commercial fly tier, and guide for Big Sky Expeditions on the Smith River. Brant joined the Yellowstone Angler in 1989 as a manager, guiding on his days off, through 2004. As a licensed Montana outfitter, he has returned to guiding on area waters, teaching fly casting and fly fishing clinics around the country, and tying flies on a custom order basis. He was also an Adjunct Instructor at Montana State University in 2005 and 2006.
Brant was a columnist in both The Angler's Journal and Wild Trout Journal, and has been a contributor to Big Sky Journal, Fly Fishing Retailer, Wild on the Fly, as well as Tight Loop and Flyfisher, both Japanese fly fishing magazines. He now contributes regularly to Midcurrent.com. Brant has been active in local conservation groups, from serving as president of the Joe Brooks Chapter of Trout Unlimited to the conservation group representative on the Governor's Upper Yellowstone River Task Force from 1997 to 2003.
Brant’s fly fishing travel experience includes trips to Alaska, Canada, Belize, the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Tierra del Fuego. In the last four seasons, he has traveled to New Zealand and fallen in love with the combination of sight fishing and big brown trout. Aside from fishing, Brant’s interests include cooking, photography, traditional bow hunting and bird hunting with his black Labs.