Fall Fishing in Yellowstone National Park

Thank you, Teddy Roosevelt. You knew the value of a national park system and without your endeavors we could not have fished this Fall in Yellowstone National Park. Dick Weber and I left Salt Lake City on Tuesday October 4, 2011. We stayed in West Yellowstone, MT at the Dude Motel. Best price in town. There is a reason for that. We checked in and walked to Bullwinkle's Restaurant. The weather the previous week had been perfect. We had hoped for a repeat. That did not happen. It was cold, cloudy and rain was on the way. The next morning we ate breakfast at Ernie's and went by Blue Ribbon Flies and picked up our Park Licenses and a few flies. I got some Lime Trudes that were recommended by my friend, Dick Hauch. We were set. We drove into the Park. Dick and I argued over who would get to show their lifetime Golden Eagle National Park Pass. Dick won this time. A friendly rangerette greeted us and wished us luck in our fishing. We drove to Tower where there is a waterfall and a trail down to the Yellowstone River. We geared up, fishing gear, water, rain gear and bear spray. Yes, we were in bear country! We made our way down the trail and I walked over to the river I could see a few beautiful back eddies that looked like great holding water. I had already tied on my lime trude with a midge emerger dropper. I looked at the seam of the eddy and casted right along it. Bam, a Cut rose and took the trude. I could not believe it. First cast. I netted him, released him and casted again. Another! Cast again, this time the emerger enticed the take. I was in fishing heaven. Then, as quickly as it turned on, it turned off. Cast after cast produced nothing. It was time to move up stream. We hiked over a bluff and down to the river where a cove had formed and tried that for awhile. No luck there so we moved on. We found a beautiful stretch of river and went to work. Work it was. We could not tempt the fish. We knew they had to be there so we kept changing flies. We tried hoppers, foam stone flies, attractors, my lime trude, blue wing olives. We put nymphs on as droppers. There were not many bugs on the water, just a few blue wings and some midges. We tried zebras, pheasant tails, midge emergers, and my rainbow warrior. We started picking up occasional fish. We walked further upstream and found a place where where several back eddies formed a confluence of currents. I seemed to think that the fish were holding there. I caught one on a parachute adams and then I tied on a nymph that I wasn't sure what it was. It was next to my sow bugs so I thought it might be a type of sow bug. It was about a 20 and was flat with a shiny back. It kind of looked like a Ray Charles but had that green shiny back. Well, what ever it was, the Cuts really liked it. I started pulling in fish after fish. I was back in fish heaven. Dick started picking up fish as well.  It was starting to get late so we headed back. Dick wanted to stop where we had lunch to try his luck with a blue wing. It worked. I wanted to try my first spot and when I got there I found the eddies and caught three fish. One was actually a rainbow. Now we had the  half mile, uphill hike back to the car. It was cold and raining but it did not matter. We had a great day on the Yellowstone. We took off our boots and peeled off our waders and headed for Cooke City where we had reservations at the Super 8. We checked in and chatted with Danny, the clerk who was a fountain of misinformation. We ignored his advice and decided to eat at the Soda Butte Saloon. After an Elk Burger for me and a Buffalo Burger for Dick we head went back to the motel for a complementary chocolate chip cookie and then to bed.

We awoke the next morning anticipating another great day of fishing; not getting skunked and me being plagued by a toothache. That pretty much sums up the day but I will provide details. Our plan was to fish the Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek. We drove past the Slough Creek turnoff and found a place to walk to the river. We found a section with a lot of riffles and started fishing. I went upriver and Dick went downriver. I found a section with some fast water that took a long cast to reach. I had a hopper on and a very large cutthroat went for my fly but I did not hook him. I was encouraged, however and fished that spot hard for the next 30 minutes to no avail. Without any further action there we left for another location. This was a spot with a lot of boulders and runs. We got shutout there. It was time to try Soda Butte. Long story, short--no fish. We decided to drive up the gravel road to the Slough Creek Campground and fish there. At this point my tooth was really starting to hurt so I called Painless Pete, my dentist. He did not have good news when I told him about my tooth. I needed antibiotics. Well, first I needed a pharmacy. It turns out that Cooke City did not have one. The closest one was in the opposite direction, Gardner, MT. Pete called it in and we drove to Gardner to try and get there before they closed. We had to go past Mammoth, out of the Park and about five more miles. I picked up the Keflex and took some. Why didn't my tooth feel better?  Actually, the ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and aspirin did take the edge off. We had dinner in Gardner and then drove back to our motel in Cooke City.

The next day, Friday was our day to fish Slough Creek. We had hoped it would be our best day fishing. It would be our most strenuous day, for sure. We got up, had breakfast and got "most" of our stuff together. It was a 50 minute drive to the Slough Creek campground. It was cold, snowing and overcast. We had hoped for an early start. It would have been ideal to start on the trail between 8-9 AM.  We almost made it, arriving about 9:30 AM. I got my winter clothes on with my waders and boots and looked at Dick who was frantically going through stuff in the car. A few choice words were coming out of his mouth. "What's up, Dick?", I asked. "I think I left my %@$#ing boots at the motel." Well, I assumed that would be a deal breaker. So much for an early start. I suggested that we fish the upper part of Soda Butte that we had yet to be humiliated on. At any rate, we had to go back to the motel because all he had were his loafers. We headed back and he started making a case for still doing the hike into Slough Creek. He said if we could get back to the trailhead by 11, we could still get some fishing in. Well, we made it back by 11:30 and he still wanted to go. It was a 6 mile hike in. We would be backing in our fishing gear and we would be walking in our waders and wading boots and parkas. Yes, it was snowing. I kept picturing something not being optimal about this. Then I pictured something unwanted happening. It could be anything, bear encounter, wolf problem, injury, weather turning bad, being stranded, etc. To cut the suspense, none of that happened. What happened may have been worse. We left the trailhead and immediately the trail starts to climb, and climb, and climb. This was the worst part, said Dick. I believed him. I got pretty short of breath but kept on. Thankfully, it did flatten out for awhile before we climbed some more. When we hit the two mile mark, I could hardly believe that we still had four more to go. The scenery got beautiful. The first meadow was gorgeous. I asked why we don't fish there. Dick said we would do better at the second meadow. When we came down the ridge to the second meadow, my spirits were lifted. We still had a half a mile to go to get to the creek but there was liveliness in my step now. We got to the creek and saw that one of the campsites was occupied, by a buffalo. We were pretty hungry  so we had lunch before we started to fish. It had taken us 1 hour and 52 minutes to go the 6 miles. We examined the water and we each took off for a spot that looked promising. OK, another long story sort of short. No fish. Here''s my story. The water was very low and the riffles we expected to be holding fish we clogged with algae. There were no bugs hatching but we tried some dry flies anyway. Then we tried dry-dropper combinations. I even set up a nymphing rig with two flies. That was my algae collector. We fished until the drop dead time that would get us back before dark. We trudged on back. Now our boots were collecting mud and had doubled in weight. We saw some bear footprints on the trail on the way back. We made it back in one hour and 57 minutes. We were tired, blistered, hungry, and skunked. It was back to Cooke City and the Ore House Saloon for some dinner.

On Saturday, we would be heading home. The weather was better than on the day before so we were hopeful that we could go through the Park to get to West Yellowstone. We stopped an "Stop the Car" store and I picked up some cute mittens for Diane. When we got to the Park Entrance, I asked the rangerette if we could get to West. She said, "Sure, you just go up to Mammoth...". That was the long way we were hoping to avoid. That was would give us a 10-11 hour drive. We made good time through the Park and went past Mammoth, Gardner and into Livingston, MT. From there we went past Bozeman and then to West Yellowstone. We had lunch at Ernie's and then Dick took over the driving for awhile. We pulled into my house about 6 PM. The trips had it's ups and downs but it will occupy a prominent place in the good memory bank of my brain. Except for the toothache.

PS: Root canal scheduled for Monday October 17. That is if I survive the pain this week while working in Wyoming.