Brown trout taking dragon fly nymphs along shoreline Biscuit Basin on the Firehole River.
The West Gate to Yellowstone National Park opened this morning, and with it so did the park’s general fishing season. Driving through the entrance gate along the Madison River brings a flood of memories of years-gone-by opening days.
Today I’m reminded of missing friends, those I have shared this road and rivers with on opening day, some long ago, others for the first time. Every one of those departed friends shared my love of the park and its waters.
Firehole River brown trout.
I pulled into places friends and I shared names for, names like: “Cinnamon Roll Bank” on the Madison where Paul told me he’d expect I would have to wheel him in a chair to his favorite spot on the river when he legs failed, Fred’s “No Fail Pool” on the Firehole where he never failed to find rising trout, Lou’s “Lost Glasses Run” on the river where his good friend once lost his glasses and they never found those glasses but did find lots of trout rising to caddis, and other spots I stopped at too. I sat and thought of these anglers who so loved the waters and were a big part of the rivers and the park for me too.
I thought of Howard Back the author who wrote “The Waters of Yellowstone with Rod and Fly”. Back’s little book sits at a special place on my desk. I read it every year, and have since my old friend Herb Wellington presented it to me nearly 40 years ago. I scored another copy of this hard-to-find book last year, published in 1938, last fall and will donate it to the West Yellowstone Public Library this week.
It was great to get in the park this morning, to think of old friends and reminisce. I thought about the time as police chief of West Yellowstone when one of my patrolmen ran me down on my day off while I fished near the Barns’ Pools. He came slugging through mud that day to alert me of an emergency meeting of the West Yellowstone Town Council when biker gangs came to Town in 1979. I managed to meet with the council, then separately with the bikers as I still wore my waders. We avoided any issues due to those meetings. In later years I’ve fished with some of the bikers who’ve turned fly-fishers, now mostly retired as am I from COP. I could go on with more stories, and someday might, but let’s get back to today.
Social distancing on the Firehole River.
I arrived at “Garbage Can Run” above the cascades on the Firehole to fish. The 3 rocks Cal Dunbar and I stacked there in spring of 1989 were still there. We put them there, near a pine stump, while we shared a lunch spot along the river while fishing a Pale Morning Dun hatch that spring, the year after Yellowstone’s ’88 fires. The pine stump long deteriorated but the rocks remained. Cal was a strong as those rocks, and needed to be as Town Councilman. Funny how you remember little things like the 3 rocks, but I’ll never forget Cal.
I knotted on a pull of 5x tippet and tied on a Nick’s Soft Hackle Caddis in honor of Nick Nicklas. Nick was a best friend, and worked with us from 1981 until he passed away 6 years ago this fall. I caught a couple plump rainbows and one thin 14” brown trout and called it a day. I will pen in my fly-fishing journal and logbook reporting of another “opening day in the park on the Firehole River”, but needless to write about it because they’re all locked down in memory.
Caddis on Firehole River.
Thanks for reading my rambling. It is the beginning of another fishing season in Yellowstone country and I hope to share more with you about the fishing, wildlife and wild places in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned!
New Yellowstone family member.