Observation, Approach, and Presentation

We’ve had an action-packed week in Yellowstone country. It began early Tuesday morning when our resident moose, Bullwinkle, decided to wage war on Jackie’s birdbath.

An hour later Yvon and I were on the water where he started out winning a battle with a gorgeous hooked jaw male brown trout he took on one of his famous soft hackles fishing it on his favorite bamboo rod, one the master Leon Hanson from Michigan crafted for him.

Yvon releases a nice brown trout.

The following day I had the pleasure of fishing a few hours with the new US Ambassador to Japan and his wife. Both caught fine trout on caddis patterns and promised to return soon, for a full day on the river.

New US Ambassador to Japan takes a nice Madison rainbow on X Caddis.

Most evenings Terry and I fished emerging caddis activity. You will see Terry sitting on the bank watching a big brown trout rising to emerging caddis pupae. A X Caddis Tan #16-18 and an amber Iris of the same sizes are the only caddis patterns needed for success. As with all our flies, they are easy to tie, highly visible and durable and fool lots of big trout.

Heads up! Here’s a large brown trout rising to emerging Caddis.

Today we arrived on the river early to find rising like wolves to Pink Lady mayfly spinners. I knotted on my new foam-hackle spinners and began taking several nice browns and rainbows until they abruptly quit rising. A short time later we noticed they’d moved into the soft-frog water along the shoreline and were feeding on #24 emerging midges. Adding a long pull of 6x tippet and knotting on a #24 Zelon Midge proved deadly on these rising fish, for half-hour until they quit rising.

We did not sit on the bank long before fish began feeding on emerging caddis, their explosive rises giving us the clue to switch to patterns like our Tan X and Iris Caddis, tied with sparkling-trailing shucks that imitate impaired emerging adults stuck in their shucks, and recognized by big fish as easy prey. We took several nice trout until the rise-forms changed, again. Now the large fish sipped casually, moving slowly to take PMD Duns drifting in the seams and behind boulders along the shore. A switch to #18 PMD Sparkle Duns was all that was needed to fool most sippers.

Eperorous spinners bring up big trout during morning spinner falls on Madison.

By close observation, careful approach and presentation with proper fly patterns we had a banner week of fishing Yellowstone country. I hope to see you see soon. And now, I’m heading to my fly tying table to replenish flies used this week.

YELLOWSTONE FOREVER

PMD Mayfly.

Last week we saw some good dry-fly fishing on Yellowstone Park's Firehole and Madison Rivers. Pale Morning Duns and caddis brought fish to the surface during their emergences, but we could use a cloudy/rainy day to bring on heavy emergences of the mayflies that result in some of the finest dry-fly fishing of the year.

Young moose racing us.

Yesterday morning we got into a race with a young moose that ran along side our vehicle as we headed to a native fish and bear program meeting with JD Davis of "Yellowstone Forever”. Jackie and I served on the Board of Directors of Yellowstone Forever, formerly Yellowstone Park Foundation, for many years and continue to work with them on the awesome programs they fund in the Park. Please help fund YF programs if you can by sending a few bucks their way!

A sleeper late day fishing bet is the Madison River between Quake Lake and there West Fork, 8pm to dark, when tiny midges bring big trout to the surface. #22-24 Zelon and Scotty’s Midges are the best flies to present to the rising fish. You see the photo below of Terry landing a nice rainbow on a Zelon Midge at $3 Bridge this week.

I hope to see you on the river soon!

My friend Terry with a nice Rainbow trout he took on a midge below 3$ Bridge.

Nice brown trout I took on a PMD #18 Sparkle Dun on the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park.

"It's a game of inches..."

I just returned from fishing my way to eastern Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota.

I enjoy spending time in the turkey woods and on the prairie this time of year. Pasque flowers dot the pine hills and pincushions and phlox litter the prairie floor. The sounds of male sharptail and sage grouse whopping it up on their dancing leks trying to attract females to mate with echo off nearby buttes. It’s a great way to spend some spring time in the woods and on rivers not far from our Yellowstone country home. I do this not because I find fishing or turkey hunting so terribly important, but because I suspect to many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant, and not nearly as much fun!

The turkeys cooperated by coming to our soft-quiet calling from slate, box and mouth calls. Patience was key too, we had to wait it out on a couple big birds who took as much as an hour to travel a short distance to our location.

Taking big trout required patience too, and figuring out what the fish were rising to.

BWO (Baetis) Mayflies.

Midges and Midge shucks.

By doing what the river told us and with careful observation, proper presentation, and the right fly patterns, those with trailing shucks, fish rose to imitations of tiny midge and BWO (Baetis) mayflies. Best dry fly patterns were Zelon and Scotty’s Midges and BWO Sparkle Duns, #20-22. Like my good Colorado friend, talented guide and angler Pat Dorsey says, “It’s a game of inches where everything has to come together. Fooling your opponent is the icing on the cake…”

Nice brown taken on a Zelon Midge #22

If you love Montana’s native and wild trout make sure you are a current member of Montana Trout Unlimited.

This organization is keeping our politicians and appointed officials honest at this critical time in native and wild trout management. There’s been attempts to do away with current stream restoration and native /wild trout enhancements projects within our state. Science is taking a backseat to political agenda. Montana Trout Unlimited is our watchdog. Support them now like you’ve never done before. We cannot afford to compromise what we’ve long fought for. Stay informed, write letters and comment on these proposals. Let’s continue to fight the good fight to protect-restore and enhance all the great work that has been done in the past and into the future to keep Montana’s native and wild trout programs the world’s leader in fisheries management. Support Montana Trout Unlimited today! Thank you.

Big brown taken during BWO emergence with #20 BWO Sparkle Dun.

If you want to fish dry-flies you’d better get to Yellowstone country, quick!

PMB and BWO on the Madison.

It has been 2 decades since we’ve seen such incredible early season dry-fly fishing here. Pale Morning Dun, Baetis (BWO) and Green Drake mayflies continue to emerge in number on rivers like the Henry’s Fork and Madison. Big trout rising to their hatches, best on cool-rainy days, and we’ve seen lots of those lately.

Caddis mating swarm along the river.

Evening caddis activity is cranking up on the Madison, and salmon flies are showing up above Wolf Creek as well. Make sure you play the short video showing an evening caddis mating swarm so common now along the river from Ennis, Montana to Earthquake Lake.

PMD and Hydropsyhe Caddis

My fishing buddy, Yvon Chouinard, is here and we’ve had some incredible fishing this week. I got Yvon off his fishing soft hackles kick, and back to fishing dry flies when every big fish in the river was rising to emerging mayflies during rain and hail storms last Monday and Tuesday.

Yvon scores a nice Rainbow.

Last Wednesday my good friend and fishing partner Terry, my wife Jackie and I drove into the Park to fish. While we waited for a rain storm to move in and get the PMD mayflies emerging in number we hiked along the river to revisit an old poacher’s cabin, then an Indian hunting pit I’d located years before. You never know what you’ll find hiking along our area rivers.

Ruins of an old poacher’s cabin.

Indian hunting pits along the river.

Once the PMDs rolled off we had nonstop dry fly fishing to big rising brown trout for 2 hours before the sun peaked out and the PMDs shut off for the day.

It is important to remember the 3 clues to Caddis emergences and trout rising to them on rivers as John and I wrote about in our little “Fishing Yellowstone Hatches”. The first, trout are seen leaping out of the water as trout chase emerging Caddis pupae and their momentum carries them out of the water.

The second clue is that there are NO insects on the water. Adult Caddis are very difficult to see drifting on the surface.

The third clue is that most of the feeding fish are bulging and splashing in fast water sections of the river when the trout take the pupae from the surface and turn downward. In slower water you will see quiet dimples and porpoise rolls or tails breaking the surface.

If you remember these simple clues you will be successful taking fish on emerging Caddis, I guarantee.

And, have X and Iris Caddis patterns in your fly arsenal. Then you can’t miss fooling even the most selective caddis feeding trout. Let me know how you do.

Nice Rainbow Trout took an X Caddis.

Until next time, thanks for reading and please support our partner conservation organizations, and keep on fishing!

Help Support The Montana Water Rights Protection Act

This is very important. If you love native and wild trout like I do please join me in supporting Montana Trout Unlimited’s “Montana Water Rights Protection Act”.

Make sure you go to their website and learn about this important piece of legislation that will protect stream flows, ensure healthy fish, improve fisheries and help us protect our coldwater resources while strengthening local economies.

This is urgent so act today! Thanks in advance for your support!

My fishing buddy Terry and I have been fishing the Firehole and Madison Rivers in Yellowstone National Park. They’ve offered up some of the best early season dry-fly fishing we’ve seen in years but, that will change as the weather and waters warm and flows diminish. We might have a week or 2 left of stellar dry fly fishing left so get there ASAP if these streams are in your fishing plans!

Yesterday we explored a piece of small water before hitting the Madison below Elk Meadow. Pale Morning Duns were beginning to emerge and a few fish rose to the duns. Check out the photo of Terry who'd delivered an accurate cast to a brown trout that rose to his fly. The next photo shows him landing that trout.

Brown trout rising to dry fly.

Mid-day emergences of PMDs have provided anglers with great dry-fly fishing during their time on the water. Evening caddis activity has been strong as well. White Miller Caddis will continue to emerge on warm evenings and the number of fish that rise to them can be spectacular. Check the photo of the batch of Fluttering White Miller Caddis I tied this spring. What is left of those 20 dozen flies are in Blue Ribbon Flies bins so get their quick before they run out if evening caddis fishing is in your plans.

If you fish the Madison River in the park expect to take brown trout like the one pictured finning above my wading shoe along a favorite piece of water in the Madison River. Many of these larger brown trout are Hebgen Lake residents that ran up the river to spawn last fall and remained in the river in winter and spring. They’ll stay until the water temperatures warm, then return to the lake to take advantage of cooler water for summer before running back up the river to spawn this September. These lovely brown trout will come up on cloudy afternoons for emerging PMD and BWO mayflies, and in the evening for emerging caddis.

I had to take today off to catchup, tie a few flies to replenish those I’ve used, and get ready for Yvon to arrive this evening. We’ll fish and explore off-the-beaten-path waters the next several days. And I’m looking forward to showing Yvon sections of a local stream that have recently been restored along with a couple future conservation projects we hope to work on. Please stay tuned here, reports to follow!

Thank you for reading, and please support Montana Trout Unlimited’s “Montana Water Rights Protection Act” today!

Remembering Yellowstone Park Fishing Season Openers

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.