A Trip Out West

[Greasy B]

Great report, on my last visit to that creek the wind blew so hard the only way to get a fly on the water was to stand upwind reach the rod out in line with the drift, strip out line then drop it on the water by dipping the rod tip to the surface. A wonderful place with fantastic fish.

[Lancer09]

That creek and its pure Yellowstone cutthroats is amazing, isn't it? One thing that not many people try on it that always seems to work when they aren't quite committing to dry flies is to toss streamers. Those cutthroat love good size streamers. I've been to the third meadow; in fact did a four day horseback pack trip up the third meadow one time. Did not see but one other pair of anglers besides our small group of friends, and the fishing was spectacular. I hate riding horses, but it sure beat walking 8 miles up and back with a pack on your back.

That cold front that you experienced in Jackson Hole dumped snow on the mountain in front of our house north of Yellowstone, down to only about 1000 feet elevation higher than the house, and the temps dropped to near freezing that night.

Seems like the Chernobyls are always the first choice of the guides on the Snake River from July through September. It's an easy fly to fish and will always scratch up a few fish, so the guides like it. I've done two trips on the Snake, one through the park and one below town, and both produced well with Chernobyls, but I also caught a bunch of fish on various nymphs.

Glad you got into enough good fishing to make you happy...fishing has been slow on the Yellowstone for the last three weeks. Everybody is waiting for the fish to start looking up for hoppers, but it isn't happening yet. I caught one nice brown by the house the other day on a big Stimulator, and have caught a few other fish on the Stimulator on the three floats I've done, but it certainly hasn't been great.

That creek really was incredible. However we actually did encounter another group, and a lone angler in the second meadow alone. On the hike in we saw probably fifteen people hiking back and every one of them had a rod tube or two on them. When we were there we saw probably that many people headed to the third meadow and they all had rod tubes sticking up as well. I wanted to fish streamers on this trip and took my 7 out there and thought about giving it a shot with some bigger stuff, or trying to mouse one up, but never got around too it. The tent we stayed in was actually in West Yellowstone on the last night right on the South Fork of the Madison and there were some STUD fish right in camp that just looked like they would have liked a nice mouse after dark.

Our guide said that the hoppers have been late up there this year and weren't in full mode yet there in Jackson like usual about now.. Which is predominantly what I tied. They were all over anything with a little sparkle, and that small stimulator was the ticket. I bet I missed 2-3 times as many fish as I actually hooked, and even fewer to hand.

Love the pics. Congratulations also. Your fiancee is way better looking than you. Or the delicious beer you're drinking. Not to be creep or anything.

I definitely out kicked my coverage. The beer was delicious.

Great report, on my last visit to that creek the wind blew so hard the only way to get a fly on the water was to stand upwind reach the rod out in line with the drift, strip out line then drop it on the water by dipping the rod tip to the surface. A wonderful place with fantastic fish.

We had a bit of wind that day too. Without anything there to block it it got tough to cast a few times. I actually had one of the little water spout, miniature tornadoes start right over top of me and actually pulled my hat off.

[BilletHead]

Great report Lancer!

Glad you had a good time. Congrats too from the Billetheads also. We are still enjoying our trip West right now. Report coming up in in a bit over a week.

Al, we are about in your neighborhood and will be for a couple of days.

Billetheads.