Back on the Yellowstone

[Al Agnew]

The Fish and Game people opened up the Yellowstone in front of our house last week, after the emergency closure because of the great whitefish die-off from a parasite.  The river had been warm and at near historic low water in August, and that had allowed the parasite to explode and wipe out tens of thousands of whitefish, and a few trout.  We had planned all along to leave last week for Montana, so I was happy that the cool weather had allowed them to open the river back up (though there is still a stretch up in Paradise Valley that remains closed).

We got back Saturday night, and yesterday I looked at the river.  The little channel in front of the house was barely flowing, and the river was as low as I'd ever seen it.  A deep pool in "our" channel was holding a bunch of trout, both rainbows and browns, that will be there all winter, since there isn't enough flowing water for them to escape that pool.  They should survive, however, because water seeps through the rocks of the island and emerges in the bottom of the pool. Another pool downstream, a bit shallower, is holding a few nice trout and a school of survivor whitefish.  These fish, in these confined, almost dead still pools of clear water, are exceedingly wary and difficult to catch, unless I can catch them on a small dry fly or a streamer just before dark.  On the other hand, by next spring, before the snowmelt starts, they will probably be very hungry and easy to catch.

I went out and fished the main river in front of the house for a couple hours today, drifting nymphs.  It's down to about 1500 cubic feet per second (it should be around 2400 cfs this time of year), and I could have waded all the way across it at the island.  Places where I was catching fish back in mid-August are now less than a foot deep.  I caught one whitefish, two big suckers, and 4 rainbows, one of them a beautiful 19 incher.  That was a couple of firsts for me...the first time I caught more than one sucker in a day (they eat nymphs but not often), and the first time I've fished nymphs and caught more trout than whitefish on the Yellowstone.