When it's good...

[Al Agnew]

The entire Yellowstone River is finally open again.  Cool weather has lowered water temps, but the river is still as low as I've ever seen it.  I fished in front of the house for a couple hours a couple days last week, and caught a few fish, including whitefish.

The Yellowstone is not an easy river to fish.  On an average day, an angler with a bit of knowledge of the river and trout might catch a half dozen to a dozen trout, mostly 10-14 inchers.  A few days of that kind of fishing and you kinda forget how good the river can be when it's good.  Today it was good.

I didn't get on the water til after 11 AM, having a bunch of stuff to do beforehand.  I put my little one person raft in at Carter's Bridge for the "town float" through Livingston down to the house.  Leaving the access, there's a long stretch of fairly fast moving water along cobble banks, not very deep, certainly not the kind of water that shouts "trout".  I had on a Joe's Hopper, an old school hopper pattern that I've taken to using instead of all the high tech foam hoppers that everybody uses on the Yellowstone these days.  There are still some hoppers along the banks on warm days, and this promised to be a warmish day, maybe up to 70 degrees.  On a dropper I put on a blue winged olive pattern that's kind of an all purpose dry fly for me.  In 100 yards I had four takes, one on the hopper and the others on the BWO, catching three 11-12 inch browns.  I had another take, bigger fish, in deeper water below, but missed it.  

The river splits, and where the two channels come back together it's pretty gnarly water.  Low water constricts the river in places, forming 3 feet high wave trains, and the wave train on the runnable side runs straight into a sharp drop coming from the other side.  It's a spot that has been giving drift boats trouble, but I was easily able to avoid the worst of it in the little raft.

The riffle below has a tiny "riffle corner", an eddy formed on the inside of the turn.  It's small enough that the guides probably don't ever stop tehre to fish it like they do the bigger, more obvious riffle corners.  I stopped, and on the first cast drifting a Prince nymph and pheasant tail soft hackle, I caught a beautiful 17 inch rainbow.  Second cast, I hooked a bigger one, and fought it for quite a while as it ran out into the heavy current.  Finally the hook pulled out.  Third cast, a 13 incher.  A couple drifts later, another big one on, this one about 19 inches.  Altogether, from that little current seam, I hooked 9 trout...and 1 whitefish.

I went back to the dry flies as I drifted along the banks, picking up little browns and rainbows.  I stopped at a couple more riffle corners, and took both trout and whitefish from all of them.  Then there was a little rock ledge coming off the bank, barely submerged, a nice current sweeping over and past it.  I drifted the dries over the ledge, and right on the downstream drop-off a big fish took the hopper.  It was a beautiful 18 inch cutthroat.  

The fishing slowed during the more sunny middle of the afternoon, and when a small thunderstorm gathered to the south over the Absarokas and clouded things up again, the fishing didn't pick up much.  I was still catching small trout on the dries now and then, and I stopped at a couple more riffle corners and took a few average rainbows along with some survivor whitefish.  I passed the city park and heard a marching band, which reminded me that the homecoming parade was this afternoon.  The beating drums didn't bother a mink that was foraging along the bank.  A few drops of rain fell, the thunder rumbled and grumbled.  I decided to only fish the best spots from the Mayor's Landing access down to the house.  

To take out at the house, I had to enter our little side channel at the deep pool on the upper end.  With the clouds, I figured it was a good time to try stripping a streamer for the big trout I had seen in it.  Sure enough, I got a heavy strike in the upper portion.  It was a 20 inch rainbow, the best one of the day, and it ran all over the upper half of the pool before I could subdue it, probably scaring the bejeezus out of any other trout in the vicinity.  I rowed a few strokes to where I could make some casts to the lower, more undisturbed part of the pool.  Sure enough, another heavy strike.  This was an even bigger fish.  I finally netted it...a 23 inch brown!  Really nice way to end the day.

Sorry for the lack of photos...I forgot my waterprood camera, and when I tried to take pictures with my cell phone it said I'd used up all my storage.  Arrghh!  I know, without photos it didn't happen.  But it all did.  I didn't keep track but I certainly caught more than 30 trout during the day, and some of the bigger trout I've caught on the Yellowstone in the last year or two.  When it's good, it's GOOD!

[Mitch f]

Very nice report Al!

I would love to try an original jointed floating Rapala on that stretch. With some upgraded trebles of course.

 

[DainW]

Awesome thanks for the report Al. Sounds like a heck of a day. Glad to hear that river is open and fishing well.