Yellowstone Area Trip Reports

So I'm hopefully going to get after myself and actually post trip reports more regularly (that is to say, ever) on my blog. I have a hard time keeping up with Parks' Fly Shop's fishing reports in the summer, so this is sort of a substitute. Here's the link: http://www.montanafishing.guide/fishing-report-blog/

Here's the first report:

Trip Type: Float.
Trip Location and Timing: Yellowstone River, Brogan?s Landing to Yankee Jim, 8:45AM to 12:45PM.
Weather: 40s-60s, sunny, with smoke haze. Calm wind becoming north (aka blowing right in our faces) 10-20mph.

Today?s client was a novice from Georgia and this was his first time in a drift boat out West. We had the first night in the 40s in quite a while and fishing started off slow. It picked up around 10:30 and my sense was that fishing stayed very strong until the end of the day. Unfortunately, my angler had a lot of difficulty casting with any accuracy or control, particularly after the wind came up, so the numbers of fish weren?t great. Ultimately he boated three cutthroats, two rainbows, and one whitefish. The top flies were a #14 light pink Bob Hopper and a #16 Bicolor Flying Ant, with the largest fish (a 13″ cutt) coming to the hopper, though quite a few larger fish ate the ant and either didn?t get hooked or came unbuttoned.


One interesting factoid is that the higher-profile ants I?d been fishing for the past several weeks aren?t generally working as well now, with a basic poly-wing ant now producing better. I suspect this is due to the steadily dropping streamflows and bright skies we?ve had most days lately.

Weather 40-60? I was there the last week in June fishing in the 90s. Maybe I should come back now.
Bob.

Weather has been crazy this summer. Our longest run of hot weather was the last week of June through July 4. No more than a couple days in a row over 90 since then. Today started off in the 40s and touched 80 when we got back. Yesterday I wore fleece fingerless gloves much of the day. Last couple days have been good. Report tomorrow.

Beautiful dayn the Madison at Westfork (temp-wise) but not pretty due to smoke everywhere!! As with all I talked to, the fishing was slow. Did have a couple hookups of smaller browns.