Wyoming Trip 2012

I've got a buddy back in Oklahoma that's been wanting to come up to Wyoming with me for a number of years, but it just hasn't worked with his schedule. I didn't think it would work this year either, but with the well-below-average snowpack, things opened up a little earlier than normal and we were able to make a trip. Most years, the streams we fished don't clear until early-to-mid July at least, but this year they were clear by the last week of June.

I was supposed to pick up my buddy at the Casper airport at 9:00 on Saturday morning, so Friday I headed down to the Big Horn Mountains by myself, in order to leave a short drive the next morning. I figured I might as well fish while I was there! I spent about 3 hours on a little stream just off the highway and caught 30 or so fish, mostly rainbows with about 25% brookies mixed in. Nothing big (biggest was about 8"), but a couple of the fish were really pretty.

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This was probably the prettiest rainbow I've ever caught:

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This guy did not care about me at all:

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On my way to Casper the next morning, I got a text that my buddy's flight was delayed, and he wasn't going to get into Casper until after noon. :( Anyway, I finally picked him up and we headed west. He's done a fair amount of fly fishing, but the vast majority of it has been warm water fishing. The little trout fishing he's done has mostly been on the two Oklahoma tailwaters that are filled with stocker rainbows and aren't exactly the most challenging fish. We finally made it to the mountains and headed to a little stream that's filled with eager, but very spooky, brookies. The fish we were going after on this trip are a lot more wary than the fish he's used to, so I figured this stream would acclimate him to the stealth that's needed to be successful, but would have so many fish that it wouldn't matter how many opportunities he blew.

He spooked all the fish out of the first half dozen holes or so that he fished, but he finally got the hang of it.

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This was the typical fish from this stream:

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The next day we headed to one of my favorite streams which is usually pretty good for numbers, and where I've caught a few nice fish. On this particular stream, we hike about 1.5 miles downstream and then fish our way back up. There are a couple of decent holes where we start, then it's kind of mediocre water where you'll pick up a few fish here and there before we end at a truly fantastic pool. The second hole that we fished gave up his first cutthroat.

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This particular stream actually is the native home to both Yellowstone and Snake River Cutthroats. It's right along the area where their ranges overlap, so you get to see some fish that are clearly the fine-spotted variety, a few that are clearly the large-spotted Yellowstone variety, and a bunch that look somewhere in between. Someday I might actually send in the photos to get my certificate for Wyoming's Cutt Slam program, and if I do, I want to send in photos of the four smallest fish they've ever received for each subspecies. So when I caught this little fine-spotted guy, I was pretty excited.

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When we got to the last hole that I mentioned above, we've probably caught about 10 or so fish between us. This hole can't really be fished by more than one person at once, so we just took turns fishing it. Once one of us would catch a fish, the other one would take over. We pulled 11 fish out of that hole between us.

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The next day, we drove a couple of hours to my favorite stream. It's usually one of the last streams in the area to clear up, so I was pleasantly surprised when we pulled up and the water was crystal clear. As I was standing there inspecting the water, something buzzed by in front of me and landed on a nearby tree. A stonefly! I've only once fished a stonefly hatch before, and those were some realllllly tiny stones (like, size 18 ) These were some really nice golden stoneflies in sizes 6-10.

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We hiked a couple of miles downstream before fishing back up, and I don't think I've ever made that hike so quickly!

It didn't take long after we started fishing that I hooked into a nice 15" Yellowstone Cutt on a big stimulator.

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Right after that, my buddy hooked up with a nice whitefish (his first).

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Right after the hole where he caught his whitey, the river split (well, actually that's where it comes back together, but we were fishing upstream), and my buddy started to take the little side channel. I've only ever fished this stream later in the summer, and I knew there were some really good holes over on the main stem and the side channel doesn't hold much water, so directed him over there and told him that I'd try the side channel. Ooops. A few casts later I hooked into a nice 16" brown.

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And the next hole up on the side channel produced a fat 17" cutthroat.

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Meanwhile, he caught absolutely nothing on the main stem. Dangit. That's not what I was trying to do to him. Anyway, we met back up when the channels came back together (or split, as you will), and he moved on upstream. I felt like there really should have been a fish in the last hole he was fishing, so I stayed behind while he moved upstream. A few casts later I hooked a nice little 13" brown. When I turned around, he was starting to fish a little ways upstream, but I felt like he'd walked past a spot that might have held a fish. It wasn't great looking water, but I thought it was worth a try. My first drift through there produced another cutt, about 13 or 14". It felt like kind of a cruel way to teach him a lesson, but he didn't walk past any good holding water after that. :)

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The fishing wasn't as fast and furious as it usually is later in the year (normally you can catch fish in almost every run, but with the high water at this time of year, the fish were either concentrated in the slower pools, or just weren't as willing to eat in the faster runs).

Either way, the fish were hitting big bugs all day long.

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Lots of fish in the 14-16" range, and all nice and fat.

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Just a little way before we got back to camp, I hooked into a nice brown (17" or so if I had to guess), and when I did, he immediately leaped three feet out of the water! Then he jumped all the way out again! Then he did it again, and this time he threw the fly. :( Oh well, he was fun while he lasted.

The next day we decided to hike a couple miles further downstream than we had the previous day, right to where the stream enters a steep canyon. The canyon section is nearly impossible to fish just because the water's so fast and the walls are so steep you can't walk along the bank in most places.

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A little ways up from the canyon I hit a nice little side channel that held some productive looking water. A couple of drifts through there produced a missed strike and a refusal on the big stonefly, so I went to a slightly smaller, but still big (size 12) humpy. Bingo!

I followed that fellow up with a LDR on a decent brown and another missed strike from a cutt. A bit further upstream we came across a really nice, deep, slow pool. With faster water in the middle, my buddy took one side and I took the other. I pulled four nice cutts out of there, while he picked one up on his side.

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One photograph is enough!

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Farther upstream, I hit another little side channel and immediately saw a nice fish rising. With the high water on this stream, the side channels were really the hot place to be this week. Although the stream as a whole is pretty big, it's a much different feel when you're fishing a channel that's only 10' wide, and then gives up fish like this (stupid shadow, get out of there!):

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We went quite a ways upstream without catching much except a few small whitefish. Finally I wound up on the opposite side of the stream from my buddy after he'd fished a nice looking run with no success. There was some very fast water in the middle of the stream, and some big, deep pools behind some big rocks on the other side. I climbed out on one of those big rocks and looked down to see a realllly big cutt (at least for this stream) holding in the bottom of the pool. I tossed a big dry out there and got no response for several casts. Then he disappeared. So I watched for a while longer, and when he reappeared, I put on a big, heavy wooly bugger. I got him to turn and look at it, but that was it. The water was swirling so much in this hole it was nearly impossible to control where your fly went. Successive casts to the exact same place would result in the fly doing completely different things. Finally, after about 10 minutes of trying unsuccessfully to catch this fish, I decided it was time to move on and try for the two fish that I could see rising in the next pool up. As I tried to move upstream though, the bank just kept getting steeper and steeper, and I realized I wasn't going to be able to get back down to the river by continuing upstream, so I headed back downstream. As I did, I thought I'd try to see if that big fish was back in his hole. Just as I peered over the ledge, I saw him come up twice and take a couple of bugs on top (couldn't see what) and then go back down. So I tied on a big grey dry fly (my flies are all pretty generic) and put it over him. On about the 20th try, he came up and took it! Now, the problem was that this bank was REALLY steep, and there was a tree across the river just downstream from him, so I really had no way to chase him downstream. Fortunately, he didn't try to take him downstream, and I was able to find one little spot where I could get down to the river. If he had tried to take my downstream I might have just had to create my own A River Runs Through It scene and jump in after him. Thankfully it didn't come to that, and I was able to land him while staying dry. Unfortunately, my lens cover didn't open all the way. I measured him along the rod though, and he came out right at 19".

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Unfortunately, the day wouldn't stay that fantastic. A mile upstream or so, I hooked into a nice fish that I wasn't quite sure what was at first. This stream has always held a lot of Yellowstone cutts, a few whitefish, and an occasional brown. So when I hooked this guy, I wasn't quite sure what he was at first. When I landed him, my worst fears were realized.

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A rainbow. Well, a cuttbow, really, as he had some light slash marks under his jaw. This was the first rainbow I've caught in this stream, and it was downright depressing. This stream is one of the last strongholds for native Yellowstone cutthroats, so the presence of a rainbow/cuttbow was not what I wanted to see. In fact, I emailed a game and fish biologist about it afterwards and discovered that this was the first time a rainbow/hybrid had been found above the canyon. They were hoping that the canyon had enough waterfalls to act as a barrier to keep the rainbows from moving upstream. Obviously, that was no longer the case. My theory is that the high water last year made it possible for a few fish to move upstream, as I've caught far more browns, and now a rainbow, in the last two years.

That fish isn't in the river anymore though, and she made a fine supper. Thankfully, she still had eggs in her, so she hadn't spawned yet, so hopefully I was able to keep the cutthroat population as genetically pure as possible. I know a lot of people don't like the idea of keeping fish, but there was just no way I could return this fish to the stream, knowing what I know about the threat it poses to the cutthroats native to it.

For our last day, we drove around to the other side of the mountains. Had we walked all the way up the previous stream and crossed over the mountain, we'd be on this stream. So we were about 15 miles away as the crow flies. Of course, it was a 5 hour drive to get there.

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When we got there, nothing much was happening, so we piddled around for a little while. Then the bugs came out! I've never seen so many stoneflies in my whole life. So what were the fish eating? Caddisflies, of course! There were two massive hatches going on at once. Big golden stones were everywhere (including on the water), but the fish were keying in on the clouds of caddisflies that were returning to the water to lay eggs.

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On this day, though, my buddy really came into his own. At one point the day before, I'd caught somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 fish, while he'd only caught two. On this day, he put it to me. I caught somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 or 9 fish that day, and he doubled me up. He caught the biggest fish of the day too, a nice 15" cutt out of a stream that shouldn't hold fish that big.

We rounded out to trip with a nice meal of the previous day's rainbow, as well a smaller cutthroat from the final day's stream. A little salt, pepper, rosemary, lemon, onion and garlic, wrapped in foil and baked over a bed of hot coals. Absolutely fantastic.

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Beautiful country, beautiful water, beautiful fish; thanks for sharing the road trip pics.

Regards,
Scott

Patrick -

That was really enjoyable - both the narrative and the pixels.

Hope you had as much fun compiling your report as I had reading it. Thanks for the ride.

John

Very nice and thanks for sharing. You made my Saturday morning as I work thru the honey-do list. Have a smooth day and tight lines. Michael J.

Great pics and report!

Quivira Kid, keep an eye on Miss Betty. She might be packing her bags (onto her broom) for another trip. Lookout Montana.

Ed