yelowstone Park advice needed

[st.croixguy]

My wife and will be staying in Yellowstone park June 20 -> 25. Any suggestions, advice or helpful info would be appreciated.

First two days in the Gardner area, last part will be at Old faithful.

Feel free to im me

SCG

[ScottP]

Hopefully, runoff will have abated somewhat, Gardiner River could be decent. Yellowstone Lake opens on June 15 (river below the lake to the Falls not until July 15) - remember, if you catch a lake trout, you have to kill it. Firehole/Gibbon/Madison should still be good. Catch a bunch.

Regards,
Scott

[BelAirSteve]

Ditto what ScottP said about Parks Fly Shop. If you are in Gardner, stop by and pick up Richard Parks' book "Flyfishing Yellowstone." He literally lists every stream and river in the park, the best times of year to fish them, the best flies to use, etc. Plus he has a really cool old fly shop!

[RALMD11]

Ditto what ScottP said about Parks Fly Shop. If you are in Gardner, stop by and pick up Richard Parks' book "Flyfishing Yellowstone." He literally lists every stream and river in the park, the best times of year to fish them, the best flies to use, etc. Plus he has a really cool old fly shop!

I actually recommend The Yellowstone Fly-Fishing Guide by Craig Matthews. I worked for a summer at the Yellowstone Adventure shop near Canyon inside the park. I think I probably read that book cover to cover 3-4 times between when I got the job and when I came home. Ideally order the book off of the internet before your trip. It has the park divided into sections, so you can just look for the northern section for your day's in Gardiner. I fished the Lamar River a pretty good bit, Soda Butte creek, and made the hike to Slough Creek.

I still have flashbacks of the hike back into Slough, I'm not sure how much you are looking to hike, but that is a very very unique place not to mention an awesome fishery.

The dates on your trip might be just a tad early for the ideal fishing in the northern part of the park, but that will really all depend on run off and the current weather.

Blue Ribbons flies has great fishing reports on their websites as do most of the other fly shops out there. I would definitely buy everything I needed fishing wise before I went in the park, and most every fly shop should be able to set you up with something that will catch fish.

The Firehole would probably be a pretty good bet. I fished the Firehole canyon pretty heavily with stonefly/attractors with a dropper and had pretty good success.

Bottom line, I would get the book and use it as a guide to have a rough plan of where to go and what you will need. Then I would drop into the fly shops and tell them what you are thinking about doing and they will set you up.

Good Luck! I'm so jealous; that summer was truly the best summer of my life.