Bighorn River

The river

Below Yellowtail Dam the Bighorn runs at a constant cold temperature, which produces enormous numbers of trout and equally enormous numbers of anglers. The 21 km from the Afterbay down to Bighorn Access is catch-and-release, artificial-lures-only, and it is the reason people fly across an ocean to fish here. The float is the standard unit of fishing; walk-and-wade anglers should target the first two kilometres below the dam and the boulder flats at Three Mile.

On this river

The winter midge game

From December to February the whole river switches to midges. Fish a two-fly rig with a pupa on the point and a smaller pupa 40 cm above it, under an indicator set shallow — 60 to 90 cm — because midges emerge in the top metre. Watch the indicator for a sideways slide rather than a dunk; trout take pupae on the move and rarely hold.

Reading a tailwater column

Because the flow is steady, the Bighorn has a stable three-layer structure: fast gravel on the surface, a mid-column of suspended food at 1–1.5 m, and a slow bottom layer. In a single run you should fish all three before moving — indicator rig through the mid-column, then a Euro-style tight line along the bottom, then a dry if anything is up.

Float etiquette on a busy river

The Bighorn gets over 100 boats on a June Saturday. The workable convention is that a boat already anchored on a run owns the run; pass on the far side and do not stop within 50 metres below it. Walk-and-wade anglers have priority on the first two kilometres below the dam, because there is nowhere else for them to go.