Yellowstone River

The river

The Yellowstone drains a fifth of the park and then runs 1,100 km without a single main-stem dam. That means the whole river rises and falls with snowmelt, and the season has a hard shape: high and brown in June, dropping and clearing through July, and perfect from August to the first hard frost. The native Yellowstone cutthroat is the reason to come — it eats a dry fly with a recklessness that stocked rainbows never quite manage.

On this river

Fishing the bank, not the river

On the Yellowstone most of the food arrives from the bank — hoppers, ants, spruce moths, and the big stoneflies that fall out of the willows. That means your first cast should be within 30 cm of the grass, and your second cast should be 50 metres further down the same bank. Mid-river blind casting on this river is a way to spend a day without a take.

The Salmonfly window

The adult salmonfly lives about a week, and fish switch onto it hard for four or five days. Look for adults crawling on willow stems at the head of a riffle and for splashy, imprecise rises. A #8 Chubby or a Rogue Stone drifted in the foam line with a small nymph 50 cm below it covers both the surface fish and the ones still eating nymphs.

Wading safety in a free-flowing river

There is no dam to flatten the spikes, so a thunderstorm 40 km upstream can raise the river a metre while you are in it. Watch the colour line along the bank: if the clear-to-muddy boundary starts moving toward you, get out. A wading staff is not optional on the Yellowstone after August; it is standard kit.