Yellowstone River · fly box
The longest free-flowing river in the lower 48, and the best native cutthroat fishery in it.
| Pattern | Imitates | Size | Technique |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chubby Chernobyl, gold | Salmonfly adult | #8 | Hang it 10 cm off a grassy bank and twitch; the take is a violent surface boil. |
| Parachute Humpy | Heptagenia dun | #14 | Standard dead drift along the foam line of a riffle. |
| Dave's Hopper | Grasshopper | #8-10 | Cast tight to the bank, let it sit, then twitch once. Most takes come on the twitch. |
| Conehead Woolly Bugger, olive | Leech | #6 | Fish the soft water behind boulders on a floating line, no indicator, watching the leader. |
The dressing plate
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.