Parks' Fly Shop 2011 Season Photo Essay

Introduction

The 2011 season was something of an odd one for Parks' Fly Shop and everyone in the Yellowstone area. A heavy winter snowpack followed by a wet spring and very slow spring melt meant that there was a lot more water in the rivers until a lot later in the season than usual. While there were always places to fish, and the fishing in the right spots was good even when the water was highest, these places were unusual ones and often not the places people usually expect to fish in the area at a given time of year. The spring runoff didn't recede enough on the Yellowstone to begin floating it until July 28, for example, when we usually get started the first week of July. We don't think we're unusual when we say our business was down quite a bit. On the other hand, the fish were extremely healthy due to the high, cold flows, abundant food, and relative lack of fishing pressure, and because the flows stayed high until late in the year, we were able to continue offering floats in Yankee Jim Canyon into October, something we'd never done before.

This page tells the story of the season in pictures and text. Some of the photos were shot by clients. Thanks to those folks who submitted them. As of this writing (early December), the outlook for next summer is great, with the forecast for a normal to slightly above normal snowpack, which doesn't delay the start of the float season much but keeps the water cold and the fish happy. If you'd like to experience some of the fishing shown in the photos below, we'd love to set up a trip or trips with you.

Early Season: April through June

After a winter filled with an occasional midge hatch (for Ben), a lot of sitting in the shop (for Richard), a lot of bass fishing in Georgia (for Wilson), and a lot of snowboarding (for Walter), the fishing season really got going in a big way in April. Besides a couple floats, including the annual river cleanup for Richard and Ben during which they got in a little fishing, early on we mostly fished lakes. Dailey Lake and Story Lake were both regular haunts, and besides getting the truck and trailer stuck while trying to ram through a snowdrift once on the way to the upper lake, Story Ranch lakes were the stars. Large black leechy streamers were the key.

This pattern mostly continued through May and early June, mostly because the Yellowstone was a bust during this time. Whereas 2009 and 2010 saw excellent Mother's Day Caddis hatch action during May, and even a few days in late May when the river dropped into very fishable level and clarity, this year the hatch was totally blown out and only one or two days late in the month were even remotely fishable.

Upper Story Lake endured some unusual mud problems in May, but Lower Story fished well, soon followed by Merrell and then in late May and early June by the return of Upper Story. Options expanded near the end of the month, when the Yellowstone Park season opened. Though most of the fishing pressure at this time is concentrated on the Firehole and Madison Rivers, the short drainage and steep gradient of the Gardner River means that it clears enough to fish quickly in the event of cold weather in the middle of runoff. We enjoyed around a week of such conditions this year right at the beginning of the season, and stonefly nymphs pounded right in bankside pockets produced amazing fishing for anglers fit enough to work along the edge of the still high and fast river.

Late June saw consistent fishing on the usual June Park waters, chief among them the Firehole. Both bugs and fish enjoyed the cooler water, delayed warmup, and higher than usual flows. By the 20th the Gibbon was in top shape, and we spent a great deal of time from this point until mid-July hitting the pocket water sections of this river, especially the newly-reopened section where the road was rerouted away from the stream, turning this formerly roadside fishery into an attractive stretch of water off in the trees. The "catching" might not be any better, but the fishing sure is.

Top Flies, April-June

• Lakes: #4 Black Jewell Thief, #10 Joffee Jewel, #16 PMD BLM Nymph, #12 Red Chironomid Pupa, #8 Blood Leech, #10 Wire Worm
• Firehole River: #14 Glasshead PT Soft Hackle, #14 Palmered CDC & Elk, #12 Black Sparkle Bugger, #16 PMD Sparkle Dun
• Gibbon River: #12 Coachman Trude, #10 Synth Double Wing, #14 Bead Hare & Copper, #14 Green Montana Prince
• Gardner River: #6 Black Minch Stone, #10 Golden Minch Stone, #6 Brown Girdle Bug, #10-14 BH Prince, #10-12 Tunghead 20-Incher

July

Typically early July finds us abandoning the Firehole and Gibbon, and most area lakes, in favor of the Yellowstone, Slough Creek, and other waters in the northern part of the park and further north. This year was an exception. We continued fishing private lakes through mid-month, the park lakes really didn't even get going until early July, and the Firehole didn't shut down until mid-month. The Gibbon continued to be our main haunt for beginners and anyone looking to fish dries through mid-month, while fish in the private lakes became more aggressive to dry flies and chironomid emergers fished fast in the mornings before dropping down below the thermoclines in the heat of the afternoons.

By mid-month many of our smaller regular summer haunts were finally beginning to fish. Beginner trips transitioned from the upper Gibbon to small creeks in the Gardner system, while more-experienced anglers explores some more-challenging small streams whose names we won't give here in addition to the Gardner River, where the Salmonfly hatch began below Boiling River around the 18th. By the 20th, Slough Creek started to fish well, and immediately started producing some large fish on streamers for clients who made the hike with Ben into the Second Meadow, while Walter's clients experienced some success on dries in the Lower Meadow, which was unfortunately crowded, as it often is when nothing else in the Lamar system is fishable yet. The Yellowstone outside the park FINALLY became fishable on the 28th, though it was strictly a nymph and streamer fishery for the first week of the season. This was a time of ups and downs on the 'Stone: Walter's first clients on the 28th barely avoided a skunking, while his client on the 29th put well over twenty in the boat. On the last day of the month, his inexperienced client still managed around eight fish, while Richard's experienced folks only managed one apiece on a half-day, for example. Consistent (if not always "better") fishing would come on floats beginning in early August.

Top Flies in July

• Top Dries:#12-16 Coachman Trude, #12-14 Gray and Green Foam Drakes, #6 Parks' Salmonfly, #16 Tan X-Caddis, #14 Royal Wulff Cripple
• Top Wets/Emergers/Cripples:#12-14 Kaufmann Chironomid Pupa, #12-14 Ben's Slough Creek Spinners
• Top Nymphs:#8-12 Minch Golden Stones, #6 Minch Black Stone, #10-12 BH Prince, #14 Amber Prince, #12 Black Merrell Lake Chironomid, #8 Wine San Juan Worm, #12-14 Epoxyback Golden Stone, #10-12 20-Incher, #16 BH Prince, #16 Hotwire Prince, Yellow and Red and Green and Yellow

August

Typically August is the second month of our peak season. This year it was the first. In most ways, August fished this year like July usually does, with Salmonflies lasting in the right places until mid-month and the fish hanging tight to the banks and feeding aggressively.

In Yellowstone National Park, the Salmonfly hatch was in full swing for the first ten days of the month on the Yellowstone River in its Black Canyon and on the Gardner River above Boiling River. As is often the case, the best flies during this time often weren't the omnipresent Salmonflies. On Walter's trips into the Black Canyon at this time, streamers, attractors like large Turck's Tarantulas, and medium-sized attractor nymphs worked much better, while Ben used similar flies but relied even more heavily on streamers. On his and Wilson's trips on the Gardner, Yellow Stimulators, Trudes, and Spruce Moths produced just as well or better than the Salmonflies. On Slough Creek, streamers were usually the ticket, as the Drake hatches were more scattered this year than usual, and few competing anglers (of which there were many) thought to try streamers. By this time the beginner trips had mostly shifted to the mainstem Gardner, but the action stayed just as hot.

In the Park, the main disappointment in August was Soda Butte Creek. While it's always crowded and we stay away when we have clients able to hike, the first few weeks after it clears typically see excellent, dense hatches of several different insects on Soda Butte, and enough water in the side channels for everyone to have a shot at aggressively rising fish. This year the crowds were present, but the hatches weren't. The heavy spring runoff rearranged Soda Butte considerably, filling in some formerly delightful pools and displacing some fish and insects. Some anglers did well on Soda Butte this year, most did not. Unless another record runoff changes things in a big way again in the spring, next year should see the insect and fish populations stabilized again. On the flipside, the Lamar, Slough Creek, and other streams in the Lamar drainage fished as well or better than usual during this time, and with the exception of Slough Creek's obvious meadow pools and the easy to reach sections of the Lamar near the road, crowds were manageable.

Richard and Walter handled the brunt of early August float trips, and both generally stuck to the upper Yellowstone where the fish were more apt to rise. On the upper river, the first week of August saw the fish willing to eat large attractor dries like #8-10 Turck's Tarantulas and large Yellow Stimulators, but the preferred fly was far and away Walter's new Amber Prince, which probably split the difference between Yellow Sally and Golden Stonefly nymphs and Hydropsyche caddis larvae. On the 7th or 8th, a day when the fish weren't so keen on the Prince and more fish seemed to go for the dry than before, Walter played a hunch and tied on a #16 Yellow Crystal Stimulator behind his client's Tarantula, and the summer dry fly bonanza was really off to the races, with over 25 fish coming to dries that day and plenty more in the days ahead. For the remainder of the season, Walter's float trip clients caught more fish on dry flies than nymphs on all but two days, and other guides generally saw the same sorts of results. The little Yellow Stimulators remained our top flies through mid-month, after which hoppers took over.

Further downriver the fish weren's so keen to rise as they were near Gardiner, but streamers and large nymphs under indicators produced some hefty fish, if not so many. One of our favorites was the great brown pictured below, which was caught by one of Ben's anglers on the "Bird Run" float from Grey Owl to Mallard's Rest, on a float he donated to Mike Leach's Yellowstone Country Guardians River Guardians Fly Fishing School.

In late August, our full-day walk trips for experienced anglers shifted almost exclusively to various sections of the Yellowstone inside the Park, with only a handful of trips run on Slough Creek, the Lamar, or elsewhere. The crowds were getting heavy in the Lamar system and the fish were getting spooky, while those on the Yellowstone were just now getting really interested in big grasshoppers and were still entirely happy to eat a streamer if if swam in front of their noses. Half-day trips mostly ran on the lower or middle Gardner for experienced anglers, or on the upper Gardner for rookies.

Late August was prime time on the float sections of the Yellowstone, with great dry fly fishing all the way from Gardiner to way east of Livingston. Except for Wilson, who doesn't row, all of our in-house guides did more floats than walkers in this period, and we also made extensive use of contract guides for floats. We usually shared the river with large numbers of other boats, but the river was still high enough that accurate casts and tricky drifts were often required, so even on the crowded days there were usually enough fish to go around. Late August was all about hoppers. Hoppers, hoppers, hoppers. Perhaps because of the high flows, the fish never really did turn on to caddisflies or the medium-sized (#12-14) attractor dries that usually share the stage with hoppers in this timeframe. Instead, they usually wanted a big hopper trailing a little one, or two medium-sized ones in different styles or colors. We were happy to oblige. Early in this period, fairly robust hoppers in tan, gold, and pink were the keys, while later in the month medium-sized peach and pink flies took over. There were also a few days here and there when a #14-16 tiny tan hopper was far and away the best choice, usually behind another hopper.

It sometimes seemed random which specific bug worked best from day to day, but it really mattered. One day a client who insisted on fishing his version of Doug's Wrapped Foam Hopper caught only half as many as his less-experienced partner who fished a peach Morrish Hopper, whereas the day before the Wrapped Foam Hopper fished at least as well. Regardless of which fly the fish preferred, this period was dry fly fishing at its finest, with most days producing trout on dries at a 5-1 ratio to those caught on nymphs.

Top Flies in August

• Top Hoppers: Morrish or More or Less Hopper, #10-12, peach and tan, Korn's Wrapped Foam Hopper, #8-10, assorted colors, Wiese's GFA, #10-12, assorted colors, Chubby Chernobyl, #8-12, pink, gold, tan, Rainy's Grand Hopper, #14-16, tan, Wiese's DFH, #10, amber, #10 Pink Pookie
• Other Top Dries: Card's Cicada #10-12, Black Swisher's PMX #10-12, Trina's Carnage Attractor #10, Coachman Trude #12-14, Wiese's Clacka Caddis #14, PFS Trude Cripple #16, Yellow Crystal Stimulator #14-16, Turck's Tarantula, #8-12
• Top Nymphs: Baby Golden Stone #14, Bead, Hare, and Copper #12-16, Minch Golden Stone #12, Wiese's Amber Prince #14. Honestly the dries were WAY more important for most of the month.
• Top Streamers: Black or Olive Conehead Crystal Buggers, Black Bow River Bugger, White Conehead Madonna, Tan Everson's Tung Minnow, Trick or Treat Bugger, all #4-6

September

Crowds declined slightly in early September, and conditions actually began to approach "normal." In this timeframe Ben and Wilson mostly conducted walk trips. Ben spent most of his time taking people on the Gardner and Yellowstone in the upper Black Canyon, while Wilson hit the lower Black Canyon near Gardiner, the Lamar, and handled the beginners. The fish in the Park were beginning to get spookier, but on the Yellowstone smaller hoppers continued to produce, while the fish began cautiously investigating small mayfly-type attractors like Purple Haze Cripples. Streamers were still a ticket in the upper canyon for Ben. On the Gardner, Small hoppers trailing flashy beadheads remained the ticket for numbers, but on cloudy days some larger browns began to come to medium-sized attractor nymphs run repeatedly past their noses.

Early September floats were largely centered on Yankee Jim Canyon, with good hopper fishing continuing in this section even as the fish began growing more spooky. The lower section of the canyon didn't fish as well early in its floatable season as the top did, for some reason bringing mostly tiny fish, so Walter and Richard (who was floating the canyon regularly for the first time) generally floated very long section, skipping the less-productive bottom chunk of the canyon and instead hitting the best sections from Carbella to Point of Rocks below the canyon in late afternoon, long after the full-day crowds putting in at Carbella were gone.

Typically in early September we see at least sporadic mayfly hatches in the afternoon, in addition to plenty of fish still interested in eating terrestrials, but due to the high sun and wind we had in September this year, the mayflies were slow to materialize. Instead of the double-mayfly or attractor-mayfly rigs we fished in 2010, we most often fished either a hopper trailing an mayfly-type attractor like a Purple Haze or a small terrestrial such as a beetle or ant. As the month progressed, more and more fish preferred the smaller fly, and the lower portion of Yankee Jim began to turn on, with larger fish moving back into this section as they did once flows dropped below 3000cfs, as they did in 2010.

Late September saw more of the same weather as early September, which frankly made the fishing less consistent than usual during this period. Water levels and bug populations were at fall levels, but the weather still insisted it was summer and the fish didn't know what to make of it. Generally speaking, the bigger waters that offered the fish a greater sense of protection from the bright sun and clear water fished better in late September, with the Yellowstone being the clear winner. Except for a few days Wilson and Ben enjoyed on the Gardner immediately after the one brief cold spell around the 20th, when large numbers of fresh early fall-run browns entered the river, our best fishing during this period was on float trips.

The mayflies finally began to trickle off in earnest during this period, so for at least an hour or two every day in early afternoon we fished a larger mayfly or mayfly-type attractor trailing a small Baetis of one type or another, usually a Purple Hazy Cripple or Loopwing Haze Emerger, but sometimes a more-imitative Gray Baetis Parachute. Top flies ranged from medium-sized Clacka Caddis to smaller Trude Cripples, but Walter's top fly (which will be in the bins next year) was a Tan Rainbow Parachute, a fly that probably imitates tiny hoppers as well as Mahogany and Hecuba mayflies. When the fish were still on hoppers, as they usually were both before lunch and after around 3:00pm, or all afternoon on the hottest days, small and pink or peach were the tickets. By far the most productive hopper during this period, and continuing through early October when the hopper bite finally died, was a #12 Pink Minipook, a small hopper with the general outline of the more-robust Pink Pookie that works so well when the water's higher. This is another one that's going to be available in big numbers for 2012, after literally every one we tied went out with guide trips --and only 3-4 came back without being ripped apart by trout teeth.

Top Flies in September

• Dry Flies: #12 Pink or Peach Wiese's Minipook, #14 Coachman Clacka Caddis, #16 Trude Cripple, #16 Sparkle Parachute Flying Ant, #16-18 Purple Hazy Cripple, #14-16 Tan Rainbow Parachute, #18 Gray Baetis Parachute
• Nymphs: #12-16 Bead, Hare, and Copper, #10-12 20-Incher, #6 Brown Girdle Bug, #10 Minch's Golden Stone, #4 Minch's Black Stone

October and November

October, too, was warmer than normal, and hatches were more limited than expected on the Yellowstone. The bright sun and lack of spikes in streamflow also kept the entrance of fall-run browns into the Gardner slower than usual. On the flipside, it never got too cold for the private lake fish to stop feeding aggressively, so while floats were key early in October, from the 10th onward the lakes provided spectacular fishing.

With the exception of a few days in the first week of the month, October fishing on the Yellowstone was all about mayflies. Because of the bright sun, the streamer bite was generally limited to an hour or two early in the morning, and the fish were more reluctant than usual to chase big, meaty streamers. The dry fly bite was never as intense as it can be when the weather is ugly, but the warmer weather and streamflows that were still a bit above normal meant the river got warmer faster during the day and never got quite so cold at night, so the dry fly bite often started at 10:30 or 11:00 instead of after lunch like it usually does late in the season. Early October is when we finally switched to 5X tippets on the Yellowstone, easily five or six weeks late, showing in a nutshell how slowly the river dropped and cleared for the season.

Typically most of our October fishing and guide trips after the first week or ten days are centered on Yellowstone Park, with Walter and Ben chasing runner browns both alone and with clients and Richard chasing hatches on the Firehole (Wilson is done for the season at the end of September). Richard still hit the Firehole, and Walter and Ben still went looking for runner browns on their own, but from October 10 through the 25th almost all of our guide trips were on private lakes. This year the big winner was Merrell Lake. Each guide day during this period was better than the last.

The above photos are actually a bit misleading. Shortly after we started fishing Merrell in mid-October, almost all the fish were rainbows. Eric's brown pictured above was one of only three or four caught that day. The most consistent fishing during this period was found well off several cattail-covered banks, with small black leeches and Minch Flashabuggers the top bugs and red chamois worms serving as a changeup. The fish wanted the flies fished slow, almost still.

Things started to change by the 15th. While the small leeches and chamois worms still worked, the fish showed a distinct preference for larger flies, especially chocolate brown Bully Buggers and #6-8 peacock-bodied Woolly Buggers with a heavy wire rib. Where the fish were also began to change. The deepwater dropoffs that had been the hot spots just a few days earlier now no longer produced. The fish were on many of the same banks, but cruising closer to shore. They also moved in much tighter to the rocky shores at the southeast side of the lake, both browns and rainbows, and several fish were caught sight-casting the streamers. While rainbows still outnumbered the browns during this period, the ratio was much closer.

By shortly after the 20th, when outside anglers were booted from Merrell Lake while the lodge owners prepared to host elk hunters, The fish were almost exclusively tight to the banks and they almost exclusively wanted medium-sized streamers. The rocky south and east banks fished much better than most of the north shore, though on Walter's last trip his client had some memorably action casting a streamer right to the weeds in the lake's northwest corner, with strikes usually coming in a rush almost as soon as the fly touched the water. The fish combination at this point was almost 50/50 browns and rainbows, with the few fish caught along banks that had produced the majority of catches a week before now more small browns and rainbows than the larger rainbows that had predominated before. The larger browns were simply all tucked up on the rocks trying to find suitable spawning gravel, while the rainbows had followed them hoping for some caviar.

As is often the case, guide trip business petered out in late October, though thankfully not until after those trips on Merrell Lake, some of our best of the season. There was still time for our own fishing, however, and Walter buckled down to some serious brown trout hunting on the Gardner. Which was almost a bust this year. After Ben and Wilson's clients put up some huge numbers on early-run fish in September, and considering fall 2010 was one of the best ever for big numbers of "runners," we were expecting big things this fall. In terms of large browns, we mostly didn't get it. Instead of 10-12 per day on average, numbers were almost universally in the single digits, and with the super-clear water from dry weather and cold temperatures, the fish were spooky.

The end of the season was far from a total bust, though. While the runner browns didn't make as many appearances as we would have liked, the fall Gray Baetis mayflies did. Typically we'll see one or at most two heavy hatches on the Gardner each fall, hatches that seem to make almost every rock in the river turn to fish. This year the last week of the YNP season brought this type of hatch almost every day for at least an hour or two. By far the most productive bug was the #18 Purple Hazy Cripple, with the fish largely ignoring more-imitative Baetis patterns, probably because they didn't stand out as well as the purple fly amid the flurry of naturals.

After the park season closed at dusk on November 6, we honestly started going into winter hibernation ourselves. Ben fishes a fair bit in the cold and dark of late November and December, but Walter and Richard are busy prepping the shop for our winter ski and snowshoe rental business, Walter is busy with grad school and prepping his gear for snowboarding, and frankly everyone just needs a bit of a break. Our 2012 fly order are in, we're talking about adding guides for next summer, and the phone calls and e-mails about trips for next year are starting to trickle in. All in all 2011 was a somewhat trying season, but a good one, and we're hopeful that with more-normal water predicted for 2012, next year will be even better.

Top Flies in October and November

• Lake Flies: #10-12 Chocolate Bully Bugger, #8-10 Black Flashabugger, #8 Peacock and Black Bugger, #12 Black Electric Leech, #10 Red Chamois Worm
• River Dries:#16-18 Purple Hazy Cripple, #18 Loopwing Haze Emerger, #16 Gray Baetis Parachute, #14 Tan Rainbow Parachute
• River Nymphs:#6 Brown Girdle Bug, #10 20-Incher, #12-14 Minch's Bead, Hare, and Copper, #6 Minch's Creep, #12-18 egg flies, #16-18 Trina's Bubble Back
• River Streamers:#4 Olive and White Silvey's Sculpin, #4-6 Woolly Buggers in white, olive, and black (in about that order)