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Yellowstone River

Introduction

        The Yellowstone River is the parent stream of most of the waters we fish, and we spend a great deal of time on the big river itself.  More than any of the others streams in our area, the Yellowstone offers an immense variety of water types, insect species, levels of accessibility, crowds versus solitude, and tactics an angler may use. 

        The wide variety of characteristics noted above can be broadly grouped into categories defined by the course of the river.  The upper Yellowstone between Yellowstone Lake and Canyon Village, in the heart of Yellowstone National Park, offers challenging fly fishing for large cutthroat in a generally easy-to-access area, where currents are mellow except in a few places and insect hatches range from mildly perturbing to exasperating in their complexity.  The canyon stretches of the Yellowstone, from the Upper Falls near Canyon where the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone begins to the terminus of Black Canyon of the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Gardner River, offer a broader range of fish sizes and ways of catching them.  The river in this stretch usually displays a steep, brawling character, and all but a few short stretches require a hike of at least a half-mile to so much as reach the water.  Outside the Park, hatches are less complex than those above the canyons, but more diverse than those in the canyons.  Access and water character are diverse as well, with a few places displaying raging whitewater like that in the canyons while other areas are almost placid.  There are some places to fish outside the Park on foot, but the best way to experience this portion of the Yellowstone is to float it, covering from five to fifteen miles of river over the course of the day in a McKenzie drift boat.

        For more information on fishing different stretches of the Yellowstone, click one of the links to your left.