Opening Day Reports

Here are four quick mini-reports from Yellowstone Park's openeing day.

Yellowstone River
Angler: Walter Wiese
Locations: Tower Falls area and upstream from the Roosevelt Bridge
Time: 11:15-4:45
Weather: 70 degrees, occasional hard wind gusts, partly-mostly cloudy
Water: 2 feet to 18" of visibility, tannin-stained, no more than 44 degrees and probably colder.

Well, I got one day of pre-runoff fishing in the lower Grand Canyon before it went away. The lake is rising like a rocket and it's been rainy, so this water is probably done until July 4 or so. Fishing was good, but not as good as I actually expected. I kept count and caught 30 fish at Tower, most on streamers and most of these on small black Sparkle Buggers. I probably could have caught more fish on nymphs, as the fish weren't in chasing mode. There were a lot of bugs in the air, but I only saw 5-6 rises total, which was disappointing. I was hoping for Mother's Day caddis. I just think the water (which was in Yellowstone Lake under an ice cap a day earlier) was too cold for the fish to rise. My second spot was between 1/4 and 1/2 mile upstream from the Roosevelt Bridge, where the canyon walls get tight. I only got one fish here, which I think is an artifact of the cold and very deep water. I expect this will fish better come Salmonfly time. The clarity was starting to drop while I fished.

Gardner River
Angler: Matt Minch
Locations: Several stretches below Boiling River
Water: Super high, six inches of visibility, around 48-52 degrees.

Matt figures he caught around 40 fish in this section, all on his double stonefly combination. The Golden Stone was actually the bigger producer, probably because the black one was too hard for the trout to distinguish from woody debris in the high flows. Most fish came from within a foot of the bank. Most tourists would have caught nothing, as the river is very difficult to fish at its current flows. The real upside here is that the fish seem to have filled in many of the lies vacated during last summer's gullywasher of sludge that significantly degraded habitat and thus fishing last summer/fall. A lot of the silt has been washed out already, and the river still has a good 750-1000cfs to rise before it peaks. This will add up to good fishing come July.

Firehole River
Two guys who were in the shop this AM joined the Firehole circus and said they did well on Pheasant Tails and other mayfly nymphs. They also mentioned some Nectopsyche caddis were in the air, although they saw no rises. Another guy did well on small olive buggers. I think the lesson is that the Firehole is fishing well, but only subsurface.

Joffe Lake
A pair of German tourists we sent there caught "a lot" of brookies on small spinners.