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July 13, 2002 Beautiful Morning!! Up and at ‘em!! Breakfast at Arnie’s (eggs, pancakes, sausage, OJ, coffee, good solid fare for the day – another Lipitor day!). Met our guides Mike and Dave at 0840. Flies recommended for the day were: trico spinners, pmd spinners, etc.
Stopped by Craig to launch drift boats and into the river by 0900 (MS picked up croakie for glasses for the day at the Crosscurrents fly shop).
There is a trico hatch while we are launching that extends from the water surface a hundred feet into the sky, so thick it nearly blocks the sun. Looks like the bugs are cooperating today!! We divide into the two drift boats; Mike takes AB, JR, and GK while Dave takes AM and MS. The crew in Mike's boat drag it upstream from the Craig bridge to fish a large flat in the middle of the river. There were pods of fish all around the boat. AB hooked a nice brown right away on a trico while GK hooked an equally nice rainbow.
On the drift from this starting spot downriver towards the bridge, JR picked up a whitefish and a rainbow while AB another rainbow.
Prince nymphs seems to be the key for the latter fish. Soon we had both boats drifting down from Craig looking for feeding fish pods – Dave’s team was by Hemingway’s house side of the river (I think the East side in this stretch)
and Mike’s team was on the other side of the river. Plenty of white pelicans on the river; I don’t think they were looking for the bug hatch!! The day was brutally hot and there is no shade in a drift boat!! Temps were again in the 106F range!! Sunscreen, shorts, sunglasses, and hats were the order of the day. Gallons of gatorade were disappearing from the coolers! We often got out of the boat and waded to fish (sometimes to keep cool as much as anything else).
While we ran into some big pods I would say the fishing was overall slow. The scenery was spectacular although due to the heat, I don’t think we appreciated it at the time. We stopped for lunch at an island which is now public property and set aside for fisherman and others to use including camping at night (vis a vis Lewis & Clark). I would think the mosquitoes would drive you crazy at night however!! JR, GK, and AB fished the flats around the island for a couple of hours. There were pods of large fish everywhere!! AB caught a beautiful 20 inch rainbow - again on a trico. While holding the fish for a picture, naturally it jumped out of his hands while the boys were setting up their cameras. All they got was a picture of AB holding his hands in the air, asking, "Did you get the shot?"
GK also hooked into a nice rainbow under Mike's tutelage. AB stalked a brown trout in a brush pile near shore for a half hour with no luck. The brush pile made it almost impossible to deliver the fly into the "dinner zone." Turning around he spotted another large pod of fish feeding near mid-river. They looked like small fish based on the tiny dimples on the water surface. A couple of casts and a take!! A huge rainbow leaped from the river with the tiny size 18 trico in his lip. AB was so surprised at the size of the fish, he froze. When the fish came down from orbit about 6 feet from where he launched, the hook was straightened....but what a fish to see! After lunch, we drifted downriver and tried some nymphing in the heat of the day with a small split shot on the leader, 8-10" down to a red San Juan worm, and then 8" to a lightning bug. All smallish sizes. Use nymph rig when fish not rising and trico’s when you see risers. I got a few whitefish and some other hits on the nymphing rigs including a couple of nice LDR’s. Few fish rising at this point in the afternoon – very hot – hard to keep focused on fishing well. However we did count critter types and did see beaver, deer, pelicans, cows (moo!), bald eagle, muskrat, mink (I am told), and the next day a plastic great horned owl (which elicited a series of photographs until it was seen to be plastic!). Later did run into some surface risers and got an occasional brown although we seemed to be working hard for what we got. The wind finally came up in the afternoon and tried blowing us back to Craig and thus, required rowing downstream! We pulled over in an area with some flats and some small drop-offs and AM nailed a couple of quick rainbows on down-wing caddis (got fly from Dave) and then we were at the pull-out.
Thanked Dave and Mike for hard work in tough conditions. Got back to the cabins at about 6:30 pm. Starting to cool down finally – it was 102F. Dinner at Arnies was corn on the cob, biscuits, baked potatoes, steaks off the grill, etc. AB/GK went out to set a world record (line class) on spinning gear. AM, MS, and JR decided to give it a rest after the heat of the day. When AB/GK got back, they admitted that if there were a line class records for weeds, they might has set that one but saw no live fish! July 14, 2002 Up and packing early (by 0630) – settle bill with Arnie. Head for Craig flyshop and picked up some down-wing caddis (see experiences above). Drove back up river toward Holter Dam – pretty good access to the river in this section although the river only has a small shallow strip before it plunges deeply. Lots of fish rising and a fair number of fisherpersons – most all in driftboats, kayaks, float-tubes, etc.
AM picked up a 17 inch brown among the risers on a trico spinner. Lots of crawdads in the rocks by the shore – they would make a tasty meal in themselves!! Need to check regulations on catching those scrumptious critters!! AB was after a line class record again but try as he might, he had no luck convincing a large rainbow to take his offering. As we were fishing we realized that we had not seen any fish in the smaller sizes, e.g. 8-10 inches or less, which AM was accustomed to catching. Not sure how that worked with the population supposed to be self-populating. Need to ask around. Headed back to Helena about 11 to pick up more ice and grab lunch. Hot again today!! Drove eastward on I-90 and headed to Gardiner (Exit 333). We noted a sign on the way to Gardiner in Paradise Valley (www.troutheadwaters.com). From their web site: "Trout Headwaters Inc. is a private company specializing in the creation, restoration, and enhancement of streams, lakes and ponds." Cool idea – don’t know if they are making any money but sounds like a good thing to do. We reached Gardiner at 4:05pm – stopped by Park’s fly shop and got Yellowstone NP fishing licenses.
Checked into our hotel; had the family cabin (room 118) at the Yellowstone River Hotel which was a great deal for the 5 of us (individual beds) for $80. Seemed like a pretty good deal!! Leaving the hotel about 5:15 we headed to the Park where we started looking for Joffe Lake – the home of some brook trout. We had some obscure directions which we followed and found the lake behind some maintenance buildings for the park by the Mammoth area. Everyone hops out and starts rigging up for the fishing. JR in the water first – JR has the first "fish on" song for the group on this water!! Many more brook trout caught – some photo’d. The fish lived up to their billing as small. Most fish were 5-6 inches and the biggest were 10-12 inches. Lake is only ˝ acre.
JR manages to hook a beaver with his line (and not a hook-set per se); fortunately the beaver gets off before JR has to use his pliers to "de-hook" the beaver. I was hoping for some cool pictures of JR doing that along with the pictures in the hospital afterwards. But unfortunately for me, the beaver got away. Off to Mammoth dining room about 6:40. Seated at our table by 7:20 (the Yellowstone Heiferweizen beer was very nice!). Dinner as usual in the Park was both good and good value. After dinner, we hit the Gardner river on the way back to Gardiner (yes the spelling is different) by the bridge over the river that is just inside Montana. Heading back to the vehicles we drive towards the North Entrance of the Park (Mammoth Hot Springs), past the 45th latitude parallel sign (halfway between equator and northpole), the parked to fish the Gardner river from the roadway bridge downstream. Did not have any luck (small tiddlers – yuk!) and fished down to a rockwall area. Getting pretty dark by now so we pack it up as this is not the hot evening bite day on the Gardner for us!! (We later learn that we should have gone even further downstream past the cat-tails in a flatter section of the stream – more dry fly friendly water. Recommended generic patterns include caddis, nymphs, pupatators, and San Juan worms. C’est la vie!) Quit about 9:30 pm and headed back to the Yellowstone Hotel in Gardiner for the evening. We had a 5 bed cabin high above the river for about $80. Seemed like a pretty good deal to us! |
