Yellowstone Fly Fishing Episode 1: The Firehole River

yellowstone is truly one of our nation's treasures it's home to 50 of the world's active geysers it's home to bison herds that have continuously grazed its valley since prehistoric times there are endless miles of scenic beauty and the reason for my journey to yellowstone and the surrounding area the opportunity to fish for both native cutthroat and wild populations of rainbow and brown trout in some of the world's best fly fishing rivers lakes and streams [Music] so here's the plan i have a reservation for a week of fishing in yellowstone it's mid-june so under normal seasonal conditions there are only really three rivers in the park that are fishable the fire hole the gibbon and the madison for this reason i made reservations to set up my base camp at the madison campground conveniently located at the confluence of these rivers the other rivers in the park the lamar yellowstone gartner etc will be flooded and very cloudy due to the runoff of snow from the mountains which i was okay with because the firehole river is my first choice the firehole river is it's unique among trout streams worldwide with dramatic scenery as it runs right by several major geysers and hot springs in the park such as old faithful and grand prismatic spring i spent the night in livingston montana got up early in the morning and drove south through pleasant valley following the yellowstone river to gartner montana and the north entrance of yellowstone early enough to avoid the crowds and grab a cup of coffee before entering the park you got to just be a little careful sometimes when you get out of your car you're going to look around a little bit around here you remember you're sharing these parking lots now since i had a few hours to kill before check-in at madison campground i thought i would head up the firehole river and scope out the areas i plan to fish when you're new to a river it's not a bad idea to take a little time to get a feel for the river's structure its runs its its riffles its pools [Music] where the fish might be holding or rising what insects are hatching and if you're lucky you know possibly learn from the people with more experience who are fishing the river and wouldn't you know it i get stuck in a bison jam and if you've ever been to yellowstone you know what i'm talking about bison jams bear jams and that guy and a bicycle that just drove by and i hope it's not a bear jam like like a grizzly bear on the side of the road [Music] after the traffic started moving again i was able to turn off onto the old freight road to an area known as fountain flats one of the areas i planned to fish and clearly this was the reason for the bison jam i had heard that bison can be a little predictable so i made a mental note of the time around 9 30 a.m and decided that if i'm going to fish this area i'll need to do it a lot earlier or perhaps it might be a good site you know in the evening it looks like they're moving i probably should have parked back there well i can always turn around walking palms practically walking over them little babies after checking out the fountain flats area and getting some advice on where fishing guides take their clients to fish i got back in my car and headed up to biscuit basin i chose these spots because they're in an open area with plenty of visibility the last thing i want to do is surprise any of the large animals yellowstone is known for from what i've read biscuit basin is one of the more challenging sections of the firehole river the river here has a few deep runs and holes and is repeated to hold some of the larger trout for this reason biscuit basin gets more fishing pressure and attracts more experienced fly fishermen resulting in the trout being a little skittish and becoming a little savvy themselves that's my uh my marmot buddy i think that's the mum and there was another one that was in there underneath that juniper bush but let me show you where the uh um well this is my camp site and i've got the tent all set up what i like about this tent is uh it actually has a screen porch so that can close internally and i've got a nice you know caught in there and a table and you know all the luxury items that you'd expect to have on a nice safari right but um let me first tell you so this is marmot land and the locals here call them whistling pigs because they make a little whistle sound but i know there's babies in this little hole right here because they stuck their head out earlier with mom and they got more holes luckily they don't dig in under the gravel that the the campground folks give you to set up your tent but as you can see it's uh it's quite a little marmot place and they eat grass and stuff like that this looks like the king of the marmots must live in here this is a big hole right but they're all around here so i'm sure i'll be doing some videos of the marmot also this is my bear box where i keep my food and anything that smells sweet toothpaste all kinds of stuff and while i was sitting here i noticed that i have another mum and she's got a nest right in there i don't see her now but she was sitting there today while i was here so maybe out looking for some food or something anyway i'm cooking myself up some dinner i got some uh homemade uh chili that i'm cooking i mean uh hormel yeah i don't know how i'm i don't know how i keep making that mistake you know but uh i'm gonna do that and then i've gotta gotta work on some of my fly lines and get ready for some filming tomorrow i went up to biscuit basin and checked it out i saw some trout i saw where they were hiding and so i think maybe what i should do is or where they were feeding maybe what i should do tomorrow is just go up really early in the morning and um you know see if we can't uh catch some uh so they look they look pretty nice too for uh for the fire hall river they're like about a foot long each there was a whole bunch of them so but the water is very warm and it's very low so not a lot of people fishing it and expectations are not high from those that are fishing it so but we'll see i got a week it's about six o'clock in the morning june uh 15th and it's a little colder outside than these thermals and as a result you get a little spectacular sort of view of the steam rising that normally you might not even see as it starts to warm up during the day at least i didn't see this kind of activity yesterday when it was like 90 degrees well i'm here at uh biscuit basin you can see it's pretty early in the morning i'm going to try a a little catas a merger i mean i'm sorry um yeah on a merger i tried the caddis spent and i really couldn't even see it this early in the morning and i'm not seeing any rises so i think this might be a little more effective and i'll use it as a search pattern for this area and we'll see how that works out so since i'm not seeing any rises trout eating insects on or near the surface i have a couple of choices i can tie on a large mayfly or caddis pattern with a foam body and use it like a strike indicator with a weighted nymph trailing underneath or i can choose a very popular method of fishing the fire hole which is to swing a wet fly by casting a fly that imitates either a small bait fish or an emerging insect floating to the surface you cast the fly out keep in a tight line and let it drift down to where you suspect the trout are holding as the fly swings across the current you lift your rod which imitates a nymph fluttering to the surface or you can strip your line strip in your line which might imitate a bait fish or a nymph swimming across the stream no one really knows why it works but you cover a lot of water it's relaxing and by keeping a tight line the trout often hook themselves so as you can see here the fire hole river is splitting into two sections so i'm having to mend my line to keep my fly drifting in the slower water in the middle of the river to the point where i want to swing the fly down and across the faster current uh into the near bank my goal is to swing the fly in front of where i see the beginning of a riffle as trout occasionally position themselves in front of like say submerged boulders or whatever is causing that riffle and if that doesn't produce a strike i simply move down a few feet and swing my fly behind the submerged boulder which is another good holding spot six so well it's time to take a few steps and move down the river a little further and try swinging my emerger uh just behind the um these uh these boulders at the start of this rifle i just noticed a large male bison buffalo bison down the river just here a little bit you probably can't see it because it's wide angle camera lens it's it's a lot closer than uh than it appears got one you can see that my first uh yellowstone trout let's get it in quickly looks like uh brown trap i actually had to lie down on the side of the bank to net the fish as well as to wet my hands before handling it because the water is so low because of the drought conditions out here but you have to do what you have to do a nice brown trout and it looks like the looks like a cell the hook released on its own where that where'd that big male buffalo go you know while i was um fixing the my real you know mount uh was a little loose i i saw this big big buffalo that was like right over there somewhere and now i don't see it right so i don't know if he's making its way they're really dark so when they get into the shadows i don't know if he's making his way up here i don't see him but what i'm going to do the plan now is i'm going to cast a few more swing swing a few more of the caddis mergers in here and maybe i'll get you know another nice brown one but i'm seeing i'm seeing some rises just up there near the tip of that structure and they're not consistent but i saw a couple in a row so i'm gonna work my way slowly up there and and i'm also sort of looking to see if there was a place where it might be easier to get into the into the water here so i have a little more a little more freedom a little few more options it started to get really windy as i moved upstream the fire hall river has a reputation for strong winds but before heading out i decided to give it one more try near where i parked my car in the biscuit basin parking lot two good reasons for fishing the river early the wind picks up and the parking lot fills up as the sun rises me that didn't take long little brown trout and he got himself off too which was nice popped right at it i don't know if i could caught any of that on camera but that was nice second fish who would have thought right and once again it's the same fly it was a cat it's uh it was that katusa merger that i had tied on right here at the biskin uh basin i mean literally this is almost as far up as you can legally fish on the river so another one this feels bigger another brown trout quick release wow that's three on this one little that's three on this one little fly and i was just about to quit because of the wind so so the reason why i chose this place to catch them is that i know the catas have been hatching and this is a little emergent and caddis like to hatch in these little riffles you know so you know it's not only uh fishing technique and the right fly to use i mean it's also uh knowing where based on the types of insects and stuff that you've been seeing it is windy me trying to sidearm cast try to keep the line low hmm oh had a bite i tried a few more casts got a couple of bites but with the wind picking up i decided to head out grab some lunch and explore other areas of the park boy beautiful scenery oh another bite as the wind settled down and the temperature dropped i headed down to madison junction for some evening fishing this is one of these options that i i wish i could have every night so i took advantage of camping nearby and probably fished this area four or five times in the week that i was here well it's beautiful it's absolutely gorgeous sun's starting to set i'm hoping that that little rise will start up again tonight it's uh 6 30. last night was like around 8 7 30 8 o'clock the river was just swarming with the caddis and and the pmds coming off i think i said that earlier but um i didn't see a lot of fish rising but you can sort of see where that fella is fishing right there the only rise i kind of marked it was in between see those little um the little strip of grass that's off the shore a bit there and there's like one gap in the middle just out beyond that by like about five six seven feet there was a fish rising so you know but i got all the time in the world there's nothing going on right now he's he's nymphing and um yeah we can watch and see if he has any luck okay just swinging a caddis and uh feels like a pretty good-sized fish see what it is whoa wow it's a big fish whoa that's a big that's probably the biggest fish i've caught so far here at yellowstone that's for sure i don't want to crank them in too much it's like i might have snagged him though oh why it's fighting so hard yeah i think i snagged him oh damn oh well let's let him go fast then brown trout yeah i snagged him a little bit sorry about that fella yeah i'll get that off yes oh come on in the second episode of my fishing adventure in yellowstone i head up to fountain flats on the firehole river early in the morning to get in some fishing before the bison herd pushes me out which was earlier than expected and then afterwards i hike and fish the given river in the canyon below the scenic gibbons falls and please subscribe to my channel for episode 2 and future episodes as i head out to fish the ghost village and west fork sections of the madison river the harriman ranch section of henry's fork and my quest for cutthroat trout on the snake river and soda view actually kind of blind down here i'm going to change flies i think i'm going to do it and keep an eye on the buffalo herd in case okay so in case i walk up and find them like all around me pretty much wow they move fast they move really fast

Channel: Remote Fly Fishing

Views: 98,204

Keywords: Yellowstone, Fly Fishing, Trout, Firehole, Madison Campground, Madison River, Bison, Biscuit Basin, Fountain Flats, Camping, National Park, Bear, Buffalo, Bamboo Rod, Wild Trout, Native Trout, Dry Fly, Soft Hackle, Volcanic, Geyser, hot spring, Bear Jam, Bison Jam, fly fishing video, 'video, advice, recommendation

Id: s86KYPLzEi8

Length: 27min 34sec (1654 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 12 2021