Yellowstone Fly Fishing Episode 3: The Gibbon River

[Music] fly fishing the gibbon river while sharing similarities with its sister the fire hall navigating geyser basins and colorful volcanic springs offers solitude and the opportunity to fish less pressured waters the headwaters that form the gibbon river emerge from the center of yellowstone national park as a woodland in meadow creek fed by waters from greb lake and wolf lake waters that offer the rare opportunity to fly fish for native arctic grayling and westlope cutthroat trout [Music] the river then enters a deep canyon starting with the scenic virginia cascades and emerging once again as a meadow stream to diverse the norris geyser basin home to steamboat geyser the world's highest active geyser the river then passes through elk park and gibbon meadows before once again entering a canyon renowned for viewing the 80-foot gibbon falls and colorful volcanic springs leaving gibbon canyon the river meanders and winds through a beautiful valley populated by elk and bison to join the firehole river headwaters now for the madison river and an area popular in late september when large brown truck travel up from hebgen lake and reservoir to spawn [Music] and then there are the trophy-sized brown trout reputed to hide in the banks of the gibbon as it gently meanders through elk park and given meadows and while i was tempted to test my skills and given meadows i chose to fish in gibbon canyon for no other reason than by having seen this picture of a person fly fishing in the oxygen-rich waters at the base of gibbon falls i had to try to get down in there well this is the gibbon river and fishes very differently you can see a lot of runs things like that so i'll probably be checking it out for some pools moving up but just got here and i thought i would just try out this one section over here and we'll see how it goes it's hard to resist throwing a few casts but i have a short hike ahead of me and it's time to move up well i was thinking of going all the way up and fishing right at gibbons falls but you know i'm going to try this little area here looks promising and if i'm really not catching anything here it may not be worth heading all the way up to gibbons falls because it looks like a lot of these lodgepole uh pine trees that have fallen down during the uh the forest fires are really just absolutely cluttering up the the path in fact i i even decided to step into the water and to get around some of them and clearly walking on the other side is not is not an option so let's try fishing here and so i've got on a little attractor oh the wind is murdered oops let that breeze go by the tractor flies are large high floating and easy to see and they can be effective in fast-moving water but i like to use them as a search pattern to solicit trout especially in areas where you might not otherwise see activity i want to know where the trout are before investing my time especially when i see pools like the ones i'm seeing ahead of me the wind is murder though clearly the wind becomes a factor in casting accurately with a big fluffy attractor fly on the end of your line i'm getting some drifts that i want and every once in a while i let it go down to the tail in case somebody's interested ooh wind just took that one use the wind to dry off my fly i want to get into that corner so i can maneuver over there it was time to move up to the head of the pool and uh cut back on the amount of line i was casting ooh one kid almost came up and took it no he took a look at it so we know this fish here right at the head of this pool looked like a nice size too oh no they're biting right here the attractor fly did its job i now know that there are trout here and where they are okay so i'm going to try something a little different we know i got a couple of fish in this pool okay so i had a little dark wing caddis crawling on my sleeve here so i decided i wouldn't abandon the dry fly just yet and i'm gonna try this little caddis with a little dark hair on it i first target what i believe to be the larger of the two trump oh took a swipe at it the wind then blows my fly over to the smaller of the two trunk oh i got one oh boy i got one a big one sorry about that folks that is not a big fish i wonder what it is all right no i said a trout there that's a little wet my hands here a bit god it looks like a little brown truck see that looks like a little brown trout maybe huh there you go well that that little fly definitely worked but or he's messed up now okay so the wind's at my back and when it's not blowing really hard i'm getting some nice visibility right into this water so i'm gonna try that i'm gonna start here with the tail a little bit and then work my way back up to where those fish were my casting from the other side of the pool didn't pay off so i decided to give the pool a rest and moved up to the next pool okay so i'm going to try this golden stone fly that i tied up it's got foam it's got some little rubber legs to it i moved up to the next pool using my golden stone fly as an attractor pattern and first started casting to the tail of the pool see i'm just fishing this little seam because if there's trout here that are interested they will uh they'll be right on the edge watching this stuff go by in the fast current and they'll dab up and grab it that's the idea oh almost had him there's definitely fish here i just tied on a little smaller fly a little black caddis again with a little lighter color wing and let's just take a look at this pool maybe that other other fly was just a little too big i'm not ready to go to nymphs yet oh i swear they're missing the hook seeing aggressive rises at it but they're just not touching it or maybe at last minute they're avoiding it i don't know it didn't matter how many times i cast the same fly after the trout's first attempt there was never a second until i changed flies it's fun to get schooled like this it becomes a challenge and i was getting schooled while i was casting i started to notice some salmon flies dabbing around on the water so i thought maybe i'd give that a try okay so what i'm going to try is i get this big honking that's probably like a size eight it's not that big but you know uh salmon fly uh that i tied up the other day some rubber legs and everything and then about i don't know 18 20 inches down below that because that seems to be i probably could go a little bit lower i've got a little tiny bead head um that's sort of like a cat a submerger sort of thing nothing nothing special no flash or anything in it but so let's just see what happens oh someone tried to go for the stonefly why don't these fish hook up so yeah still my now oh boy he feels like there's like one fish in here and once he doesn't take it he doesn't go for a second time fish to a pool so let's see i'll try to cast around this rock and hopefully not snag up my line up this is actually characteristic of wild trout unlike stock trout that grow up rubbing shoulders with each other well trout are or can be more territorial i'm probably gonna lose my line if i try this too aggressively the wind and all oh get out of there no i knew that was gonna happen well i'm going to try a couple more of these little pools it's right up next to the gibbon falls i'm not going to go all the way up there these look promising and i tied on my big um golden stone fly because uh i'm getting tired of just trying all sorts of different things and not being successful and having them miss and i might as well just throw something out there that i can see right but i lost my big stone fly i mean my big salmon fly which is unfortunate this so oh something's got biting over there just saw a nice rise okay so i've got a little mayfly spin with a nice little sparkle in it and let's just see if that attracts them something wind is a killer always seems to be blowing against me now that's what ooh i got one i was going to say that fly was just right where i've been fishing them well let's see what it is it doesn't look big it's like a brown trout yeah it's a brown truck been catching brown trouts all but some time now there you go well at least i uh caught two small brown trout on this river it's not known for big it's not known for big trout you know so i might be catching the monsters for all we know and a little sparkle helped we should go try like the lower pools where i was unsuccessful before all right another nice looking pool try my little magic spent i'm gonna try a couple of spots that look like they might be fishy oh i just saw some i just saw a rise right over here the window let me get in there fighting those little seams that should be the one okay you're not gonna go for it huh keep an eye on the upcoming blue box i'm so distracted by a salmon fly landing next to me that i never saw the trout strike at my fly another one of those big flies just went buzzing by big stone flies oh i just landed let's see what that is if we can i saw it fly right into here let's see where are you buddy did it fly out oh there it is look at that look like about a size eight there's another one they're laying eggs is what they're doing wish i hadn't wasted my big stone fly back there huh i should check to see what i have as an equivalent throw it on i must have some okay so i tied on a uh one of the gladius flies i have and and a good floater is uh this this royal wolf and we'll see how it goes it's also got great visibility i don't know if you're able to see it on a gopro camera but let's get some line out if you can see that it's pretty obvious huh oh somebody wanted to take a bite out of it yeah i think the fish might be too small for this guy though but hey it's fun teasing them right ooh another one took a big bite out of it fish are too small well somebody might get hooked as i mentioned earlier i questioned if the trout were missing my flies or spitting them out what i'm about to do is show the trout strike at my large high floating fly frame by frame and then offer an explanation along with a recommendation for a fly pattern to consider using in this section of the gibbon river as i zoom in and slow down each frame at the moment of impact my fly appears to have been pushed away by the force the fish creates on the water in its rapid rise possibly the inexperience of a young trout where older and larger trout simply rise and either gulp or sip the fly into their mouth the other possibility is the trout tried to drown the fly with a splash from its tail as it then circled and made its second attempt also a clear miss which is why i believe my spent mayfly pattern with its sparkle wings ended up being so effective this fly pattern floats in the water's surface film it doesn't float high on the top of the water and it isn't easily pushed away by aggressive young trout after my camera's battery died i tied on my spent mayfly pattern and headed back down the canyon catching trout in the earlier pools i had fished that spent mayfly with sparkle wings did end up being my magic fly and i highly recommend it to anyone fishing this river [Music]

Channel: Remote Fly Fishing

Views: 12,568

Keywords: Fly Fishing, Yellowstone, Madison Campground, wild trout, trout, Gibbon Falls, Camping, Fishing, Gibbon River, Firehole, Madison River, Gibbon Canyon, Cutthroat, advice, recommendation, access, fly fishing video, video, fishing

Id: WBVApk6IPFE

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021