The Yellowstone River
The Yellowstone River is one of the longest undamned freestone rivers in the west, and the river plus its tributaries drain the majority of Yellowstone National Park. This river, as many western rivers, has an abundance of different types of water, including fast riffles, deep riffles, rapids, and long slow drifts and tail outs. These long, slower tail outs and drifts are what we consider to be the attractive feature of the river, especially to the dry fly fisherman. We know that the fast riffle corners have an abundance of trout, but for the floating fisherman the riffle corners come and go quickly. The longer drifts and tail outs also have fish, and are slower in velocity. These are easier to key on than the riffle corners, and also lend themselves to easier dry fly fishing because they are generally without conflicting currents; therefore drag becomes less of a problem.
The Native Americans called the river by several names, such as Stone Creek, Rock Yellow River and even Elk River. The early fur trappers called it the Roche Jaune, which is French for “river yellow” or as we know it today, the Yellowstone River. When Lewis and Clark decided to split their return journey from the Bitterroot country and back down the Missouri and home, Clark and his party used the Yellowstone River corridor as the route through what is today, Eastern Montana. He wrote about seeing numerous wild animals such as buffalo, antelope, deer, and many types of birds. Although the buffalo are today distributed farther south in the Yellowstone Park vicinity, most of the other species
are still abundant.
From the northern boundary of Yellowstone park to the vicinity of Columbus, Montana, the Yellowstone has over 130 miles of fishable water. Most of this can be float-fished, but many access areas make walk and wade fishing also available. The river has, in addition to rainbow trout, brown trout, and whitefish, a native population of Yellowstone Cutthroat trout. Although some sections have a lot of fast water and rapids, most of the river lends itself to pleasant floating and fishing conditions.
Floating through Paradise Valley offers some tremendous scenic experiences, and further downstream the rolling hills, pastoral pasture and grasslands offer a rewarding change of pace.
Although this river gets tremendous hatches of caddis, stoneflies and mayflies, we favor this river the most during late Summer and early Fall for hopper fishing. At this time, the river is low and clear, and frequent winds will blow several types of terrestrial insects, from the adjacent hay meadows and pastures onto the river. Then, it is hopper time! Join us sometime soon for a great experience on this river!
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