Yellowstone 2005 |
Day 1: Thursday June 23rd 2005: I planned this trip hoping to manage to catch three new species; Arctic Grayling,
Snake River Fine Spotted Cutthroat, and Lake Trout. I was also hoping to
catch some repeat species, including browns, Yellowstone cutthroat, and brookies.
My dad and I left home bright and early for Yellowstone National Park,
making a brief stop in Missoula to refuel and to grab some lunch. The weather
was great all through Washington, Idaho and Montana, until we turned off
at the Madison River. After 11 hours of driving, there was a nice thunder
storm hanging out over the Yellowstone area, completely putting the possibility
of getting an hour of fishing in on the Madison River out of the question.
We pulled into the Norris campground at 6:00PM, in between rain showers and
tried and failed to get our tent set up before the next blast of rain came through.
By the time the tent was set up, we were soaked and decided to call
it a night. Above: The Deerlodge area of Montana. Below: A bull elk a few hundred feet from our tent. Day 2: Friday June 24th 2005: We got up early after a typical cold Yellowstone night with the added bonus of some good thunder storms. The goal for the day was to catch some grayling, and to do so we decided to hike into one of the grayling lakes in the upper Gibbon River watershed. The trail to the lake traveled mostly through a patch of forest that had been charred in the fires of 1988, and provided little scenic value until we reached the lake. When we got to the lake, there were already several other fisherman there, but it appeared that the osprey were having much more luck than what they were. We found a nice point on the lake, where some callibaetis mayflies were coming off and started fishing. I choose to use a double fly setup with a callibaetis quill nymph trailed by a tellico nymph and caught rainbow trout on the first cast. However I had come here for grayling and was a little worried that rainbow trout population would outweigh that of the grayling. This was definitely not the case, and the first rainbow trout would also be the only on that I would see. Almost every cast after the rainbow was rewarded with a grayling, which averaged about 8 - 10" with a few larger a smaller ones thrown in, and after we had caught our share we headed back to camp. Above: The grayling lake. After hiking out of the lake, we went back to camp to get some lunch, and then I headed out to fish the streams flowing through the meadow at Norris. I found plenty of small brook trout here, and lost a couple of decent brown trout and returned to camp at about dinner time after a successful day of trout hunting. Above: An Arctic Grayling (Left); a Brook Trout (Right). Below: Some of the scenery on the way into the grayling lake (Left); A great spot for brookies (Right). End of Day 2 Continue to Days 3 to 5 For more information on Yellowstone National Park click on the link below: |
