Rocky Mountain Cutthroat Hunt

Day 1: Monday July 31st 2006: Me and my dad headed out, bound for Yellowstone National Park and had a rather uneventful first day with 12+ hours of driving. We arrived in Yellowstone National Park in the evening to cloudy skies and managed to get one of the last camp sites at the Indian Creek campground.

Day 2: Tuesday August 1st 2006: We woke up bright and early to a chilly Yellowstone morning and headed to Soda Butte Creek in the Northeastern corner of the park to target the Yellowstone Cutthroat, the first targeted cutthroat of the trip. We arrived at the creek to find it extremely crowded, and we had to hunt to find a stretch that we would have to ourselves, or so we thought. We ended up being constantly low holed and high holed. We rose more than our fair share of trout including one my dad hooked that was close to 20", but I only managed to catch a couple of small cutthroat. With Soda Butte Creek being a larger more famous piece of water in the park, I decided to turn my attention to a relatively unknown small stream that I will not name here. I found it to be completely vacant of anglers, and full of very willing smaller cutthroat with some to 12".

Below: A pronghorn we saw on our way out to the Northeast side of the park, we also saw a number of coyotes, elk, and bison.

Below: A small stream in Yellowstone loaded with native Yellowstone Cutthroat.

After fishing for the Yellowstone Cutthroat, we headed back to the northwestern part of the park. In which I caught numerous brown trout, rainbows and cutbows averaging about 10". I fished the stream until we got chased out by a thunder storm and decided to head back to camp. Once the thunderhead had passed, I went out fishing for the last time for the day to see if I could catch any of the brook trout residing in the upper Gardner River. A little ways above the campground I found a nice section of stream full of rising brookies, which took my fly very willingly, and well above this I found some decent pools that held plenty of Zug Bug loving brookies.

Below: A small stream resident Yellowstone Cutthroat and a Brook Trout

Below: A pool that was filled with brook trout in Yellowstone; Me at Jackson Lake with the Grand Tetons in the background.

Day 3: Wednesday August 2nd 2006: We woke to find frost on everything in the morning, and decided to head further south to test some waters out for Snake River Fine Spotted Cutthroat. The first spot that we hit was a stream in the Tetons that had treated me very good on previous trips; however I found the trout to be less then what I would call willing this time. I only managed to catch one small brook trout and had a few hits on nymphs and streamers.

Below: String Lake in Grand Teton National Park.

After what I would call a less than successful outing in the Tetons, we decided to head into Jackson to get lunch and possibly a hotel room so that I could try to get a Fine Spotted Cutthroat again in the evening or the next morning. However when we got into town, it was extremely crowded and while we did manage to get lunch at one of our favorite restaurants Bubba's BBQ, all of the hotels were booked. We then decided to head a little further down the road to Afton, and stayed the night there. That evening I figured that I might as well try my luck for a Snake River Fine Spotted Cutthroat again in a small tributary of the Salt River. The stream that I chose was only about 15 feet across in the widest spots and was extremely fast moving with very little holding water. However the trout that I ended up finding in the stream seemed abnormally large for their surroundings, and I ended up hooking into an 18+ inch cutthroat which shook my size 18 lightning bug loose before I could net it.

Above: A nice small stream Snake River Fine Spotted Cutthroat that took a size 12 Royal PMX.

I found that the fish in this stream were extremely good at throwing the fly, and lived up to the reputation that the Snake River Fine Spotted Cutthroat has gotten for fighting hard. I ended up getting my share of cutthroat here though and decided to call it a night, with high hopes of getting into some Bonneville Cutthroat in the morning.

End of Day 3

Continue to Days 4 and 5

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