The Way Home: Down from the Mountains, Across the Plains

The fact that my Yellowstone season is truly over has sunk in. I look forward to the drive home. It will be a different route home (I-80 instead of I-90), the chance to see new territory. Unlike the firm deadline of new employee check-in last May, my eastbound timetable is carefree. So is the weather forecast which calls for fair, calm skies the next several days.

The first day is spent crossing Wyoming on a long diagonal along US 287. The drive down to Dubois last night from Yellowstone was just a down payment; it takes six hours to reach I-80 at Rawlins and on to Cheyenne in the state’s southeast corner.

Along US 287, east of Dubois

The landscape here is stunning! Panoramas composed of rock, cliff, and sagebrush stretch to the horizons. Trees cease to exist other than a narrow band of cottonwoods here and there clinging to the edge of a watercourse. This begins the High Plains of America, a vast expanse of land robbed of moisture by the Continental Divide lying just to the west.

Here, elevation matters. It alters the weather and determines the habitat. On the highway, it strains the engine and reminds you of the importance of good brakes. We are talking big numbers here. I pass through Lander, a respectably sized city where the elevation is 5,357 feet. A stone’s throw to the west lies Wind River Peak, cresting at 13,192 feet.

Wind River Indian Reservation, north of Fort Washakie

Already, I miss the rivers of Yellowstone. Granted, little is revealed about most rivers from behind the windshield rushing down a highway, yet nothing tempts me to pull over for a closer view. The first two hours of driving are along the Wind River, known for some good trout fishing. It must be known for that someplace else. It isn’t that Wyoming doesn’t have good rivers for trout. The Green River and Flaming Gorge lie to the southwest; the Bighorn to the northeast. Once on I-80, I cross over the North Platte, a reminder of some great trout fishing just to the south. For now, these are marks on my mental map, destinations for future trips.

The clouds entertain along I-80

It is sparsely populated, feels desolate. In surface area, Wyoming is equal in size to Michigan, approximately 98,000 square miles. Yet, just 570,000 people live here, compared to 9.9 million in Michigan. Without a doubt, it is a very different lifestyle from my Midwestern sensibilities.

Road Day One ends 200 miles into Nebraska at Gothenburg. I pitch my tent in the dark at the KOA Campground there. A town with some history, it lays claim to the birthplace of the Pony Express. I am up and on the road at sunrise the next morning, eager to press on.

Pony Express Mural, Gothenburg Nebraska

If the theme of yesterday’s drive was rock, today it’s corn. It is harvest time in the Great American Breadbasket. Nebraska is a beehive of activity. Combines are in the table-flat fields everywhere; tractor trailer rigs hauling the bounty to gigantic grain elevators; long freight trains on the move. The economic powerhouse that is America’s agriculture is palpable.

After Nebraska, it’s Iowa. Another 300 miles before this day is to end. More cornfields here, but these are draped over lovely rolling hills. Trees have returned to the landscape. Handsome oaks edge the fields, and stand in large woodlots. There are rivers here, hinted at by the contours of the rolling countryside. History markers at highway rest stops record their importance to the nation’s development long ago. Council Bluffs on the Missouri was a stop for Lewis & Clark. It is where steamboat commerce gave way to the railroads. The Amana Colonies chose the fertile Iowa River Valley as their home.

Darkness denies me a view as I cross the mighty Mississippi that forms the boundary between Iowa and Illinois. Road Day Two ends in Rock Island at another conveniently located KOA. I pitch my tent and call it a night, well satisfied with my progress home.

Campsite in Rock Island Illinois

The romantic part of this road trip is over. On Road Day Three, the Midwestern landscapes of Illinois, Indiana and Michigan are well-known to me. I look forward to the hospitality of Tom Quail and Chris Booth to spend the next few nights. Then, I will rent a UHaul trailer to take furniture back to DC to set-up our new apartment.

Final Four: Last Day, October 18th

After more than five months in Yellowstone, I am down to my last day. By evening, the fly rods will be packed, the car pointed toward home.

Determined to make the most of the day, I get up and out of the tent before daybreak. The huge Rocky Mountain night sky stretches above me. The Milky Way and countless constellations arc over the craggy silhouette of the Madison Plateau to the south.

It is cold, the coldest night yet. The car’s thermometer says 16 degrees. I slept comfortably in the tent, but after two days of battling the weather, I am in no mood for another day of that. No, just savor this last morning; get to the fishing once the warming sun is well up.  I walk down to the river and back to build up some internal warmth, take in the dawning of the day, and savor the solitude. The dawn’s light qualities are magnificent. Not another soul contests my command over the Madison River at that hour.

A calm morning, welcomed after the past two days

I break camp before sunup, and head out. Confidence swelled by how yesterday ended, my destination is certain: back to that deep run at Talus Slope. I follow the advance of sunrise down Madison Valley, enjoying its warmth and the unfolding scenes. A herd of elk grazes casually near one of the meadow turnouts, posing as if on cue.

I come upon the morning’s first anglers at Haynes Meadow. A trio of twenty-somethings has staked out the inside bend where the river dumps into the deep run there. It is a great place to have breakfast (hot oatmeal, cups of coffee), watch their technique and enjoy the sun. It warms me as well as my wading boots that had frozen solid overnight.

The fishing begins

Breakfast done and boots thawed, I drive another half mile down to Talus Slope.  Time to go fishing, to pick up where I had left off, to enjoy casting in calm air after the nasty winds of the past two days.

In the good light of the morning and absent yesterday’s winds on the water, I now see what accounted for the rising fish yesterday afternoon. What I had thought was part of one long, deep run is instead a series of weed-covered mounds that form shallow shelves dropping into troughs. They create the perfect current break conditions for fish to surface-feed on such small insects.

Great way to start the day

Not ten casts into my fishing, I have the first strike. I land another big rainbow despite a couple of dives that tangle the line in those weedy mounds. It isn’t even 10 o’clock in the morning, and I already feel dialed into the fishing.

For the next hour, I have another half dozen or so good, hard hits.  But, no hook-ups. Content at first to miss a fish or two, eventually the string of misses drags upon my confidence.  Slowly as these things do, the error of my ways sinks in.

Landing the second fish yesterday, I had noticed it was hooked by the trailer hook. It was an extra hook I had tied into the streamer’s long tail in a prior season in order to cure the streamer’s tendency to miss fish.

Using hemostats to release yesterday’s fish, that hook had broken at the bend in the shank. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but the loss of that hook is having its consequences now. All the missed strikes yesterday afternoon and this morning are now explained. Hooking this morning’s nice fish was a fluke.

I switch to a different streamer and resume fishing. But, the magic is over and the bite with it. It is approaching 11 o’clock. Perhaps the sun is now too bright, or the pod of fish has moved further up the river. Against the backdrop of 163 days in Yellowstone, though, it doesn’t matter. The Madison River in mid-October is now permanently etched in my mind.

I turn back toward Madison Junction, and then south toward Old Faithful. My plan for the day calls for using the afternoon to explore the Lewis River, known like the Madison for its fall brown trout fishing; and then to camp for the night at the campground there. It will put me nearly two hours in the direction of home.

Turns out, it isn’t the best plan. Every new trout stream is cloaked in a veil of secrecy. It takes time to uncover just the simple logistics of where along the river to begin fishing…more time than my fast-fading last afternoon in the Park will allow.

Lewis River's Outlet from Lewis Lake

The Lewis River doesn’t make discovery easy either, falling away from the road as it does and out of sight. I finally find a little-used footpath that takes me to the river at its lake outlet. On the fishiness-per-hour scale, I go from the top of the graph back on the Madison, to the bottom here on the Lewis. I get in about an hour of good fishing time, that’s all. It is not totally fruitless, however, for I now have the measure of the Lewis. It is a gorgeous river. There is not another angler in sight despite the peak of the fall season; and I now know where to begin to fish it next time I’m in Yellowstone.

My plan for camping turns out to be no better than the fishing. Touring the Lewis Lake Campground, I find not another camper in sight nor the amenities that make Madison Campground so pleasant for late-season camping.

The season ends.

Abandoning the plan, I head for the Park’s South Entrance. The picnic area just inside the entrance provides a fitting place to take off my waders for the last time. Ted and I had fun fishing the Snake River from there several times. At 4:15 pm, my Yellowstone season ends.

Nothing destroys an outdoor buzz faster than the dull dashboard stare at oncoming traffic and endless asphalt. The Yellowstone feeling quickly ebbs with the light of the day.

It is cold and dark…that’s all…when I find a cheap motel for the night in Dubois, Wyoming. The next few days will be measured by number of miles driven rather than number of cast made. I’ve been a lucky man living a blessed life…five months living and fishing in Yellowstone National Park. It is time to go home.

Final Four; Day Three, October 17th

Today started with great promise. A bright, crisp morning, and I had slept another comfortable night in the tent despite temperatures in the 20s. 

Madison Junction under sunny morning skies

The lack of wind was a welcome change from yesterday. Little did I know that wouldn’t last long.

The day’s promise deepened after my conversation with Tony, a campground neighbor up from southern California here for the big run-up trout. One key difference between Tony and me, though. This is his 44^th year coming to Yellowstone for the fall season. The ink on my own Trout Bum certificate smudged in his presence.

Tony spoke with the certainty of knowledge gained from all those years. His gaze was that of a pilgrim in the promised land. As if my big fish from yesterday weren’t enough ignition for the coming day, his photos of big fish from his trips past did me in. They were living torpedoes; submarines. In an instant, I comprehended the difference between 20-inch fish and 25-inch fish; why Craig Matthews in his book recommends a 7 weight rod and 1X tippet for this time of year on the Madison River in the Park.

Tony also shared a few fishing tips worth their weight in gold. Tips I have never read/heard about in all my Yellowstone research, yet which corroborated with what I was experiencing on my own fall fishing in Yellowstone. Time was just about run out for this trip, but I resolved then and there to come back another year and put his knowledge to the test.

Don’t ask me what he said because I won’t tell you.  No “kiss and tell fisherman” here. Come with me some year, though, and I’ll show you. I am this certain of the fall fishing in Yellowstone.

Deep run at the bottom of the Firehole

To the fishing. I started again at the Firehole/Madison confluence just below the campground. My euphoric state soon withered. For although I had talked to Tony, the fish had not. To no avail, I spent the morning diligently working the river with streamers. Noon was upon me far too quickly.  I narrowly missed a strong fish at the head of Junction Pool. On the very next cast, I lost my entire leader rig right up to the fly line on a deep snag.

Discouraged, I walked back to the campsite for lunch and to re-rig. Doubt birds began to circle overhead. Was yesterday just a fluke? Had the return of bluebird, bright skies put the fish off? Had sheer timing put me on top of a pod of run-up fish at just the right time and place yesterday?

This was my last afternoon of my Yellowstone season…my 9^th inning; down one run and nobody on base.

I decided to go back to old reliable…Barns Pool. I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. I would have to contend with other anglers. Now too, the wind was picking up significantly making casting difficult in the wide-open sagebrush spaces of the Park’s western boundary.

Or so I thought.  Easier said than done. 

For a dozen miles along the Park’s West Entrance Road, the Madison River remains in view. Each turnout along the way beckons the angler, “fish here.” Driving along, it sunk in that this was it. My Yellowstone season was ending. It would be a long time before I would fish this marvelous river again.

I drove past mile-long Elk Meadow and Big Bend; past the Elbow Pool and Mt. Haynes. Finally, melancholy got to me. I wanted to be fishing, not driving. Seeing the parking lot empty, I turned into the turnout at Talus Slope. Premonition was at work as well. Something in my angling data bank had sparked my desire to “Fish here!”

Oh, but the wind. Yesterday, it was strong. Today, it howled. I am sure it was gusting to over 40 MPH. Any other day, I would have set it out. But, today was not any other day.

Bright, windy afternoon at Talus Slope turnout

The radiant Rocky Mountain sun plus layers of wool and fleece offset the wind chill. My 7 weight rod and intermediate sinking tip made casting feasible. There was no finesse to the casts, just swinging the streamer on quarter-down casts and letting the current do the rest. Despite the weather and my lackluster morning, I began to fish

The Madison River at Talus Slope is gorgeous trout water. Weed beds carve deep channels and gouge out pockets; fast water bordered by slow; a rough bottom made uneven by slabs of ancient volcanic rock. Even buffeted by the cold gusts of wind, I marveled at the beauty of this river.

I didn’t fish long before I got a strong strike. Good pulls even on the 7 weight. Growing practiced at fighting bigger fish, I freely let it run against the drag and walked it downstream. I slipped the net under a big Hebgen rainbow, a gorgeous fish in a different way from its smaller brethren or even Great Lakes steelhead. These big rainbows are dark in the face, swarthy; their mouths more steely and vicious. I mentally made a note that this was my best rainbow of the season.

Strong rainbow, the best of the season

Spirits rekindled, I resumed fishing the run. A small brown trout soon followed. Confidence swelled, I reached for my streamer box and switched to the big-eyed mouthful of a streamer that had worked yesterday. ‘If the big fish are here, I’ll give them something big to chase’, so went my reasoning.

The late afternoon sun had fallen behind Talus Slope. I walked three hundred yards back upstream to take advantage of the shadows on the water and to be able to work the sweet spot of the run.

Stepping back into the stream, something on the water caught my eye. Despite the wind’s chop on the water, gusting in my face and ears, and despite the poor light conditions, I spotted them…rising fish! The slow head-and-tail rises of big fish! Unbelievably in those conditions, the big run-up trout were feeding on a hatch of tiny blue wing olives. Oh, the marvels of Nature!

I felt like an alien being. There I was, barely able to stand the conditions despite all sorts of paraphernalia; while there were the trout, comfortably finning in their climate-controlled parlor, eating hors d’oeuvres.

Switching to dry flies would have been ludicrous in these wind conditions. I stuck to swinging the streamer. Rather quickly, I hooked and landed a second big rainbow. I had that fisherman’s feeling of finding your groove.

Another chrome-pink beauty

Over the next hour or so, I had four or six more good strikes on the streamer. But, missed them all. I played them according to textbook, resisting the temptation to set the hook quickly on the belief that the fish strikes first to stun, then comes back for the kill. The textbook version didn’t work for me.

Nevertheless when sundown came, I felt really good about the day. Two more big, strong fish. Multiple chances at others to end the day. And, I had once again withstood the adversity of the weather.