The Second Season: Fishing for Cutthroat Trout

I think of July and August as the second season of fishing out here. First season is June on the Firehole and Madison Rivers. Third season comes in September/October when the westside rivers cool again and the trout run-up the Madison from Hebgen Lake to spawn.

 

Cutthroat Trout, Yellowstone River

The second season is the time to fish for cutthroat trout in the Park’s Northeast corner.  This is the native trout in Yellowstone country, and its population is in great shape in the Lamar River drainage and the Yellowstone River below the falls.

Aside from the satisfaction of fishing for a native trout, the cutthroat is simply a beautiful fish to behold with olive/copper-colored flanks, rose-hued gillplate, and unique pattern of black spots. Its name comes from the bright orange slash beneath the gills.

In the world of trout fishing, the cutthroat trout is not known for its guile like the brown trout, nor for its fight like the rainbow. While I’ll concede its lack of fight, I find the cutthroat trout can be very selective and a rewarding challenge to fool.

 

Lamar River's cobble-lined banks

Aside from its beauty, one other characteristic that makes this trout so fun to fish for is its rise to a dry fly. In his book about fishing the Yellowstone River, Bob Jacklin describes it as a “deliberate rise.” Unlike the slash-and-grab of rainbow and brown trout, seeing a cutthroat come to the fly is like watching the action in slow motion.  If suspicious of your offering, it will literally put its nose to the fly, pause, then turn away unconvinced. When it does take the fly, it’s an unhurried pirouette back to the bottom.

 Faced with lots of fishing pressure, as is the case nearly everywhere inside Yellowstone Park, the cutthroat gets downright picky. It isn’t too long into the season before the cutthroat trout you encounter will be just as difficult to fool as a brown or rainbow. (As Chris Booth, my fishing buddy, jokes about fishing out here in the summer, trout can probably tell which fly shop you bought that hopper pattern from.)

Just as the cutthroat is a different kind of trout, so is the Lamar is a different kind of river. The valley it runs through is referred to as “American’s Serengeti” for its wildlife and panoramic vistas, but its namesake river is nothing much to look at. Characterized by extremes of flow, it looks close-up like little more than a gravel-lined ditch. Steeply gouged banks and sparse streamside vegetation shows the marks left by the heavy snowmelt that keeps it unfishable from spring snowmelt until early July. But, don’t let its looks deceive you, nor its meander’s long distances between good fishing water. This is a great trout stream. You can have Slough Creek. It’s a pleasant hike to an iconic waters, but it’s overfished and not nearly the room to roam like on the Lamar.

 

Lamar-Soda Butte Creek confluence

Cutthroat trout evolved to thrive in these sparse waters. Unlike rivers such as the Firehole or Madison, a heavy hatch of aquatic insects is rare on the Lamar. On this river, don’t be waiting for the hatch to begin. Yet, despite the apparent lack of aquatic fertility that makes for lots of trout food, there is plenty of insect life to support the Lamar’s thriving trout population. On average, the cutthroat I catch in the Lamar are larger than even the browns I catch in the Madison (fall run-up fish excepted).

Trout in relatively infertile waters like the Lamar learn to be opportunistic feeders. Selectivity here comes from the trout’s response to fishing pressure, I think, not the luxury of keying on lots of the same aquatic insect available as in a heavy hatch.

It is the cutthroat’s opportunistic feeding that the angler can capitalize on. Ask most anglers familiar with the Lamar what trout fly he/she would start with, and chances are the answer will be a grasshopper pattern. To be sure, hoppers become plentiful in Lamar valley with its expansive grass/sagebrush and strong afternoon winds to blow insects into the river. But, when most anglers are all fishing hopper patterns, cutthroat trout quickly learn to be selective.

 

Cutthroat trout, Lamar River

Instead, I have observed how freely Lamar trout take a mayfly. A mayfly on the Lamar, you ask? Yes, mayfly. I experienced this during my 2012 season, and in a future post, I’ll report on my experience already this season.

It is a two hour drive from my dorm getting to the Lamar, so only on weekends do I have time to get up there to fish. Add to that the real difficulty locking-in lodging or a campsite in that part of the Park, and already I know I won’t get to fish for cutthroat trout up often enough this season.

Visiting Glacier National Park

Dateline: July 6, 2014

Heidi and I went to Glacier National Park to celebrate our 40^th anniversary. We spent four days there, dividing our time between Many Glacier Lodge on the east and Lake McDonald Lodge on the west. Both are beautiful log structures built a century ago to promote Rocky Mountain tourism.

Many Glacier Lodge, Glacier National Park

The drive up from Great Falls, Montana is a great road trip. Sparsely settled and nearly treeless, you can see for many miles across the rolling high plains and mesas. Glacier’s mountain range, still snow-covered on its peaks, rises in the distance. One marvels at the history of the 19^th century pioneers encountering this vastness. Our route crossed the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, the tribe known as “lords of the plains”, calling to mind all that great Native American history, both triumphant and tragic, over the course of one thousand years.



Blackfeet Reservation near Browning, Montana

Glacier National Park is majestic and remote, with its towering rocky peaks and far fewer visitors than Yellowstone receives. Water is everywhere from snowmelt runoff, ice melt-blue surging in streams, waterfalls and seeps. A big late season storm on June 19^th had dumped two feet of snow atop Logan Pass at the Continental Divide. Trails were closed there, the drifts astonishing for early July. Kids were snowboarding and skiing on the Fourth of July.

The Going to the Sun Road is every bit as majestic as we had heard. Our simple cameras were incapable of capturing the expanse, shapes, and colors.

Snowdrifts at Logan Pass, July 4th

It is a hiker’s mecca, and we enjoyed two good day hikes. Unlike Yellowstone, where you almost don’t have to get out of your car to see the park’s highlights (both a good and bad thing), Glacier is best experienced on its trails. There are trails of every length and difficulty. Most hikers are day hikers like us, but it’s obvious from gear and outfits that many people are there for serious hikes and climbs.

Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park

You must have blinders on if you come away from Glacier National Park still not believing about climate change, and that it’s manmade. Then-and-now photography of the same glaciers from the same locations graphically depicts their dramatic loss. Interpretive information clearly shows the steep rise in temperature patterns over the course of the same few decades. I resolve to be more aware of my energy usage; and purchase carbon credits to offset our driving and plane trips each year.

Beginning with a Bang

Dateline: June 5, 2014

A month of uninterrupted fishing began almost to the day where I left off two years ago, fishing

Along the Firehole River, June 5th

a favorite stretch of the Firehole River.

Despite heavy snowfall in Yellowstone country this past winter, the river was clear and snowmelt-free. The Firehole is almost bulletproof from the dirty water that can doom fishing on a lot of Western rivers until early July.

If you want to fish dry flies to rising fish, don’t come this early. Wait until mid-June. But, if you want to catch good-sized trout, this is prime time. I experienced this in 2012 and again this season. You don’t catch the Firehole dinks this time of year, and the bigger trout are very active, even mid-day.

This is streamer season on the Firehole. That’s probably sacrilegious to many anglers who think of the Firehole as dry fly water. Conditions are perfect for streamers. Very little insect activity is happening yet, and the water temperatures are ideal. Most importantly, the river is bankful, with plenty of water along undercut banks and around logs providing security for fish.

Undercut banks provide security for big fish

I use a short (3 foot) section of sink tip with my 5 wt rod, throwing a black or olive wooly bugger with some sort of nymph as a trailer. This is search fishing, reading the river for those lies that trout favor.

I started the morning at one of my favorite no-name stretches of the Firehole, the scene of a morning of great streamer fishing two years ago. I have found a number of these stretches on the Firehole, places away from where all the books and fly shops send you (Fountain Flats, Goose Lake Meadow, Muleshoe Bend). They are uncrowded, and the fish are bigger.

1st Trout, probably 13" or so

The action this morning proved that my 2012 season here was not a fluke. I landed three nice brown trout on a black wooly bugger; four even bigger trout got the best of me. With each new season, I always have to relearn the basics for landing bigger fish…getting the drag set right; playing the fish, not fighting it; not pulling too hard when the fish is below me in strong current.

The fish are very aggressive this time of year. I hooked a couple of the big trout on the second cast after missing a strike the first time. They came from along undercut banks, under logs, and from deep in a large bend pool.

In early June, the Firehole is all yours.

All of the fishing is within 20 minutes from Madison Campground where I am staying. Camping here, it’s easy to spend a lot of time…and the right time…on the river. And, it’s another way to avoid crowds on the Firehole. If your lodging is in West Yellowstone, it’s almost an hour’s drive to get up to where the fishing is.

Three Forks, Montana

Heidi flew into Bozeman airport on June 30^th. We are headed to Glacier National Park to celebrate our anniversary. Our first stop was Three Forks, Montana about thirty miles west of Bozeman where we spent two nights at the Sacajawea Hotel.

The Sacajawea's Lobby

The Sacajawea is a century-old hotel built in the era when railroads built grand hotels along their routes to promote tourism. It was beautifully restored in 2011. Yellowstone friends, Denny & Jan Kane, recommended it, and it lived up to everything they said about it.

The town of Three Forks is a wide spot on Montana Highway 2. It is set amidst a broad expanse of alfalfa fields, rolling sagebrush hills and endless rock outcroppings, all framed by distant mountain ranges in every direction: the Gallatin, Madison, Tobacco Root and Bridger Ranges. All so pleasing to the eye. And to the nose. The air is fragrant with the smell of alfalfa, sagebrush and wildflowers. Montanans say they’ve never seen things so green as this year.

Three Forks gets its name from the confluence of three big Montana rivers (the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson) to form the Missouri River. Used for centuries by Native American tribes that came from afar to hunt the area’s plentiful game, it became part of modern American history as a key waypoint for the Lewis & Clark expedition in 1805.

Borrowing the Hotel's Bikes

We borrowed bikes from the hotel and followed a paved trail out to Missouri Headwaters State Park a few miles outside town. We learned more great history and marveled again at Montana’s beautiful landscape. Far from the throngs descending now upon Yellowstone, we shared the picnic area with just one other party: a foursome of middle aged Germans touring the American West on rented Harleys.

It is astonishing to witness these big rivers come together. Although irrigation withdrawals have already begun to claim some of their flows, they still surge with this season’s snowmelt, draining thousands of square miles of watershed. Here the storied Missouri River begins its wide arc east and south across the Great Plains before joining the Mississippi River at St. Louis.

Overlook of the Jefferson River Valley

As with all water management in the West, the Missouri’s story is a complex one of flood control, agricultural irrigation, hydroelectric power, fishing and other recreation uses. As a river lover, it is exciting to see these big rivers flowing unimpeded. Not too far downstream, the first of many dams will halt the Missouri’s natural flow, burying so many beautiful river bends, rapids and pools beneath the still water of reservoirs.

Willow Creek Cafe

Our time in Three Forks included one culinary highlight. With the hotel’s own dining room closed for the chef’s weekend, the front desk recommended the Willow Creek Café, six miles down the road. Sitting in an old Western storefront, surrounded by all kinds of country kitsch, we enjoyed the best damn pork BBQ ribs we’ve ever had.

Harvesting Buffalo, No Arrow or Gun Needed

History in the American West is everywhere. On our way to Glacier National Park, we stopped at the First Peoples Buffalo Jump, a Montana State Park near Helena. We learned about the astonishing way that Native Americans killed buffalo (bison if you are in Yellowstone country) centuries before the European introduction of horse and gun to the continent.

Buffalo Jump near Great Falls MT

A buffalo jump is a high mesa where a group of buffalo was lured to plunge to their death through an elaborate ruse. More than a thousand buffalo jumps are documented in the country, as far south as Texas. Archaeology documents that the jump we visited was used for six centuries, 900  – 1500 AD.

A teenage boy was the typical decoy, known as the buffalo runner. He trained to learn the ways of buffalo; how to identify the lead cow, make sounds like a young calf. When the hunt began, a draped buffalo hide deceived the buffalo’s poor eyesight.

At First Peoples Buffalo Jump Interpretive Center

The buffalo jump required specific topography to carry out the ruse; gently sloping upward so that the precipice is hidden from view until close up. Acting and sounding like a lost or disoriented calf, the buffalo runner would target the lead cow and lure the group of buffalo toward the jump. As the buffalo neared the precipice, other Native Americans, hidden behind rock cairns constructed along the flanks of the slope, would rise up and startle the herd. The resulting panic sent the buffalo over the edge, where the rest of the clan were waiting to begin the harvest.

The view atop First Peoples Buffalo Jump

Buffalo were essential to Native American way of life, providing more than simply sustenance. The state park has a great interpretive center, and the view from atop the buffalo jump itself of high plains Montana is breathtaking.

Here is Wikipedia’s listing for buffalo jumps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump