Jake and I had the chance to run over to the Park on Friday afternoon; it was one of those last minute things after a business trip I had planned was cancelled at the last minute.
We left Bozeman in bright sun and temps climbing through the 70s (enough to make a fat guy sweat) and just for the hell of it decided to hop over the pass to Livingston and drive up Paradise Valley to check out the Yellowstone – it was just after lunch and our plan was to sight see a bit and be on the upper Firehole between 4 and 5 to fish the afternoon and evening Caddis.
Yep, the Yellowstone is still high and dirty, though Paradise Valley and the approach into Gardiner is a green as we’ve seen it in years. We found ourselves with some time to burn, so we zipped through Mammoth and headed to Tower and then over Dunraven pass. Showers dropped temps back into the low 50s and the views were spectacular as always.
A quick hop over the Canyon – Norris road revealed the upper most Gibbon to be in fine fettle; even if some call it children’s water we were mighty tempted to sneak around the Virginia Falls and Norris meadow waters.
Our construction hold was only about 10 minutes in the Gibbon Canyon, a quick turn south at Madison Junction, and up the Firehole.
Two things became obvious as we neared one of favorite and unoccupied runs on the upper River – the White Miller Caddis were coming off in droves and a heavy shower / small thunderstorm was about to roll over.
We rigged just as the first rain dropped began to fall; Jake being much more nimble and quite a bit younger was rigged and on the water 10 minutes before me – damn it. Adding insult to injury he brought two nice fish to hand in the time I finished setting up and lost another much bigger fish.
As the rain began to pound for the next hour, the number of flies coming off slowed to a trickle. We both switched to swinging a white caddis pupa and proceeded to have just an amazing afternoon / evening; we probably didn’t cover more than 200 yards of river, and caught many more fish than we typically do on this stretch (we’re typically not counters – but were pushing a dozen apiece….).
The sun finally made a showing just before sunset – the air temp had dropped to a brisk 44 (fat guys don’t sweat at this temp) – it was just about perfect.
Tags: River - YNP - Firehole
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