We’re still getting good, if not great, fishing reports about the Yellowstone River from our guides and customers. Our own recent fishing experiences match up with that assessment. For better or worse, the best bite has sometimes been in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. Go figure. Various hoppers continue to fool nice fish both upstream and downstream of the town of Livingston. My go-to rig has been a Panty Dropper Hopper trailed by an ant pattern (when I haven’t been fishing the Rude Trude as my dropper dry, that is). A hopper or Chubby Chernobyl with a nymph dropper is also a good bet, if you’re willing to put up with a few whitefish. Sweetwater Fly Shop guide Beau Peavey has also been picking up some bigger trout with a dead-drifted streamer. We haven’t yet heard of great success with stripped streamers, but it’s getting close to that much anticipated time. So you have a lot of options to try.
River flows and temperatures remain quite good for this time of year, even with the hot days we’re experiencing right now. Longer cool nights should only improve matters as we move into September and fall fishing. It’s probably my favorite fly fishing season in the greater Yellowstone area, with fewer folks on the rivers and up in Yellowstone National Park and good to great dry fly and streamer fishing. Soon enough, the blue-winged olive (baetis) mayflies will begin to appear on the Yellowstone River and the Paradise Valley spring creeks as well. Get ready for a stellar fall of fly fishing in our vicinity.
I’ve been fishing both colors (lime and royal) of the Rude Trude pretty hard lately. Have you? As to my success with the fly in question, let’s just say that we may have to extend the deadline for our “Rudie Can’t Fail” photo contest a bit, unless we’re going to award the grand prize (a Fishpond Cerveza Sidekick chest pack) to a photo of a modest-sized whitefish. I’m hoping that you’ve been doing better with your (unadulterated) free flies than I have!
Just for your viewing pleasure, here are a couple of short video clips from recent float and wade fishing on the Yellowstone River:
0
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.