Small Streams of Yellowstone Park

If you have fished in Yellowstone National Park, chances are you have stood in Buffalo Ford on the Yellowstone, cast tiny mayfly patterns on the Madison, or gazed at geysers along the Firehole. When you come to this trout mecca, you simply have to fish the big-name rivers, right?

Three million visitors descend upon the park each year and of them, 300,000 take to the lakes and streams. Go to Buffalo Ford on any day after July 15, when the Yellowstone River opens up and you'd think all 300,000 of them are standing right there. On stretches of the famous rivers in the park, the anglers often outnumber the trout.

You would think that with over 2.2 million acres and a thousand miles of rivers, there wouldn't be crowded water. But most anglers fish near the access points, the road crossings, the parking lots, the campgrounds, the bridges, where the river parallels the road and they like to fish the marquee rivers.

What that tells you is that if you get out and walk a bit, you won't see other anglers. Sure, go see the sights, fight the traffic both on the road and on the river, even fish the legendary waters for a bit. But the overlooked quality trout waters are the small streams. To note, a small stream in the park is not always what the average angler thinks of about a small stream. Slough Creek and Soda Butte Creek are both as big as some so-called rivers in Colorado.

Finding small streams makes the YNP experience fuller, more fun. Take a look at a Yellowstone National Park map and you will see all the little blue squigglies. Read any book on the park, and you'll rarely read about the smaller streams (although many streams are 10-20 feet wide, full of deep pools, tons of fish). Imagine that when you look at that map, all those blue squigglies are potential day trips, half-day excursions, chances to catch twenty or thirty or forty fish in a day.

Imagine that those blue squigglies present a new world, a fishing canvas you have probably never seen before because no one fishes it, you get to choose the hues and brush-strokes, and the masterpiece is yours. You'll find few photos of Duck Creek in the big magazines. There tend to be suprises along these small streams too. I've found a thermal hole along Little Firehole with elk bones in it, seen an eagle, a moose, a bear (black), and a lot of other surprises.

If you don't mind catching twenty-two inches of trout (two 11-inch trout added together), then stuff the day pack, grab the lightweight rod and start hiking.

This last summer, my brother-in-law Kenny and I did just that when we took his son Chase and our nephew Bryan on a two-week trip to Yellowstone National Park. The drive was long, even longer with two fourteen year old boys being teenagers, and after 20 hours, we were ready to get there (and to never hear that plinkety-plink music of Nintendo GameBoy ever again).

Early July and all the rivers we wanted to fish were still a little high. We had little choice but to put these teenagers on the fickle Firehole or mercurial Madison Rivers or take them hiking into the backcountry and onto the smaller streams not affected as much by runoff.

The sky looked fake. It was a little too sky-blue, the clouds a bit too puffy, kind of like a bad oil painting at a starving artist sidewalk sale. We were watching Bryan cast to four or five cutthroats holding over a sandbar, oblivious to his splashes and shadow.

In the last hour, he had already caught four cutts from the little meadow creek, each one a wholesome 12-inches long and more colorful than a painter's palette. He hooked up again as we watched, his 4-weight rod bent over like Grandpa's back, the kaleidoscope of a fish twisting and jumping against the fake blue sky.

Chase came over to admire his cousin's catch. The boys reluctantly posed for a picture. The inevitable question 'whaddya catch'em on?' and Bryan, with some hesitation, replied 'I caught him on a Malcolm X Caddis.' We snickered not wanting to show him up. We'd save that for later.

We ate a lazy snack that day on Cascade Creek, the lazy meandering feeder stream to the might Yellowstone River. Cascade Creek is typical of the underfished small streams of the park. Since all the other bigger rivers in the park were blown out, swollen from melting snow and recent rains, so we had turned to Plan B, fished the small streams of the park and we had one of the best days of angling we ever had.

Did you know that nobody in the world fishes the small streams of Yellowstone National Park? We saw nary a soul on the banks of clear brooks which flow through verdant valleys or race through canyons.

We fished Nez Perce Creek on a sunny day, angled next to backcountry hot springs, walked entirely too close to a grazing bison, hooked and released entirely too many trout. Even if they were only 10 to 14-inches long, no one else we talked to back at camp or at the stores was catching trout on the big rivers. We drove past serious anglers wading the dangerous high waters of the major rivers. We left those swift waters behind for isolation and steady dry fly fishing (and catching) on twisting meadow pools and runs of Obsidian Creek and upper Gibbon River.

We braved rain and wind and mosquitoes to fish for lunkers, and I mean big lunkers, on the marshy 20-foot wide, 3-foot deep Duck Creek. Never heard of it? Maybe only Yellowstone River itself holds larger fish of the rivers in the park.

We had great luck tackling the small streams of the park, and despite our best efforts to screw up the fishing trip, Lady Luck was on our side. How about fishing for four hours on Obsidian Creek, where we parked the Suburban on a small turnout, all kinds of cars and RVs passing by, only to come back and find that we had left the tailgate wide open. We saw this error from a quarter-mile away, and since we had thousands of dollars of equipment in the truck, and more importantly all of our food for the two weeks, that was the longest walk we ever made. We were astonished to find everything right where we had left it. And we were able to con the teenagers into thinking it was their fault too.

So despite the heavy runoff and persistent bad weather, we caught lots of fish. We got to see streams and forests few folks ever see in the park. It was fun to sit back and watch the boys fish, to witness how much better they had become since we had first put a flyrod in their hand. Small streams are excellent teachers. The pupils catch a lot of trout so their tactics and casts are rewarded. We'd chuckle when Chase would get into his predatory mode. He would zone out, lean forward, and for hours on end, he'd cast and move, his eyes always peeled for rises and subtle movement. Small streams are not as intimidating as the larger rivers.

We had difficulty convincing the two teens that they needed to be scared of grizzlies, that bison can outrun them, not to walk too close to the thermal areas, to brush their teeth and so on. And when you are in the less-frequented areas where the small streams flow, you have a better chance of encountering wildlife. But at that age, young men have a certain cockiness that defies description or counsel.

But we fished streams so clear the water was invisible and we did so in the middle of the prettiest section of country in the West. Each small stream was a little different than the previous one but still familiar. The small streams ranged from serpentine meadow streams to pockety fastwaters to riffle-run mini-famous rivers.

We hoped that our explorations of the wilderness that these small streams coursed through showed the boys a genuine affection for the outdoors (even if we ourselves craned our necks silently watching out for their safety at every grizzly sound we heard crackling in the forest).

So there we were, the four of us, not on a big stream, but sitting in a meadow by a little stream, a step-across stream with undercut banks and bend pools, snacking on summer sausage and cold water, laughing loud enough that the wolves could hear us.

Earlier in the morning, on our easy hike along the small stream, while we were catching fish after fish, we ended up at a lake. The fishing in the lake was poor for the wind whipped up but we got to see something few people ever see . A huge bird, like a stealth bomber, appeared out of nowhere and swooped down on the lake. It was an eagle, big enough to carry off one of the boys. Her talons were out, she hit the water, rose quickly and held one of the 14-inch trout we were trying to catch. None of us said a word, just watched, slack-jawed at the rare sight.

We finished our lunch, put the trash in our pack and got back to fishing. The fake sky looked like one of us could reach up and scratch it with a fingernail, and for a moment, as if we were posing for our own postcard, everything in the world seemed just a bit more real by contrast.

Reasons for fishing small streams:

• Gets you in practice for the big streams
• See country most don't see
• Intimate
• Sometimes challenging but often easy pickins'
• Perfect for beginners
• Perfect for families
• Perfect for dry fly purists
• Perfect for teaching someone
• Perfect for getting away from the crowds
• Perfect for fishing to trout that might not have seen an angler all season
• Perfect for defeating runoff. They give you a second choice, an adjunct trip to the big river.
• Perfect for traveling light (no vest)

• The fish aren't all that much smaller and are the same size in some cases. The main stem of the Gibbon River doesn't produce big fish. The feeders to the Firehole have fish that move up during summer when the main river heats up. And streams like Soda Butte, Cache, Slough and Duck Creeks hold some big trout.
• Hatches are less important but don't totally discount them.
• These fish see few anglers and are not as skittish (except when it's shallow and clear as on Slough Creek).
• Don't go a-fishin up just any creek without knowing if it is fishless, where it goes, without letting someone know where you are---some streams have no fish
• Lots of these small streams come from or near lakes, ideal for taking lunch or varying the fishing.
• Think Dry flies, light leaders, stalking, kneeling, varied casts, staying low and dapping.
• Go with a buddy.