Dream Trip, Camm and Gordon Swift, 24-29 July 2023
We stayed with John and Laine McGarity’s handsome mountain log cabin and enjoyed great meals and interesting conversation. From their porch we saw many mountain birds, particularly hummingbirds, visiting the feeders on their porch and became reacquainted with Gray Jays, Mountain chickadees, and Red-breasted Nuthatches among others. The McGaritys also took us on evening sight-seeing tours. One was to Big Spring, one source of the Snake River, where many very large trout aggregate for food thrown by visitors. Another was to Hegben Lake, a reservoir on the Madison River with a fishery of its own. A third was to the unique Earthquake Lake derived from a 1959 earthquake-caused landslide damming the Madison River. The lake was still margined by hundreds of dead, submerged trees with a few hundred roosting cormorants, attesting to the presence of fishes. Finally, we were entertained on Wednesday night by the junior rodeo of Meadow Vue Ranch’s summer youth horsemanship campers, including some adult rodeo events followed by a fund-raising barbecue.
Last but not least McGarity’s dog Gus, very friendly and a deterrent to the nearby recent bear activities including a fatal attack on a jogger and mortality of a bear cub on the local highway. Local wildlife agents had gone door to door with warnings to be more than usually alert for bear presence.
We started fishing on Tuesday, July 25th spending about 9am-4 pm on the Gallatin River stretch within Yellowstone Park, about 2-3 miles north of West Yellowstone. There was intermittent breeze and we caught a few trout, with Gordon getting more, about 5, 9-15 inches. An intermittent breeze made casting challenging from the left side of the stream looking up stream as a left-handed angler. Otherwise the weather was warm and mostly calm for the rest of the week for ideal fishing weather. The closeness of willow and alder vegetation kept the possibility of nearby bears in the back of one’s mind.
On Wednesday the 26th John had arranged a float on the Madison River with Jordan Myer, Blue Ribbon Flyfishers, based in the city of West Yellowstone. We went from Lions bridge to the Palisades launch site, about 7 miles, from about 9am-4pm using dry flies and virtually constant casting. The first fifteen minutes or so Camm got one rainbow about 14 inches and about 15 smaller fish taken among both anglers for the rest of the trip. Near the beginning, Gordon’s retrieval of a small trout near the boat was followed by a very large trout, probably a brown, close to the surface as if to take the trout but did not. By far the largest fish seen on the trip. John later recounted a story of a large fish he caught after it refused to let go of a similar smaller trout he had hooked. We seemed to be the only drift boat using dry flies, green drakes, hoppers, and a simulator. Other boats were mostly drifting with nymphs and indicators with few other catches seen by us. Several bald eagles and mergansers observed through the day.
On Thursday the 27th John brought us to the Lamar River 1-2 miles east of Tower-Roosevelt for large cutthroats and we took about 20 between us from about 10-18 inches from a few of the largest pools. Since it was a longer trip, we fished from about 10am-3pm, also the window of best insect activity. We used a beetle fly which seemed to work better than the green drake or simulator. The streamside vegetation was only low stands of thistles and a few bull bison were some distance away. John said rainbows are also here but we did not encounter any.
On Friday the 28th we went almost all the way across Yellowstone Park to Middle Creek (a middle fork of the Shoshone River in Wyoming), a smaller stream but with many large pools and logs. We fished the first half mile or so upstream of the park boundary. We both took several large cutthroat trout 12-18 inches which put up good fights. We used both green drake (Gordon) and an Adams fly modified. These fish were in the largest pools 3-6 feet deep with logs or brush on at least one side. We had strong fights from several. A highlight was one long pool to about 4 feet deep with overhanging brush on one side. A cast to the opposite shallow exposed edge in about a foot of water drew a large fish sideways out of the depths to take the fly and ultimately landed as an 18-inch fish. The thick wide margins of dense willows brought back the occasional thoughts of possible bear presence. All week we each carried bear spray, standard and prudent practice if going outdoors in the Yellowstone area.
On Saturday the 29th we stopped on Henry’s Fork near the upstream end of the Harriman Ranch State Park at Last Chance Fisherman Access Site and walked downstream of the log jam about half a mile. Watching from about 10-11 am disclosed no rising fish and several anglers were not getting any action. It seems to be an accepted rule that if fish are not actively rising, it is not worth the effort to fish. We proceeded to home in Sandy, Utah reminiscing about a real Dream fishing trip.
The Lamar and Middle Creek days provided the most trophy-sized fish and more or less continuous action followed closely by the float trip; the latter was the more novel and educational experience. It was a new method and strategy for both of us, particularly the need to be ever vigilant as pools, undercut banks, and backwaters continued to be encountered while drifting down stream. This included somewhat different approaches between anglers in the front and back of the boat. The week of fishing was all new to Camm and Gordon was able to expand his eastern Yellowstone experience to western Yellowstone.
We ended up using three licenses for our fishing, a Montana one for the Gallatin and Madison, a Yellowstone Park one for Lamar and Middle Creek, and an Idaho one for visiting the Henry’s Fork the last day. Of course, both John and Laine’s knowledge and advice enriched and guided the fishing and extra-curricular activities making the Dream Trip even more and better than advertised.