Eight years ago a volunteer fishing program was started in Yellowstone National Park to help scientists and Park biologists better understand and manage the diverse fisheries in the Park. Here is a link to the program (I'm the one in the orange hat in the second photo) http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/vol_fishing.
My husband and I have volunteered several times a season over the last 6 years. The trips are always an adventure, including sinking a float tube in Ice Lake (brrrrrrr), having to telescope grasshopper flies through heavy brush into a one foot wide creek, oh and last year's run in with both a grizzly and then later a crazed and enormous bison up on Slough Creek - luckily (?) we were on horseback for both encounters.
Usually the purpose of the trip is to fish a designated section of stream with the purpose of identifying, measuring and obtaining scale and fin samples for later DNA testing. Sometimes we'll fish a remote lake to see if we can catch anything - sometimes yes, sometimes no. A major issue/problem for the Park is hybridization. There is a unique Yellowstone Cutthroat that is at risk of disappearing. Cutthroats successfully interbreed with Rainbow to produce a "CutBow". Rainbows traditionally have been a favorite of anglers for their acrobatic tenacity when hooked. So "Bucket Biologists" (read unauthorized planting of non-native species) have introduced rainbows and other fish like Lake Trout and Brook Trout to YNP waters over the years. Now the biologists are trying to figure out what fish are where, and eventually return at least some of the streams/lakes to the native species. (Another interesting native fish to YNP is the Grayling, the volunteer program has spent many hours tracking down and DNA testing these little guys). Trips are led by one of the program's volunteer leaders and usually include 4 to 10 volunteer anglers.
Monday's trip was on Specimen Creek. It is in the very Northwest corner of the Park, about 30 minutes north of West Yellowstone, Specimen is a tributary of the Gallatin river (which joins the Madison and Jefferson near Bozeman to form the Missouri). Our leaders for the trip were Bill and Joann Voigt - who work for Penn State in their "real" jobs, and there were four anglers. The task was to catch fish, inject them with a bright orange epoxy dye and release them. During the course of the summer, volunteers will fish the entire length of the stream up to a weir that has been built on one of the two main forks. The purpose is to see if any fish from below the weir are able to get around/over and above it. Biologists will "shock" the stream above the weir and look for these orange dyed fish. Eventually they will cull all rainbows and hybrids from above the weir and reintroduce the cutthroats. Earlier trips had already fished the lower sections, so we hiked up a trail for about a mile before starting. The morning was cool, the water was cold. 7 deg C. One volunteer, from Florida, was quite impressed. Fishing was slow to start with, amazingly the first fish caught was one that had already been injected, either we had overlapped a bit or it had moved upstream some.
Specimen Creek is glorious. It probably averages 15 feet across, is crystal clear, and runs from a high meadow down through a narrow valley to meet the Gallatin. We fished the narrow valley which was absolutely choked with wildflowers. The valley is also home to quite a forest of Lodgepole pines. Many of which are no longer standing. It is the natural cycle for these trees to blow over and so at times one feels much like an ant climbing up and over the downed matchsticks. A great workout. Interesting, in the area we fished there had been a major forest fire a year or two ago, it was amazing to see how quickly and aggressively the forest grows back. Of course that meant that some of the downed wood was downed charcoal - we were pretty dirty at the end of the day.
Here’s where the trail started.
Back to the fishing. By lunch the water had warmed up to 10C, better, but still cool. There wasn't much insect activity, a few caddis, and an occasional stonefly or mayfly. There are tons of grasshoppers around the area this year, but as we moved up into the forest there is less grass and fewer hoppers. This section of the stream is fairly steep, and so the water moves pretty fast. There is plenty of structure - rocks and hummm did I mention downed trees - creating little pools of calm in the midst of the rushing water. This is the best bet for finding fish, hit the pockets close to the seam or edge of the fast/slow water. The fish sit in the slow water conserving energy as the fast water acts as a conveyor belt to bring food by. It all happens pretty quickly, make a cast (watch out for the trees and bushes behind - I think we fed more pines than fish) the fly lands in the pocket, pauses, then is pulled out by the fast water which grabs your line and drags everything downstream.
These fish are quick, as they don't have much time. So it goes: cast, splash, pause, drag, repeat, repeat, then splash, POW, oh, darn it. missed em. cast, splash, pause, drag... When we finally hooked one of the little bastards, we had to keep from losing it in the rocks and hummm downed trees. Once I had to wade across to untangle everything from a log, just about broke my rod, while the fish was still messing around in the branches - I did manage to extricate everything and land that one. The goal was to get the fish into an official yellow bucket and then get the bucket to the Voigts (read scramble through brush and over downed trees with rod and bucket to find them) so they could measure and inject the fish. It sounds so easy. I think we managed a total of 10 fish in the 4 or so hours we fished. There were a fair number of swings, misses and errors, but I have to say, it was a pretty slow day fishing wise. I think it was the temp and no hatches, also that section is challenging to fish and I think the fish/mile is fewer there then in the meadows or lower down near the Gallatin. But really fun. Perfect weather, no thunder, no rain, no large unexpected animals this time.
For anyone interested in the details, we fished mainly dry flies. Nymphs were almost impossible given the small pocket size and speed of water - there just isn't time to get a weighted fly down far enough. Almost all the fish were caught on caddis imitations - a variety of deer/elk hair patterns, a hopper caught one and a royal parachute madame x caught one or two. We did try dropping a nymph off the back of a dry fly - we hooked a few that way, but didn't land any. I think the other guys were using 5 weight rods, we both have a sweet little Sage 7'10" 3 wt which is perfect for those conditions. All the fish were rainbows or cutbows, one guy thought he had hooked but lost a brown trout, which is possible. The fish were small, ours ranged from 5" to 11", but then this stream is about the challenge, not the size.
A fabulous day, I didn't think about the stock market even once. If anyone is ever going to be in the neighborhood of Yellowstone, get hold of these guys and they will try to work you into a trip. It is not guided, but they do want anglers of all skill levels as it helps approximate what the average visitor might encounter. I would say that if you have or can beg/borrow a rod and can at least tie on a fly, in case you happen to lose one, the day would be a quite an adventure. The folks at Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone can help you contact the volunteer program and are super helping with gear or fly selection. That's it. Now back to the regularly scheduled quarterly corporate mumbo jumbo.
