Credit: Jacob W. Frank / NPS
Summer heat has closed Yellowstone National Park rivers to anglers so frequently, park officials will open fishing season almost a month early this spring.
“It’s a pretty big change there,” Bozeman fly-fishing blogger Nick Williams told Mountain Journal last week. “We’ll have access to three legendary Yellowstone fisheries a little earlier. Lately, water temperatures have been getting so warm by middle- or late June, they get too warm to really fish.”
The new Yellowstone fly-fishing season starts May 1, about three weeks ahead of the usual Memorial Day weekend opening. The change affects three rivers: the Firehole, the Gibbon and the Madison. All three have major park roads alongside them stemming from the West Yellowstone entrance, although late-spring snowpack can make it tough to get from the pavement to the shoreline for early-season anglers. Nevertheless, park officials say they aren’t worried about adding pressure to the fishery.
“The park closely monitors water temperatures and levels throughout the season and closes waters when temperatures get too high, aligning with state closures whenever possible,” a Yellowstone Park spokesperson told Mountain Journal in a February 9 email. “These particular rivers, early in May, are cold and high and we are not concerned with over-stressing fish until water levels drop and temperatures rise, usually later into the summer. If anything, these are the best times of year to fish these particular waters.”
The Firehole, Gibbon and upper Madison all receive water from underground thermal sources. That typically leaves them ice-free all year and reduces the sediment flow that hits mountain rivers during spring runoff. Yellowstone fisheries biologists have found rainbow trout spawning in winter due to its unique temperatures that remain consistent year round, while most other rivers see spawning in late May and June.
“That could provide a little relief valve for early-season anglers,” said Mike Duncan, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region 3 fisheries manager in Bozeman. “The Gallatin [River] is usually early May before it starts going. So this could redirect some folks.”
Early-season fly-rod action will tend toward nymphs and streamers, according to Ryan Ongley at Beartooth Fly Shop in nearby Cameron, Montana. While those rivers sometimes get a jump on spring caddis hatches, most of the dry-fly opportunities will be limited to tiny midge patterns until late May.
“Most years we don’t get heavy mayfly action until Memorial Day weekend,” Ongley said. “But this year, who knows? The way the weather’s been here most years, February, March, April and May are the heaviest snow months. I don’t expect we’ll see people planning special trips.”
Lately, water temperatures have been getting so warm by middle- or late June, they get too warm to really fish.”
Nick Williams, “Curious Angler” fly-fishing blog
On the other hand, Yellowstone officials said high summer temperatures and low water supplies have frequently forced river closures in the later weeks of the fishing season. Due to their thermal aquifer mixing, the Gibbon, Firehole and park-portion of the Madison often get partial or full closures in mid-July as rising temperatures and low streamflows become stressful to trout. In hot years, other rivers usually last until August before needing “hoot owl” fishing restrictions.
About 50,000 anglers fish Yellowstone waters each year, according to NPS records. Those over age 16 must get permits to fish in the park. State fishing licenses from Montana, Idaho and Wyoming are not valid in National Park Service waters.
Williams, who runs the “Curious Angler” blog, said the change might rattle a longstanding West Yellowstone tradition of celebrating the open season on Memorial Day weekend.
“It changes things for the older guys,” Williams said. “The Firehole and Gibbon will get some color [due to melting snow runoff], but they don’t get as bad as some other rivers in the region. The big reason I’m pleased is we’ll be able to fish those rivers now a whole extra month in prime hatch season, compared to previous years when we waited until May 28.”
All three rivers feature lengthy reaches along major park roads, making access easy. And they each featured favorably in the 2012 book Fly Fishing Yellowstone National Park, by Nate Schweber, an award-winning journalist hailing from Missoula and who now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Schweber described the Firehole River as a place where “hairy, horned, clawed and toothy beasts from the last ice age stalk the banks in search of food or places to give birth, or both.” Nevertheless, he gave it the first entry in his guidebook which features commentary from numerous Yellowstone angling experts. He quotes West Yellowstone’s John Juracek recalling “when a hatch is happening and you see the surface of the [Firehole] boiling with rising trout, it’s just an incredible experience,” but adding that it was too hot to fish by mid-summer.
Yellowstone Regs: Read the fine print
Yellowstone National Park overlaps three states, each with its own fishing regulations. Plus, the federal park has its own, separate rules. And those rules vary across five subregions.
Yellowstone’s changes do not affect state fishing opportunities in neighboring Montana, Wyoming or Idaho. Those state waterways are open year-round to angling, according to wildlife officials in all three states, but require their own licenses.
In some parts of the park, nonnative trout caught there must be killed, according to NPS regulations. The rules vary widely throughout the park, so check specific sites on the Yellowstone fishing webpages.
Yellowstone’s overall fishing season still ends on its regular date of October 31.
The Gibbon River has three main parts, with the new rules affecting the most popular, central portion. Schweber noted the middle section of the waterway “courses easily through broad meadows filled with bison and elk. Here big, wary brown trout hang under overcut banks and in deep pools. Catching them often requires technical match-the-fly hatch selection and extreme stealth.”
The Madison’s confluence with those other two rivers at Madison Junction is a favorite spot for grizzly bear advocate and author Doug Peacock, according to Schweber. Peacock told Schweber he “ate trout until they were coming out our ears” in the 1960s, the time he chronicled in Grizzly Years: In Search of American Wilderness. Peacock also observed that creel limits were very different then: Yellowstone National Park allows only catch-and-release fishing there now for all species except brook trout.
