Pete Drochelman and I (John Walker) spent the week of Sept 2nd thru Sept 7th fishing in Yellowstone Park. This is the fifth time I have fished there during late August/early September but it never gets old. Pete and I started in Gardiner and fished Soda Butte and made the hike back to Slough Creek. Soda Butte fished well as is typical this time of year. To our mild surprise the fish were not very interested in hoppers but instead sat down deep the day we were there. So, we had success on copper johns, the P&P, zebra midge and Barr’s emerger. John had 2 cutthroats at 17 in and several others in the 15in range. Pete also got a couple of nice ones as well. The best fly by far was the P&P followed by the Copper John. All flies we brought with us. The next day we fished Slough creek. We took the 5 mile hike to get to the 2nd meadow giving us roughly 5 hours on one of the great fishing spots in the U.S. We entered at campground 2S1 and camping there was a group from St. Louis. Small world. Anyhow, here the fish were interested in hoppers, so it was on. John caught 8 solely on a foam hopper or Chernobyl ant he had bought on previous trips. Pete went the elk hair caddis route and caught several. In fact, his total would have been higher had he checked his fly and realized he had a busted hook. Pete also managed to catch a couple late in the day on a Copper John in some of the faster moving water. All in all that was a great day but the hike back was a little rough. Pete and I were both exhausted when the day was done. We drove to West Yellowstone the next day and fished at the confluence of the Gibbon, Firehole and Madison rivers. The fishing was much slower here but John managed to catch a couple with an x-caddis. Every evening if the sun was shining there was a strong caddis hatch but for the most part they weren’t taking dry flies here and we struggled to figure out what they wanted.

The next day we fished Firehole in the morning and the fishing here was also a little slow-at least for us. We each managed to catch one, Pete on a P&P and John on a Hare Ear nymph. We were a few weeks early for the good dry fly fishing on the Firehole. In the afternoon, we chose to try something different, for our group anyways, and fished the Gibbon river in Gibbon Meadow above the falls. We have been told that while the fish are mostly in the 10-14in range there can be some big fish hiding in spots. Pete was going to prove the latter true while John focused on catching the smaller ones. Gibbon Meadow is a beautiful spot to fish, one of our new favorites. It is oxbows and cutbanks with some nice fish hiding out. John ended up catching 5 cutbows all in the 8-12in range, on hoppers. Pete went for quality and caught a very nice Brown ~ 17in on a hopper that was near the bank in maybe 18 in of water. It was one of Pete’s highlight moments when that brown lasted his hopper. He later caught another nice brown here as well. The next day we fished the Gibbon below the falls. Unlike the previous day this section had more riffles and runs and was mostly over stone. We didn’t do well here but Pete got a really nice rainbow of about 16in in a riffle using an RS2. We later fished the Madison but as we have typically found this time of year we didn’t do very well. All in all it was a great time. Slough and Soda Butte were awesome as always and we really enjoyed the scenery and surprises of the Gibbon. We had hoped for a lot more hopper action than we had, though we did catch fish on them, it was the traditional flies we use here in MO that worked really well. Especially the Copper John and P&P.