Winter Fishing March 4

Yesterday, myself and one of my guides, Mark Bolton, decided we would venture down to the Yellowstone for a few hours. All told we fished for about two hours.

Midging was strong with a few rising fish in foam holes along a rip rap bank. We began fishing at 1 p.m. I started with a nymph rig with lead shot. As soon as I got to the river fish were rising in the foam. I'm stubborn. So I fished the setup which drifted in an eddy about four feet under the fish. I snagged on a rock and broke off. I decided to go with a 16 soft hackle pheasant tail and a 18 black midge with silver wire below it. I used no weight and strung the indicator at 1 foot above the top fly.

I immediately hooked up and landed a small rainbow about 12 inches. I hooked another one and lost it.

I could see Mark casting to a foam hole that had two fish rising in it. I hear him hoot

and could see he was hooked up with what looked like a nice fish. the fish decided to take him out into the current. He followed it down stream where the fish wrapped his line around a boulder and broke off.

He gave a few choice words.

He retied with a similar rig as I had and proceeded to catch the other fish. He kept it out of the current this time. It wasn't nearly the fish the first one was.

I worked down river and caught three more rainbows.

We decided to move to another spot before an incoming storm caught up to us. I caught four more trout in a nice slow run. At about 3:30 the White fish bite started and I landed nine in quick secessions, but only one more trout. You could feel the temp drop. When I left my house the temperature was 47 degrees, but by the time we finished fishing it had reached 30. Mark caught another trout and then the sky opened up and we were pelted with snow. This morning we had six inches of new snow.