Bears, Bears, And More Bears While Fishing In Yellowstone

Each year I enjoy a trip to Yellowstone National Park with members of my immediate family. Last week, my wife, Jeri and I met our youngest son Mark, his wife Talara, and their three children at the Bridge Bay Campground to spend three days together seeing the park.

I was born a mere 90 miles from the park in Lovell, Wyoming, and in our family, fishing in Yellowstone was the closest thing to heaven we could possibly experience in this life. When I was old enough to fish (2) the daily limit on trout was 10 fish per person. Our family included 10 children and mom and dad. So, we could literally take home 120 fish each time we visited the park.

We bottled trout, had trout fries, and made a form of trout jerky. Never did we foresee what has happened since. But, that will be left for a future post.

Now, the cutthroats are actually endangered (not officially thank goodness) in the Yellowstone River, especially the parts closest to Yellowstone Lake. The Park Service wants to blame the introduction of lake trout in the lake for the cutthroat’s demise, but those of us who were raised in the park know better. The Park Service destroyed the spawn assist facility located near the mouth of the river which severely restricted the replacement of cutthroat for the entire section of river between the lake and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. They closed Hayden Valley to fishing in the ’60s so there is no blaming anglers or lake trout for dwindling numbers of fish there. No, incredibly stupid fisheries management must assume much of the blame for the current state of affairs in Yellowstone Lake and in the Yellowstone River.

The first morning of our adventure on June 13, 2012 was to visit one of my favorite bear sighting areas on the east side of Yellowstone Lake. In my e-book available at www.amazon.com/ kindle store “Bears In Yellowstone”, I take folks through the park pointing out how, when, and where to find, watch, and photograph the bears of Yellowstone. My son Mark and I rounded a corner within a mile of our destination to find ourselves watching two adolescent grizzlies returning from getting a drink from Cub Creek or even the lake, and returning to their daytime feeding and lounging grounds a mile or so above the lake.

Later that morning, we spotted another mother grizzly (not Sarah Palin) just north of Canyon Village. We explored the Lamar River Valley and spotted some wolves (don’t get me started) and saw a mother black bear with a cub. We stopped and fished the Lamar River but found it running so high that we only hooked a handful of small brook trout no longer than 10 inches in length. We opted to use a barbless inline spinner in the brown trout color to do what little damage we got a way with.

The following morning was the opening of Yellowstone Lake to fishing and once again, my son Mark and I rolled out of bed at the crack of 5:00 a.m. and headed to Sand Point, a section of beach I’ve been fishing for close to 55 years. Within a hour, the two of us had caught and released 10 trout that weighed no less than an average of 3 to four pounds each and were pushing 23 to 25 inches in average length.

We used Jake’s Spin-A-Lures in the gold with red dots pattern and found the huge cutthroats to be very healthy but every one of them looked like cookie-cutter size … huge but not too many of them. This is typical of lakes where the young of the year are eaten by other predators. In Yellowstone Lake that would be the mackinaw or lake trout.

We decided to rent a fishing boat for a few hours and took the kids out to catch some of these monster cutthroats. In just under three hours, we boated between 20 and 25 cuts and the children had a ball casting and trolling their “Jake’s” from the boat. At $50 bucks an hour, the boat rental made a lot more sense than hauling my boat to and from the park.

In the afternoon, after resting up from the morning’s activities, we took a ride through Hayden Valley (spot number two in my bear book) and saw four more grizzlies including two that looked like record book bears. Though they weren’t quite next to the main road, they were visible with the naked eye and I was able to take a couple of telephoto shots with my trusty Cannon Rebel T2i.

In all we caught hundreds of small brookies in the tiny streams that litter the park. And, we caught a couple of dozen of the finest cutthroats I’ve seen for many years, and we saw almost a dozen grizzly and black bears along with countless bison, elk, coyotes, and deer.

Yellowstone is still a great destination but don’t just bring your fishing pole because you might be a tad disappointed. For now, bring a good pair of binoculars, a spotting scope, and a good pair of hiking boots to make your time in Yellowstone a whole lot more valuable.