Fishing in Yellowstone

Fishing


(Photo is of a fisherman in waders in the hypothermal water, we decided he deserved anything he caught)


I fished a lot in my lifetime and have never been very successful at it. When I was younger, I never caught anything so my parents took us to a trout farm. I remember the fish practically jumped out of the water. I think you paid by the pound and this lasted for 10 minutes because my parents were scared at the cost.


I was very excited to fish in Yellowstone because I knew we would be successful. The added excitement occurred when we heard our trailer neighbor come home at 7 a.m. with his quite manly Chevy Diesel Dually truck. I don't know when this guy left to fish. We never heard this truck start even though he was 3 feet from our bed through a 2 cm wall of fiberglass siding. He got out proudly and held this 20 inch trout that he caught. We marvelled at his catch knowing that Yellowstone was going to be the honey hole of fishing.


I was willing to shell out the license cost of $24 for a 3 day pass for the family. It would be worth the cost when we had fresh fish to eat. We even contemplated how we would store the fish for the drive home. The guy who issued our license said we could fish right behind the Visitor Center. He also said that his lures had brought luck to this other guy before us at Gulls Point. We went out and fished for a few hours. We never saw one fish!!!!!


An angler came up and told us that the Forest Ranger said they pulled 1,000 lbs of trout from Gulls Point. Now I was interested. I searched all the maps for this secret Gulls Point. Guess what, it was not on the map!!!! So I went to the activities desk and asked where this place was. At first the guy told me to just go behind the Visitor Center. I was not about to leave until I found out this secret place. I told him I heard the rumor about the 1,000 lbs of trout. He smiled, and said it was true. He knew I was more than this good looking lady, but I was a seriously hot angler. He whipped out the secret map and even drew his own map of how the road meandered through the forest.


I told the family we are fishing after dinner. I packed 2 bottles of Off(9$ at the store) and the personal Off fans.We found the road closed, but I was not deterred. We kept on questioning why would the park close a perfectly good road. We parked the truck on the side of the forest. We walked down the road, because I saw the wild animal warnings posted all over the place. Somehow, in my mind, the animals wouldn't take the road. There were others like us down at the secret place. We walked in over 3/4's of a mile to where the bank drops off 5 feet from the edge. The great thing about this lake is it is clear. There was minimal catching of our lines. The mosquitoes were out in full force landing on the top of the lake. It was the optimum fishing moment, other than the 8 year old freaking out at every bug that came close. The temperature must have dropped 10 degrees and it became very cold. We were the only ones left at the lake. Again, I saw no fish, not even a ripple from one coming from the surface. It was time to go.



We saw that most of the people took a path through the forest and we wondered where it came out. We were commenting at the scat(poop) by the path, which we attributed to a deer or a bear. We all agreed to take the path. We were in the forest on this path when I heard two branches break. My mind recalled the days events when I watched a very well fed 12 year old German girl jumping on a fallen tree trying to break the branches. She must have jumped for a full 5 minutes before she was successful at breaking one branch. That is all it took, we were out of that forest and fast. We took the road all the way out. After our all to near encounter with wildlife, we realized that perfectly good road was closed because of bear activity.

We can say that we saw one fish during the week. That fish was our trailer neighbors and we were wondering where he bought it.