Fly Fishing the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park

After fly fishing the Green River in Wyoming, we drove over Hoback Pass on our way back to Teton National Park. Our scenic tour has been amazing as the aspens were in full fall color. We watched another sunset and sunrise on the Teton mountains before rising early to see if we could find some wild animals. Our goal was to find a moose or two, but elk replaced these large mammals. Our journey continued through the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park. We planned to drive through and out the northeast corner of Silver Gate and Cooke City, staying the night before going over Beartooth Pass. At the last minute, we stopped at the Fishing Bridge General Store and purchased a fishing license. Our goal was fly fishing the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park.

The image above of a Yellowstone Cutthroat might be a spoiler alert that in fact, we did find a few fish!

It was August last year when we drove through the Lamar Valley. Road construction was ongoing due to the massive flood in 2022 and there was no access to the lower portion of the Lamar River. We were looking forward to see if the road was completed and have a closer look at what the flood did to the river.

Indeed, the road was finished and we stopped to get a good view of the canyon section.

The image below is looking downstream as the river heads towards its confluence with the Yellowstone. Looking down at the boulders was amazing. It’s hard to imagine the force of water needed to roll these large boulders down the river!

I turned to get a view upstream. Boulders appeared to block the river, but we found the river flowing easily through the boulder garden.

This is another view a short distance upstream. Notice how the sides were scoured by water and rocks.

We were quite surprised to see a section we’ve fished before had little change from the years we’ve fished here. Our hope was we’d find a few willing trout.

It didn’t take too long before willing Yellowstone Cutthroat trout rose to a Purple Haze.

My first fish was small too, but put up a good fight.

I was able to find three other fish like the one below.

Here’s a close-up showing the Cutthroat “slash”.

We enjoyed a nice evening of fly fishing, each landing 4 or 5 Yellowstone Cutthroat and raising more that sometimes ate our flies only to pop off the hook.

On our journey through the Park, we enjoyed the fall colors and were lucky to find some wildlife.

Here is a Grizzly Bear we found a few days later when we entered the Park again, this time from the east out of Cody. It was a short distance from Yellowstone Lake.

We stopped briefly at LeHardy Rapids on the Yellowstone River to view the fall colors.

Hayden Valley along the Yellowstone River was full of bison.

Our journey also found us exploring East Rosebud Creek, which is close to the Stillwater River, MT. After that, a drive to Cody and up the North Fork Shoshone and back through the Park towards the west entrance and West Yellowstone.

While driving from Madison Junction to West Yellowstone, we found four elk crossing the Madison River.

Our final fishing was on the Bitterroot River. There wasn’t much dry fly fishing for us, but we did coax a few to our flies. I’ll share more about the Bitterroot soon.

And just like that, we’re back home after driving almost 2,900 miles.

We had hoped for better fishing, but much of our trip was devoted to enjoying the fall colors, which is why we spent several days around the Tetons.

Here are my other posts from our trip:

• Fall Fly Fishing and Scenery Road Trip
• Fall Fly Fishing on the Green River

Enjoy…go fish!