The next stop on this year’s fly fishing road trip is fly fishing the Green River below Fontenelle Reservoir. We left the Grey’s River and drove to Salt Lake City, UT for a quick family visit.

Upon leaving Salt Lake for our 200 mile trip, we drove through Park City, UT, Evanston, WY and stopped at Little America for a 75 cent ice cream cone.

It tasted delicious on a very hot day!
We fished the Green River for the first time back in 2021 upstream of Pinedale. This year, we decided to try the river below Fontenelle Reservoir which is an elevation of 6,500 feet. A friend of ours had fished there last year and I tied flies for one of my customers a few years ago who had a trip planned for the same area.
The main reason we decided to try our luck in Wyoming was because of the hot air and water temperatures in Montana. Remember, hoot owl restrictions were in place for many rivers and the Madison, Gibbon, and Firehole rivers were closed to fishing in Yellowstone National Park. As I recall, it was close to 100 degrees in Salt Lake City the day we arrived.
The night before our arrival in Salt Lake City, we found a campsite at Tony Grove Campground (8,042 feet). Our strategy is the higher you go, the lower temperatures we’ll find and we can sleep better in the van.
Here is the lake we camped next to. I captured this image as the sun rose.

And how my camera was set up…

We arrived at Farson’s Bridge for our first look of the Green River. I noticed a couple of rises that looked like smaller fish. Seeing several empty drift boat trailers was encouraging. It meant people were fishing this section.

The next morning, we made our way upriver to Weeping Rock campground. There was an empty site, but we chose to camp along the river at a fairly flat spot and closer to an area we planned to fish.
We sat outside the in the shade of the van during the hot afternoon and watched people drift by. One fly fisher was upstream fishing and catching several fish. He had floated to a spot with his pontoon boat, got out and fished below an island. He was quite a ways away, but we could tell he knew what he was doing as he landed several nice trout. I talked with him when he arrived at the boat launch and it turns out he was using a drop-shot technique where the weight is below the two flies which were tied on droppers. He was gracious enough to give me a couple of flies that worked well for him.

They look like a size 18 Split Case PMD Nymph to me, w/o bead (left), with tungsten bead (right).
I found out he fishes the river quite a bit and he relayed his experience was the river is best using nymphs or streamers. Well, you know me…I like to dry fly fish these days and wasn’t quite prepared for the drop-shot method. My hope was we would find a few willing trout in the evening willing to rise to our flies.
We did notice a couple of rises upstream from our van and we walked up the river on the cliff to find them. They were close to shore and I found a couple more trout as well.
Later that evening, I finally saw a couple of fish rising directly out from the van and donned my waders, gathered the fly rod and pack hoping to hook one of them. One rose to my fly, but I didn’t hook up. No other fish rose, so I decided to walk upstream to the area where we had found trout in the afternoon.
I was able to raise 6 to 8 fish and hooked up on this beauty which measured between 21 and 22 inches. It took a size 16 X Caddis.

Dancingtrout was on the cliff watching, so this is the best image I was able to get. She quickly went back to the van and joined me. We saw a few rising fish which we cast to. I broke off one that took a size 16 Purple Haze. My fishing partner landed this 17 to 18 inch Cutthroat.

I was pleased we were able to hook and land a couple of these fat trout. The other fish that rose to my fly and didn’t hook up was reminiscent of the same action I experienced on the Grey’s River. For some reason, I was able to get these fish to rise. It could have been a GREAT evening of fly fishing if I had hooked all of them!
Earlier in the afternoon, there were quite a few insects flying around. I was able to capture images of these that landed in and around the van.
A moth

Mayfly spinner recently emerged.

Perhaps a PMD Mayfly on the window with a reflection.

I’d guess a BWO Mayfly.

A Mayfly

I hoped the morning might find a few fish rising to something, but that wasn’t the case. Perhaps we might experience similar action in the evening.
It started out as a beautiful evening and our expectations were high.

However, it quickly changed as we could see a thunderstorm approaching in the distance.

Only a couple fish had risen that evening. I had one rise I missed and I think that was it.
The lightning got closer and we called it a night at 8:45 pm. We quickly returned to the van, put our rods away and hung the waders. Five minutes later as we safely sat in the van, we noticed a very strong wind headed down the river, whipping the water as it approached our van. We experienced a tremendous thunder and lightning storm the next 30 to 45 minutes with large hail as the wind rocked our van back and forth. I might have said something like “I hope the hail isn’t golf ball size or larger!”
There was nowhere to hide and we were relieved when the hail stopped and wind died down.
The next morning was similar to the previous day with no fish rising. We decided to move on and try a different river.
Before we left, I noticed all these black spots on the side of our van.

It turns out, Trico Mayflies were landing on the van and molting into spinners. They were quite small, either size 24 or 26.

Here is a dun ready to become a spinner.

And the spinner with an empty shuck.

This image shows the spinner struggling to free itself from the shuck.
I decided to video the experience. I was able to tell when the process would begin as the wings began to move.
We drove to Pinedale with the idea of fishing the upper Green River. After finding good cell service, we checked the weather for several locations we thought about travelling to next. The forecast was for multiple days of mid-90 degree highs. Since we knew hoot owl hours were in effect for multiple waters in Montana, which was our destination, we decided it was time to head home.
The day we travelled home, a fire started close to the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park. It was close to where our next stop was on the North Fork of the Shoshone, outside of Cody, WY. It was confirmation we made the right decision to head home.
We’ve been home for a week now after travelling a total miles of 3,500 miles.
While we cut our trip a little short because of the heat, we created more wonderful memories from our 2024 fly fishing road trip.
- Starting our 2024 Fly Fishing Road Trip
- Fly Fishing the Madison River in Early July 2024
- Second Week Fly Fishing the Madison River
- Return to the Grey’s River
Enjoy…go fish!
The video of the dun molting into the spinner was fascinating. I’ve never seen a video of this before. Your bug photography is really excellent and much appreciated.
Thanks for the compliment, Jason. I appreciate it. John
Fishing would be even better if everybody would quit posting about where they go and what they are using. I grew up in Pinedale, and over the years have seen the fishing take a nose dive because of over fishing and all the boat traffic from guides out of Jackson Hole. Sorry, fish your own rivers.
Thanks for leaving a comment.
Wow-what a trip! I was tired after my week on the St Joe, Bitterroot and Lochsa rivers. I’m a wimp compared to you two. Thanks for posting the vid of the spinner emergence-that’s pretty cool to see. That big cutty looks like the big one I caught on the upper St Joe-they’re gorgeous!
That’s and gorgeous cutthroat. I was born in Evanston Wy, unfortunately we never fished the Green River we would usually go into the Uinta mountains and fish the small streams and beaver ponds.