TRAVELINGWITHTOOLS

In 2015 I paid my first visit to the Gardner River in Yellowstone National Park. I had an exceptional experience, due to the dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time. I had parked the motorhome at the Lava Creek trailhead, just adjacent to the Mammoth campground, and hiked down to the river to explore.

I don’t recall having much success as I moved upstream, where I eventually came across a guide with two young sports, and they were absolutely killing it! They were casting into a deep pool next to a large boulder, and every few casts were hooking into sizeable brown trout. I snapped some pictures of one of the kids with his trophy fish…

I exchanged info with the guide to send him my photos and in return, he gave me a little intel on the spot. My recollection is that he called it the “kiddie pool”, because it was so easy to catch fish there that it was a reliable win for his young sports. A small pheasant tail behind a heavy stone fly, sunk ten feet under the bobber. Cast to the head of the pool and wait.

A thunder storm was rolling in and he took his young charges off the river to safety, while I set my rod down to wait out the brief lightning surge, tying up the nymph rig he suggested. It only took a couple of casts until I was into a nice fish, a brown of maybe 15″.

I landed a couple more, and lost the biggest one, easily a 20 incher. Ten feet is a long line to control under a bobber, and I had forgotten that I had my 3 weight rod in hand that day… the 7-1/2 foot 3 weight! I could not reach the fish with my net! I should have had my 9 foot 4 weight.

After I had my fill of the long line bobber routine, I wandered back downstream to a really fishy looking slot, where a long stone shelf created a deep run, easily drifted from the shallow gravel bar on the opposite bank. I caught a brown, a rainbow, a whitefish and a mountain sucker, all on the same pheasant tail nymph. The day was a great introduction to the Gardner.

I came back in early August of 2020 and had much the same experience. The kiddie pool produced a number of nice browns. There were recently hatched golden stoneflies flitting about, and I made an effort to get one of the pool-dwellers to come up to a dry fly, but didn’t succeed. The long line under a bobber with the little nymph was the winner again.

I somehow managed to return the next year, and the 2021 experience was again fantastic. No giants that year, but a good number of fat healthy browns.

In 2022, Yellowstone was hit by a 500 year flood event. A heavy rain coincided with peak snow melt after a good winter, and the Gardner River flooded so severely that it wiped out the main entrance road from the north gate. The Lamar river destroyed sections of the road that it parallels, and the Yellowstone did major damage all the way downstream past Billings. I wondered about the fate of the Kiddie Pool, my favorite honey hole.

I didn’t have a chance to revisit the Gardner until this year, and I was really curious to see what effect the flood had. The main impact, as far as me visiting the river goes, was that the road closure meant it wasn’t possible to reach the Lava Creek trail head with my motorbike, and the ranger would not allow me to park in the Mammoth Campground that is adjacent… they told me I had to park up the hill at the Mammoth Village. Including the hike from the trailhead to the water, it looked like a long damn uphill trek for the return trip, so I decided instead to go upstream to where a high bridge crosses the river and hike down.

That was a big effort for the one fish I landed, but it wasn’t a heart attack inducer. Back at camp, I googled the distance from the upper parking area down to Lava Creek and it seemed like less than 1-1/4 miles. I figured I could hack that.

So the next day I returned to park at the top and decided to bushwhack straight down the hill instead of walking the much longer path on the paved road. It wasn’t too steep or brushy, and the traction was good from the lava rock that much of the hillside was made of. I saved at least 3/4 of a mile!

As I reached the first view point above the river, it looked much the same as I remembered. It hadn’t dramatically changed course or wiped out the main landmarks. When I reached the water and the long stone shelf that had made a great run previously, I saw the first signs of change. What was a 60 foot long run was reduced to ten feet, the upstream portion reshaped by a gravel bar.

Walking upstream, there was a large sediment bank that looked new, covered with dead wood. As I rounded the corner, I saw the big boulder that was responsible for making the deep pool that held so many fish… the Kiddie Pool survived! But had it, really?

It appeared that the flood filled in much of the deep hole with gravel. Where 10 feet was the previous leader depth to get the bottom, now a 5 foot length was snagging the rocks. I tried a number of different setups and tied on different bugs, but I got not a bump. It seemed like there were no fish, or at least they’d moved to where I couldn’t reach them.

The death of my favorite honey hole, what a bummer! At least I can now share the story without burning a secret spot. As if there are secrets on a river next to a highway in the busiest national park in the world! Well, maybe some new ones downstream on the inaccessible stretch along the ghost road. Destruction and renewal, around and around we go.

I went back down the the long stone shelf and switched to dry flies, a hopper and an ant. One fish came up to eat the ant, so while I wasn’t skunked, it was nothing like the previous visits. The hike out seriously tested my fitness, which is no surprise, and I made it to the top just before dark.

Thanks to Dave Force, head guide at Hubbard’s Yellowstone Lodge, for the tips almost ten years ago that resulted in three really great days on the Gardner.

Here’s a few images from the four visits from 2015 to 2024… (click for larger versions with captions)