-
A Look Back at Fly Fishing in 2024… WTF, Mate?
2024 was the ninth year that I’ve been a full-time RV’er and I have been looking to upgrade to a new model for the next ten years. My business has been good this last year, or rather you could say I worked more than I wanted. A happy result is that I’ve saved a substantial…
-
Finally, A Colored-Up Fall Run Fish
I’ve fished the Madison in Yellowstone 12 days total since September 22, and this is the first legit lake-run fish that I’ve caught. It has been so bright and sunny, some of the willows along the bank think it is spring and have started to bud! But what a fish, just look at that orange…
-
An Update from West Yellowstone
I’ve managed to break my weekly posting streak here at travelingwithtools.com, which started back around this time last October. I’d committed myself to a regular writing schedule (more or less) with the goal of making this website into something more useful. Well, two weeks ago, I set up on the Madison River at Bakers Hole…
-
The Gardner River and a Yellowstone Honey Hole
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…
-
Trout Spey and Preparing for the Madison Fall Run
I’m staked out here on Hebgen Lake near West Yellowstone, Montana and I’m getting excited to fish the Madison River Fall Run. The town had a fly fishing and art festival last weekend called “Wretched Mess Fest“, which is just a damn great name. My first motorcycle was a Yamaha XS500 that I lovingly referred…
-
Halfway Through the 2024 Fly Fishing Road Trip
I left California on July 20 so I’m now about five weeks into this year’s western road trip. I’ve got a campsite booked at Baker’s Hole on the Madison River for the last week of September, to hunt for the traveling browns that move upriver, so about five more weeks until you can reliably expect…
-
A Day on La Barge Creek, Wyoming
I was really hoping to find a creek full of wild and colorful cutthroat trout, and to have a day perhaps like that one years ago on Long Draw in Colorado. I’d watched some YouTube videos of guys fishing small creeks up in the boonies of southwestern Wyoming, and I pinned a couple of rivers…
-
A Day Floating the Green Below Fontenelle
My spot on the Green River at the Slate Creek campground just didn’t look very fishy. A few smaller fish would rise erratically, eating bugs that remained unidentified. Sure, there were some trico spinners in the morning, and some tiny PMDs in the afternoon, but I never saw either bug on the water in numbers…
-
Wyoming Sights and Sounds, Pt. 2
Previous post, Sights and Sounds, Pt. 1 When I got back to camp after that enjoyable day on the Ham’s Fork, the door to my RV would not open. What the hell? The key worked the lock, but it would not unlatch. I had to go in through the garage, and the damn latch would…
-
Wyoming Sights and Sounds, Pt. 1
This road trip that I’m two weeks into has thrown some curve balls at me, but has also provided some really interesting audio/visual encounters. The curve balls started with the overheating problem that I encountered climbing the Sierra Nevada on day one. Which seems to have been resolved with the new fan clutch and thermostat…