Gardner River – June 2013
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Zach, I know you’ve asked about the Gardner in the past. It is one of the sweetest pocket water streams in the park, especially in June, early July. Have made three trips so far this year, but today was the best. The river has dropped enough to make the lower section pretty accessible without having to climb up and down the rocky banks every ten feet. Salmon flies are just around the corner, but the fish aren’t waiting for the real thing. Today I was able to toss big dries from the get go. Although its only 1 mile from the mouth to the Rescue Creek trail bridge, that mile takes about 5-6 hours to fish effectively. Fresh stonefly nymph husks were everywhere, but no adults to be seen because it was cool and overcast. The big hatch should take place in the next week to ten days. The big distractions this spring are the cow elk and their calves which are bedding down along the river bottoms in the willows.
Prevalent fresh Salmon Fly nymph husks
Walt Wiese’s Prom Queen
Cow elk and calves scared up out of the willowsOne of the go to salmon fly patterns on the Gardner – Walt Wiese’s Prom Queen
One of the easy sections
Much tougher water to navigate
A more classic pattern, Park’s Stonefly
This was the go to pattern today – Walt Wiese’s Prom QueenStrategy without Tactics is a Slow Route to Victory, Tactics without Strategy is the Noise Before Defeat - Sun Tzu
Mike –
Is Walt Wiese the younger guy who used to work in Park’s Fly Shop in Gardiner? Last time I saw him he had busted his leg up in I think a skateboarding accident.
Gardiner for me is a weird town, because it seems like it ought to have the same kinds of high end fly shops as West does (and West has four!). And yet you get there and there’s only Park’s, which is pretty much right out of 1955, or at least it has been all four times I’ve been in there.
I guess Gardiner just doesn’t get the tourist traffic that West does? I know they’re doing a lot of work on the North Entrance there so maybe it will pick up. That’s actually my favorite near-Yellowstone place to base camp. The K-Bar is good!
Zach
Gardiner for me is a weird town
I fully agree, but I also love the place. It’s an awesome old western town in every sense. I met an old dude at a bar in Gardiner a few years ago while I was in the middle of a 3-month fishing bender. He was sitting at the bar drinking Busch NA and rolling his own cigarettes – the kind of guy you know has some good stories just from the look of him. I ended up talking to him all night, which basically consisted of 6 hours of stories about Gardiner in the 50’s-70’s. I would love to track him down and record all his stories; one of them literally ended with, “That was the first time that I shot at somebody.”
Zach,
Gardiner is different from West Yellowstone because of its heritage and its geography. It was founded in 1880, but existed since 1872. In the early days it was the only official entrance to the park. In 1886 it essentially became a military town when the US Army took control of the park and established Fort Yellowstone. The bars and such are remnants of that era. The Northern Pacific came to Cinnabar in 1883 and Gardiner in 1906 making Gardiner THE entrance to the park for tourists, especially from the Northwest and Northeast US. West Yellowstone didn’t come into existence until 1908 when the Union Pacific tracks reached the west side of the park The road from Bozeman to West wasn’t operational until 1913 (it was only a single track dirt road at the time). As the trains went away in the 1960s, Gardiner didn’t have near the draw that West did. Because Gardiner is sandwiched in the canyon, against the park boundary and bisected by the Yellowstone River it never had much room to expand its main streets. West Yellowstone was essentially a green field.
If you ever want to watch a very campy movie about Yellowstone, but see some of what the park was like in the 1930’s, watch this one: Yellowstone (1936)
On the fly shop side, Parks’ is a great success story. Several years ago I talked with Richard and Walter when I wrote most of the Wikipedia article on the shop. When Merton Parks established the shop (1953), Dan Bailey’s in Livingston was the dominant fly shop along the Yellowstone. Dan helped Merton establish the Gardiner shop to expand Bailey’s wholesale tackle business. There weren’t any other the shops between Livingston and Gardiner at the time. Today, there are at least 6 shops in Livingston and Emigrant servicing Yellowstone River and a shop in Cooke City servicing the northeast corner of the park. A lot of Parks’ work is on the river outside the park on the Yellowstone and it’s much easier for anglers to book Yellowstone trips out of Livingston or Bozeman. I think the short Yellowstone Park fishing season is why you don’t see more shops in Gardiner. The waters near Gardiner (Lamar, Slough, Gardner, etc) have a very short season, whereas the waters near West (Firehole, Madison, Gibbon, etc) can be fished all season. Plus West has a lot more accessible water in Montana and Idaho outside the park.
Walter Wiese is Parks’ head guide and a very talented fly tier. He recently published this book: Yellowstone Country Flies-The Fly Patterns of Parks’ Fly Shop. It is a great pattern reference for the most popular and productive flies used in the Park.
Strategy without Tactics is a Slow Route to Victory, Tactics without Strategy is the Noise Before Defeat - Sun Tzu
Tim Angeli said: I would love to track him down and record all his stories; one of them literally ended with, “That was the first time that I shot at somebody.”
Whoa. Ian Crabtree and I met up with board members Joel Thompson and Ed Felker out there last fall, when I was on the photo spree which has been so productive lately. 😉 Ed Felker proceeded to drink beer after beer and yet absolutely pool shark everyone in the room. Skilled fella!
What I like to do out there is pitch a tent in Mammoth Hot Springs Campground for $17/night, snake showers from the Hot Springs Hotel bathhouses serving the cabins out back, then use the car to go into Gardiner once it gets full dark. Makes camping feel like you’re staying in a hotel, especially since that area is basically air conditioned at night by Mother Nature. I’ve had wolves howl me awake there, too.
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