Wyoming report, final chapter

[yubaman]

The final 2 weeks were certainly the highlight of our trip, both in terms of fishing as well as the towns and countryside too. After we packed up early and left the Cottonwood and Piney drainages due to the non-existent trout, we headed for Pinedale. What’s cool town Pinedale is. Two Rivers fishing is an excellent fly shop located in Pinedale. From here we floated the Green River for 2 days and had some pretty good fishing. Very good river with a bunch of healthy fish in the system. We wade fished the Upper Green. Big water with some large fish, and the same with the New Fork, where we also wade fished. We camped for 4 days in a drainage outside of Pinedale that had excellent Cutthroat and Brook Trout fishing. I could see doing a future trip just to Pinedale and fishing the waters in that area alone. Some excellent food in town as well.

After Pinedale, it was over to Dubois to fish the Wind, Horse Creek and a couple of other creeks. Along the way, we hit the Greys River. Both the Greys and the Wind were still running pretty high, but fantastic looking water if it was a bit lower. We had some fantastic hatches and rises to a couple of the smaller creeks in the area.

Following this, we headed through Cody and fished the North Fork Shoshone. What a fantastic fishery this was. We were able to net a bunch of 16”-20” healthy rainbows here. Really a great fishery. Reminded me a lot of the Truckee, but much better fishing here. The canyon between Cody and Yellowstone has a bunch of guest and dude ranches where you can stay, and they do it right at these places. Very good restaurants at the ranches, with a bunch of activities. Also, the drive up liquor stores were a hit, pretty funny.

All in all, the trip was very good. I would certainly go back for a more concentrated visit to the more northern streams in the state that we saw. The whole access law there makes wade fishing it a bit more difficult to deal with than Montana. Wyoming landowners are very protective of their property rights as a whole. Google Maps and Trouteroutes app made it easier to deal with, but it is still a hodgepodge of intertwined public and private land if you are outside BLM or National Forest land.

Still, this was a bucket list trip for sure.