Mike’s 2024 fishing adventures on The Railroad Ranch, Teton R., Yellowstone Nat’l. Park and more.
Mike’s Year in Review 2024
by Mike Lawson | Dec 20, 2024 | Blog | 1 comment
The great journalist, Andy Rooney said, “Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.” It’s going pretty fast. I can’t believe that the year 2024 is almost gone. In the past I normally wrote about our season in review in February and I’ve written about the prospects for the new season in December. That seems a little backward to me. This year I will review the past season now and I will talk about the 2025 season in February or March. It will be better to look at the upcoming season later in the winter when we know what our snow pack is like.
Another thing I’m doing this year is writing about the past year from my personal experience. The main reason for this is that I didn’t spend enough time in the shop to keep up to date on what went on with all of the water in our coverage area. For example, I didn’t personally fish the Madison River last summer. My bad! I’ve always relied on friends, customers, and guides, as well as my own fishing experiences for an accurate review of the fishing season. This is my personal review rather than the Henry’s Fork Anglers review.
Years ago, I tried to fish at least several times a month during the winter. I was OK with freezing guides and cold fingers. Not anymore. If the weather is cold enough to freeze the guides on my rod, I’m not going. If you want to review what the fishing was like last December, January and early February, you’ll need to talk to somebody else. My season started in March.
March / April
Like most old-timers, I don’t wade much, mostly because my balance isn’t what it used to be. For that reason, I didn’t get out much until the middle of March when I could start using my boat. The weather is always unpredictable in March. This year the main problem was wind. It seemed to blow every day. While on the subject of wind, I thought last season was the windiest I can ever remember.
Slinging streamers in the wind with a big rod is no longer my idea of fun. While I’m not opposed to fishing nymphs with a bobber, if that is the last resort, I usually find something else to do, like cleaning out my dog kennel. When the wind didn’t blow, I had great fishing in March and April with dry flies.
I focused on the Henry’s Fork near my home west of St Anthony. Fishing is usually very good in the spring before Fall River blows out the river from spring runoff in May. In fact, I had some of the best dry fly fishing of the entire season. My favorite place was the Fun Farm but it was also pretty good in my backyard. There were good hatches of midges and blue wing olives with plenty of fish rising. I also focused on the Chester Backwater when the snow melted and the boat ramp opened up. While the weather is unreliable in March and April, the fishing is always reliable as long as you aren’t opposed to fishing with streamers and nymphs. If you haven’t tried our spring fishing, you’re missing out.
May
May was good but not great with the salmonfly hatch. The big stoneflies hatched on schedule about the 20th of the month. The word got out and the river got crowded quickly. I avoided fishing in the middle of the day. I had good fishing in the morning or later in the afternoon. My most memorable day with the salmonfly hatch was May 22. Robert Dotson and I floated from Ora Bridge to Chester on May 22. It was early in the hatch and there wasn’t much dry fly action, so we used Rubberlegs nymphs. My best trout was a 22” brown above the Vernon Bridge. I hadn’t landed a trout that size for a couple of years. We both caught a number of other great fish that day.
I usually contract one of our guides to fish the salmonflies in Cardiac Canyon, but I waited too long, and they were all booked up. Hopefully we can make it happen this year. If you haven’t tried this, you should, but it gets booked up quickly.
June
The Upper Henry’s Fork gets going in early June and this year was no exception. On June 6th, Mark Rockefeller and I spent a day with guide, Pierce Overholt, floating from the Osborne Bridge to Riverside Campground. The upper 2 miles of this float is within the Harriman Park which doesn’t open until June 15th . We saw trout rising all the way down, feeding on PMD mayflies. We both hooked and landed some great fish, the largest a 22” Rainbow with a size 16 PMD Nohackle.
I could write several pages about fishing last June, so I’ll have to summarize. I had terrific fishing throughout the month of June. The highlights were PMDs on the Teton, PMDs, Green Drakes, Flavs and caddis on the Henry’s Fork, along with a nice day on the Firehole.
July
The flow from the Island Park Dam always increases in late June and it always impacts fishing, especially the Ranch. This year was no exception. The flow jumped from 300 cfs on June 18th to more than 1000 cfs on June 30th . The flow peaked at 1600 cfs on July 10th . For that reason, I steered clear of the Henry’s Fork and focused instead on the Teton River and the South Fork. I didn’t fish the Madison last year but if I did, it would be during this period.
The South Fork was great throughout the month of July. While the salmonfly hatch was so-so, the PMD and Green Drake hatches produced terrific dry fly fishing. On the 31st of July we headed north to fish the Missouri for a couple of days with our oldest son, Shaun, who guides out of Cascade. It was great to spend time with him fishing and catching up. We fished sections of the river that I hadn’t fished, from Mid Canon to Tower Rock. Like the Henry’s Fork, the Missouri gets crowded, but we saw few other anglers in this stretch. We also took a break from fishing to visit the museums in Great Falls, which were fantastic.
August
I never fish the Ranch until the middle of July. I had some OK days, but most days were hot and windy, not ideal to fish this water. I had one good day on the Yellowstone River in the Park with Golden Stones, but the traffic was so bad it took more than two hours. If I wanted to wait in traffic for two hours I could move to Los Angeles. This isn’t to say that I’m opposed to a drive of 2 hours as long as I can keep moving. This year I made several trips to Soda Springs to fish for carp. If you haven’t tried carp fishing, you should give it a shot. I also spent a day with my brother, Rick, fishing Birch Creek. We spent many days and nights there with our family when we were kids. It was fun to fish together and to relive old memories.
August is one of my favorite times to fish the Ranch. This year was tough for me. It was hard to find fish feeding. I caught a few big, beautiful Rainbows but I had to work for them. I expected this to be a great hopper year, but it wasn’t, at least not in the Ranch. I had great hopper fishing on the Teton and Lower South Fork to make up for it.
September
The Ranch picked up a bit, but it still didn’t meet expectations. It seemed like every time I fished there the wind came up and blew me out. I had a couple of pretty good days with ants, Mahogany Duns, and Callibaetis. I didn’t fish the South Fork as much as usual because it was hard to stay away from the Teton.
For my birthday on September 30th , my wife, Sheralee and I hired Henry’s Fork Anglers’ guide, Adam Compton, to fish the Upper Teton. Everything went right. The wind didn’t blow, the bugs came off, and the trout were up and rising. We each caught some impressive Rainbows and Cuttys. In fact, I landed the largest trout I have ever caught on the Upper Teton.
October/November
This autumn, for me at least, was pretty disappointing. I think the biggest reason is because we had July weather in October; hot, clear and dry. Blue Winged Olive mayflies are the name of the game and they don’t like clear, warm weather. I had some good days fishing streamers on the Henry’s Fork near my home and the Lower South Fork but I didn’t have great dry fly fishing. Large rising on backwaters like the Fun Farm and Chester weren’t as plentiful. It wasn’t because the fish weren’t there, not when you consider what it was like in June.
Holidays
I normally spend time tying flies in the wintertime. Unfortunately, that’s coming to an end. If you have any flies that I have personally tied, hang on to them because there aren’t going to be anymore. My hands shake too much to tie Nohackles. I’ve been tying flies for over 60 years. It’s what got me into this business. It’s hard to give it up but I have plenty of other activities to keep me occupied. I’ve been organizing and editing my 10,000+ photos. I’ve enjoyed it because it brings back lots of memories and it’s a never-ending job.
I want to wish all of our friends, customers, guide clients and employees a wonderful Christmas. I’m looking forward to the season ahead. Hopefully I’ll see you in the shop or on the water this season.