I was on the road early, determined to hit the North Fork and catch some fish to boot. I crawled up the mountains on Highway 14, which at this point was more of a one and a half-lane gravel road than a proper divided highway, and about 45 minutes later happened upon the proper turnoff.
On a hunch I took a right down a gravel road, and after a few miles happened upon the North Fork Tongue River campground, a Forest Service area. The river, I suppose more of a midsized creek, ran through a broad meadow choked with wildflowers and a couple mule deer. I stood on the bridge and looked at my options, and figured on working my way downstream to the public property line.
Fishing was easy, and in a few minutes I had landed both rainbows and cutthroat, as well as a couple brook trout. Nothing big, most of the fish were between seven and eight inches, but they were fish! Foam ants and general searching dries proved successful, as well as Copper Johns and pheasant tails. Nothing earth-shattering, but it was fun for a while.
I headed back to the Highway in my car, figuring I’d spend the rest of the day working upstream to see how the fishing became. The road came down and paralleled the stream for quite some time, making it easy to pull out and fish most anywhere. I did so a couple times, and the sizes steadily improved. I went from catching eight to 10 inch fish downstream to 12 to 14 inch fish upstream, likely in no small part to the proximity of the campground
downstream. But it was fun, throwing hoppers and ants under bushes and other vegetation, against undercut banks, splatting them against the water and watching them get creamed by innocent Yellowstone cutthroat.f a cutthroat won…
On a hunch I took a right down a gravel road, and after a few miles happened upon the North Fork Tongue River campground, a Forest Service area. The river, I suppose more of a midsized creek, ran through a broad meadow choked with wildflowers and a couple mule deer. I stood on the bridge and looked at my options, and figured on working my way downstream to the public property line.Fishing was easy, and in a few minutes I had landed both rainbows and cutthroat, as well as a couple brook trout. Nothing big, most of the fish were between seven and eight inches, but they were fish! Foam ants and general searching dries proved successful, as well as Copper Johns and pheasant tails. Nothing earth-shattering, but it was fun for a while.
I headed back to the Highway in my car, figuring I’d spend the rest of the day working upstream to see how the fishing became. The road came down and paralleled the stream for quite some time, making it easy to pull out and fish most anywhere. I did so a couple times, and the sizes steadily improved. I went from catching eight to 10 inch fish downstream to 12 to 14 inch fish upstream, likely in no small part to the proximity of the campground
downstream. But it was fun, throwing hoppers and ants under bushes and other vegetation, against undercut banks, splatting them against the water and watching them get creamed by innocent Yellowstone cutthroat.f a cutthroat won…
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