Day Seven: Yellowstone River with Eric

Today was our seventh straight day of fishing and it was a dandy!   We met our guide, Eric Paulson, at George Anderson's Yellowstone Angler in Livingston.  I have used this shop many times in the past and have always enjoyed the service they provide.  George Anderson is an icon in the fly fishing industry and he runs a top notch fly shop.

Our guide gave us the "once over" (trying to figure put if we knew which end of a fly rod to hold on to) and then decided to take us on the lower stretch of the Yellowstone River.  As it turns out the upper sections were pretty dirty from all of the rain they have been having in the park (we should know...we fished and rode through a bunch of it).  So we headed east on I90 and after about a 30 minute ride reached our put-in point- a pretty gnarly, rock strewn boat ramp.

The weather was cool and sunny and Eric had us tie on a hopper pattern with a nymph dropper.  The fishing was slow to start but as the day wore on things heated up.  My guess is that we had 50-75 fish rise to our flies and we managed to hook about 1/3 of them.  Jon once again took the best fish of the day...a 20" male Brown Trout- just a beautiful specimen.

Jon and I really enjoyed fishing with Eric.  Though I thought things started off a bit odd (as in, "You cannot use a 3 Wt rod to cast a hopper pattern"---I beg to differ), as things wore on we began to bond and I really thought he did a fine job guiding us and was a fun guy to spend a day with.  I really was impressed with all of his hunting and fishing exploits (Elk hunting, Idaho steelheading, New Zealand fishing, etc.)  and enjoyed hearing him talk about spey and switch rods.  As I told Eric I have two lists of guides...my "A" list and my Shit List.  Eric goes on my "A" list- I'd definitely fish with him again.

I must say that I was very impressed with this section of the "Stone".  Although the river followed the interstate for much of the day, the water was in beautiful condition.  The river had tons of shallow shelfs and drop offs and some fabulous undercut banks.  If we'd had the time there were dozens of places we could have stopped and more carefully worked...but we had miles to cover.  Nevertheless,  I'd gladly return to fish this section more thoroughly.

We decided to call it a day early and by 4:30 we were on the road back to Livingston.  We stopped by the Murray Hotel for dinner and sat next to Michael Keaton ( Batman, Mr.Mom, etc) at the bar in the restaurant.  He seemed to be enjoying his privacy and so we left him alone.  I was dying to quote some of his lines from Mr. Mom ("220/221...whatever it takes") and Night Shift ("Do you like music?").  We seem to think that he has a ranch near here and that he's a big fly fisherman.

Anyway, off to dreamland......