Fishing for Yellowstone Brown Trout

The best time to fish for trophy brown trout at Yellowstone National Park is after an October cold snap, before the snow starts to pile high.

By Tom Bol

Story first appeared in October, 2005 issue.

Plan your own kayak fishing trip to Yellowstone National Park.

Two things I love are sea kayaking and fly-fishing. There have been a few rare occasions when I got to indulge in both activities on the same trip, but typically one takes a backseat to the other. One exception was sea kayaking last October between Yellowstone National Park's Lewis and Shoshone Lakes in search of lunker brown trout. The fish lurking in these waters are legendary. So, when the aspens near my Colorado home turned yellow and Canada geese were migrating south, I decided it was time to head to Yellowstone.

"Right about now the brown trout start moving up the Lewis Lake channel," explained Steve Koning as he organized gear in his Jackson, Wyoming, store. "With the first cold weather, they move into the channel to spawn. The males follow the females upstream and eat their eggs. Those are the fish we want to catch."

Koning is co-owner of Snake River Kayak and Canoe, a guiding outfit and retail store that caters to the large summer influx of tourists visiting the Tetons and Yellowstone. He's the classic Jackson outdoor type: athletically built, partially bearded, and nicely tanned; an expert in multiple outdoor sports, he moves with purpose. Outdoor guides are swamped tending to clients' needs, with no time to idle; efficiency of movement is a result. Koning provided the sea kayaks and gear we needed to paddle across Lewis Lake and up the channel to Shoshone Lake, where we planned to camp overnight.

At dawn the next morning we hitched up the trailer and drove into Yellowstone, stopping to get fishing licenses at the Flagg Ranch entrance before arriving at our Lewis Lake put-in.

"Do you ever have any trouble paddling these lakes?" I asked as we unloaded our kayaks on the rocky shore of Lewis Lake.

"You can get some really strong winds and big waves, especially on Shoshone Lake, and the water temperature is in the 40s," he replied, "but if you hug the lee shore you should be okay."

We quickly packed up and started paddling. Three other avid fishermen - Sean, Dylan, and Kina - made up the rest of our crew. We all had one thing on our minds: big trout.

After a calm flatwater paddle across Lewis Lake, we entered the channel leading to Shoshone Lake. Yellowstone in October is serenely quiet and empty. No noisy RVs or loud tourists, just the occasional squeak of a mountain chickadee or drumming of a flicker. We didn't see any other people on the lake or as we paddled against the channel's gentle current. The shores were lined with dense lodgepole pine forests where bald eagles roosted, congregating for the same reason we were, abundant trout.