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Guide Luke Blaser with a sweet town brown... Photo: Dave Benes
Dave Benes following suite... Photo: Luke Blaser

The Yellowstone is starting to fish a little more like August than mid-late July.  The only tricky part is there’s not as many hoppers out as we typically see in August to really get the fish going.  Luckily there are quite a few nocturnal stones, as well as brown stones to keep the fish looking up for big dries.  Since there’s been a Chubby Chernobyl “shortage” this year, that particular pattern has been working even better than usual.  We’ve been having good luck on smaller dries as well including caddis, trudes, parachutes, Turk’s, PMXs, and parachute flying ants have been the ticket.  Some nicer browns have been caught this week on streamers, even during the heat of the day.  If you’re going to fish streamers go deep – which means either fishing with a fair amount of weight or using a 300 grain sinking line (which casts best with an 8 weight rod in most cases).