Guided Float on the Green River in Wyoming

When someone mentions fishing the Green River they are usually referring to the river in Utah below Flaming Gorge.  This is the popular, more famous and definitely more crowded stretch of river.  

Upstream in Wyoming is The Green River above Flaming Gorge, below Fontenelle Reservoir.  This section is far less crowded.  It has fewer fish per mile but you do have the chance of hooking into some really big fish.

Nick and I had a Guide scheduled for October 9^th.  We met our Guide, Ryan, at 8:30 at the Fontenelle store, a mile from our camp at Slate Creek. 

 

We launched the Clackacraft drift boat at the Dripping Springs Campground. 

 

Nick stayed to fish and keep an eye on the boat while Ryan and I took the Truck, Trailer and my vehicle to the take out a mile or two below the bridge on the Lincoln Sweetwater County Road 8 on BLM property.  We then used my vehicle to return to the put in at Dripping Springs. 

Ryan already had his nymphing rods rigged up so we used those, six weight Temple Fork rods with Ross Cimarron reels.  The terminal rigs were tapered 12 foot monofilament (mono) leaders with 4X fluorocarbon tippets.  The top fly was a blood worm. 

 

Tied next in tandem a foot lower was a red midge nymph with a smaller nymph like a pheasant tail also tied in tandem a foot below as the point fly.  One medium split shot was placed about nine inches up from the top fly.  A Thingamabobber strike indicator was placed seven or eight feet above the top fly.

After launching the boat Ryan rowed us upstream to an island and we drifted downstream while fishing the far side of the drop off.  After each drift through the run, Ryan would row us back. 

 

After an hour or so, he would drift us on the near side of the drop off. 

 

We fished this stretch two or three hours before moving on.  The day before the fish were keying in on the red flies.  This day however, they didn’t seem interested and we only caught a couple of trout in this section.

From time to time we would switch to our second rods.  These rods were set up with streamers and sink tip lines. The leaders consisted of a couple feet of 20 pound mono and a couple feet of 12 pound mono.  We frequently switched streamers, styles, colors or sizes. 

 

None of which were that successful although we did catch a few medium size fish.  For the most part we would cast toward the shore, strip in, and repeat.  If it was deep water, we would let the streamer sink for a couple of seconds before slowly stripping in.

At one point along the river we encountered a huge herd of sheep heading toward the river, noisy and dusty but fun to see.

In the meanwhile we kept catching a few more medium sized rainbows, white fish and one nice looking cutthroat. 

Our guide, Ryan, brought along his guide dog.  This was the best trained dog I’ve seen.  It stayed still the whole float, never barked and never bothered us. 

 

I would scratch under its ears once in a while and it would nudge me under my arm once in a while.  When we got out of the boat, Ryan would throw boulders and it would fetch them, even in the water.  It also went chasing after a rabbit.  It had a lot of pent up energy to expend after being cooped up in a boat all day.