Damming the Bighorn River about 20 years ago formed yellowtail Reservoir. Before the dam the Bighorn was a slow, muddy river holding squawfish and carp. The dam design allows the water to flow out from beneath the surface, which creates a tailwater with an ice-cold water temperature all year round. Even hardy wet waders don't wet wade the Bighorn. Waterweeds began to grow and some thoughtful soul planted a few trout, rainbows I think at first. And voila, instant blue ribbon fishery. Later, people stacked old junk cars to rip rap one riverbank and created a Kodak moment for advertisers of fly fishing gear. You know the one I'm talking about. The one with some guy perched in a drift boat holding a trout alongside a line of beat up cars nose down in the water. That's the Bighorn. That and plenty of people. People float fishing, people walking in fishing, people floating and then walk in fishing. Some people with guides, some without. Some knowing how to row a drift boat, some not. More than once a day I looked up to see some poor sap with wide eyes frantically rowing the wrong direction in an attempt to not mow me down. On the White River you watch out for rising water, on the Bighorn you watch out for Mr. Bean in a driftboat.

But on the lighter side, there are fish. Puhllleennnnty of fish. Some very large fish. Rainbows, browns and rainbows with a touch of cutthroat in them. Or is it cutthroat with a touch of rainbow in them? What ever. We fished with small flies. The largest was a size 16 PMD nymph. Everything else was size 18 and smaller. We fished nymphs, emergers, and dries. We fished fast water runs and shallow side stream tailouts for sippers. The Beattis hatch came off at least once a day and scuds worked religiously all day. Tiny black midges were our fall back fly. It was challenging to land 20+ inch fish in big, fast moving water on size 18 and 20 flies on 6X tippet. Especially when you got a hot one. Several browns made sure I got my exercise running downstream trying desperately not to break anything. My best fish was a hefty native rainbow with a nice kype in his lower jaw. I also remember one rainbow that was literally golden where they are usually silver and olive. Probably the prettiest rainbow I have seen in a long time.