The morning air is crisp and clean despite the wildfire haze on the skyline. This meadow of tall grasses and pines smells like bison dust and crushed spruce tips. The water here is crystal. It fractures the sunlight where the morning sun scatters on the surface. It’s so clear the pebbled bottom looks like it’s been lacquered. The sound of water trickling through the meadow and disturbed surface tension are the only things that break the spell that all of this might just be fantasy. The dew from the morning crunches under my wading boots where it’s turned to frost in the shade. I can’t breathe deeply enough in this space. I want to take it into my being and cradle it gently in my fingers like a snowflake I never want to melt. I’m here to catch fish. I hope I can fulfill that mission. And yet kneeling in this meadow and scanning the water, I can’t help but be in awe of the quiet, the primal sounds of water, air, and matter that has naturally come into being despite civilization’s best efforts to destroy it.
Up until this moment, I’ve never fished Yellowstone National Park. When I lived in California and Idaho, the park was always a place to visit. I would travel there with friends or family and see the sights, take pictures, and then leave to somewhere else less populated. Over the last 15 years of my life, most of my outdoor travel has been in pursuit of places less populated. Especially when it comes to fishing, my partner and I have taken extensive lengths to go just a little farther into the backcountry in the hopes to get to less pressured water and thus less pressured fish. This manifests itself as driving that extra hour down a dirt road, bushwhacking that extra half mile, downloaded maps, subscriptions to OnX, subscriptions to InReach, helicopter insurance, and gear packs that are probably a little fuller than they need to be for the average day adventure. Yellowstone National Park estimated well over 3.5 million visitors in 2025. If the goal over the last 15 years has been to explore less populated areas, it’s not hard to imagine why the park was never high on my list. And here I am. Crouching in this meadow in the early morning hours. Quiet. Looking for fish.
I knew September would be a difficult month for fishing. The water is low, the temperatures are high during the day, the fish have been trained all summer by every other fisherman who has traveled through trying to catch them. Still, I packed my fly rods, reels, and a box of flies I had been building all summer. I bought tapered leaders for the first time in years. I packed my camera gear, snacks, and water bottle. I was going to give it my best shot. Hopefully I could meet some new people along the way to show me the ropes and make some new friends.
Walking through the Bozeman airport, I quickly come to terms with the fact that I’m not in Alaska anymore. There isn’t the small-town feel of everyone being polite if a little stand-offish, and generally minding their own business. Here, there are open inquisitive faces, people taking up space and presence in a dominant way. There are cowboy hats everywhere. It feels like Wyoming and it makes me laugh inwardly that the tourists here are chasing that piece of the “American Dream” of the west. But I’m here to fish, not attend a rodeo or spend time at a dude ranch. It also doesn’t escape my notice that I’m the only female walking around with a fly rod case in my hand. It excites me that once I get to where I am going, I won’t be the only one anymore.
This is the first women’s fly fishing trip I’ve set out on, and more than anything I want to see how other people fish. It sounds weird, but I’ve spent most of my fishing career with family and taking out close friends. Fishing with strangers, and being in a group of people is much different from my experiences on the water thus far. I want to know what community in this sport looks like because that isn’t something I’ve seen demonstrated in a positive way as a large group. This and the prospect of catching a Yellowstone cutthroat are what excite me the most about being here.
Community
There’s laughter and smiles that echo into the kitchen from the dining room. I have a mug of wine in front of me because we don’t have wine glasses, and I am listening to a guide story shared from across the dining room table. You know the kind of story. It’s the one being told by a seasoned guide, with laughter in their voice, a smile on their face, and weathered hands gesturing animatedly about what happened in this far-off place in the wilderness. I feel at home here because the faces around me are diverse, and we are all one-offs in the industry of fly fishing. We all have stories of being the-only-one. We all have stories of being underestimated because of the way we appear. And the beautiful thing about it is that we are all seated at the same table, sharing stories and experiences from the river that are just as wild and awe inspiring as any Hemingway or Maclean.
There are six of us walking down to the river, and I’m curious to see how this is going to play out if we are all going to fish from the same small stretch of water. We’ve been fishing in pairs and independently at most stretches of river all morning, and though we’ve hooked up to fish and seen fish, we haven’t actually landed anything. The lead of our group is excited and lays out a plan to fish this particular place explaining, there are fish here and they are being active, so we are going to target them one at a time. Each person in our party will catch a fish today – even if it’s a little one. And we do. One at a time, she guides us through where to place our fly, and one at at time we each proceed to catch our one fish from this stretch of water. There is celebration at each fish landed, laughter and awe at these creatures we all love so much. There is collective and helpful encouragement when it is each of our turns, and the community sparkles in its vibrancy. It is a VIBE. It makes my heart see joy in this collectiveness where before there was uncertainty. And as I watch my first Yellowstone cutthroat slip through my fingers and back into the depths, I realize this is what community is supposed to feel like. It’s supposed to feel like home.
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