The 5 Best Montana Trout Fishing Towns in Yellowstone Country

Yellowstone National Park had been on my trout fishing list for years – but the more I planned and talked with fishing buddies, the more I realized the park was just one piece of a larger region that I wanted to fish. Naturally, the park trip turned into a road trip.

Now, I’m back at my desk after a week chasing trout across Montana's Yellowstone Country. The fishing was everything I’d hoped for, but what really stuck with me were the towns along the way. If you get the chance to experience this remarkable part of the country, these are the places to hit.

Bozeman: Yellowstone Country's Trout Fishing Hub

My trip kicked off in Bozeman, just twenty minutes from the airport in Belgrade. It’s the perfect jumping-off point, with plenty of exceptional rivers within easy reach. In under an hour, you can be on the Yellowstone, Madison, and Gallatin Rivers, as well as the Paradise Valley spring creeks.

Such great options make choosing one a daunting task – but I’d been told that trout were still eating hoppers on the Yellowstone, so there I went. Sure enough, big browns and rainbows were happy to eat big hopper patterns. Even if they weren’t, I'd have been perfectly content floating beneath the Absaroka Mountains.

Gardiner: Gateway to Yellowstone National Park

That evening, I rolled into Gardiner, a Yellowstone National Park gateway town where elk hang out on the sidewalks and use crosswalks as their own. A short drive into the park brings you to legendary trout water – the Gardner and Lamar Rivers, plus Soda Butte and Slough Creek.

I fished the Lamar in the morning, then hopped in the truck and was fishing Soda Butte Creek an hour later. It was a day of gin-clear water, native yellowstone cutthroats, and a herd of hundreds of bison that was slightly closer than comfortable.

A native Yellowstone cutthroat from Soda Butte Creek | photo by Jasper Taback

Red Lodge: The End of the Beartooth Highway

After leaving the park, I got on the Beartooth Highway – 68 miles of switchback roads that end in the small mountain town of Red Lodge.

All along the Beartooth Highway are pristine alpine lakes and streams, visible from above as you climb to almost 11,000 feet. It turns out that making hairpin turns while trying to take in otherworldly views is taxing on the mind, and Red Lodge was a welcome sight at the end of the road.

Absarokee: At the Foot of the Beartooth Mountains

The next morning, I fished the Stillwater River – a tributary of the Yellowstone – just outside of Absarokee. Unlike the slow and steady flow of the Yellowstone, the Stillwater is fast, riffly, and full of boulders that make for excellent pocket water fishing.

The Stillwater is fed by snowmelt from the Beartooths, and by fall that runoff is mostly gone. Flows can run low, but deeper pools can still be found — and plenty of trout will still cooperate with a hopper-dropper rig.

Big Timber: Trout Fishing Beneath the Crazy Mountains

On my final day, I fished the Boulder River outside of Big Timber. It’s another tributary of the Yellowstone – a smaller freestone that rolls through the beautiful Boulder Valley.

The fish aren’t as big as they are in the Yellowstone, but they’re strong and quick to rise to a dry fly. The river winds past ranchland and into the edge of Gallatin National Forest, getting smaller and prettier the farther upstream you go.

Yellowstone Country's Trout Towns At a Glance

This is a 30,000-foot view, the quick hits from a week on the road. Each of these towns and rivers deserves a closer look, and I’ll get to that over the next few weeks. For now, I wanted to get this overview out there – something to put on your radar if you’re thinking about pulling the trigger on a last-ditch fall trout trip.

More to come in - Part 2