Yellowstone National Park closes fishing in Firehole, Gibbon, Madison Rivers

Yellowstone National Park boasts a robust native populations of cutthroat trout, Arctic grayling, and mountain whitefish. Both the Yellowstone cutthroat and Westslope cutthroats roam the region, along with various species of chub, dace, and sculpin – in total, there are a dozen species of native fishes believed to be within park boundaries.

The National Park Service goes to great lengths to protect the native species of the park, in part because invasive and introduced species – the likes of brook trout, brown trout, rainbow trout, lake trout, and smallmouth bass – have begun to assert their dominance in the region. It’s become paramount to protect the native fish populations from invasion due to the size and aggressiveness of the species who have invaded, so much so that the NPS has mandates in certain regions that all non-native fish caught within the park must be killed and disposed of.

Madison Junction in Yellowstone’s northwest corridor features the confluence of the Gibbon River and Firehole River. The Gibbon flows west from its origins in Grebe Lake, eventually flowing through Wolf and Ice Lakes before growing wider through the Gibbon meadows near the famous Monument Geyser Basin. The Firehole, meanwhile, pours out of tiny Madison Lake just west of Shoshone Lake, and flows north past Old Faithful and through numerous geyser basins before slamming into the Gibbon.

Together, the Gibbon and Firehole form the mighty Madison River, which flows past West Yellowstone, Montana and the park’s western boundary before slamming into Hebgen Dam and Hebgen Lake. Beyond the dam, it flows for another 100+ miles before reaching Three Forks, Montana, where it meets with the Gallatin and Jefferson Rivers to form the start of the mighty Missouri River.

The Madison is classified as a Blue Ribbon fishery, thanks in large part to the pristine environments in which both the Gibbon and Firehole flow to form it. In order to protect the fisheries and species within these three prime rivers, Yellowstone National Park officially closed fishing within them on July 12th, citing the extreme heat in the region (and subsequent rise in water temperature).

With high temperatures expected to push 95 degrees in parts of the park all weekend, the threat of water temperatures reaching over 68 degrees became a concern, with the warmer waters – and lower flows of the rivers as the heat evaporates the water – putting fish at risk of being exhausted by simply existing. The stress and effort that would be added by hooking and catching them would put them that much closer to death by exhaustion, and the park opted to take measures to prevent that before it could happen.

Per the press release, fishing in the rest of the park’s lakes, rivers, and creeks remains unchanged, and the park will reassess the status of the Madison, Firehole, and Gibbon when weather conditions improve.