On Green River Fly Fishing Vacations and Southwest Wyoming Road Trips, you'll explore isolated expanses of Southwest Wyoming. Fish the Green River, New Fork River, Hams Fork, and numerous small streams and creeks where you'll experience excellent fishing with very few other anglers. Contact us to start planning a Southwest Wyoming fly fishing trip.
Fishing: 5 Stars GYFO people: 5 Stars Overall experience: All the Stars!!
Scott M. Raleigh, N.C.
The Rivers of Southwestern Wyoming
In southwestern Wyoming, the Green River watershed is a verdant oasis draining a vast and varied landscape from Wyoming’s tallest peaks in the Wind River Range to the high desert and arid sagebrush shrublands of the Little Colorado Desert. Miles of sagebrush flats, rabbitbrush, and greasewood fold into the lush riparian zones of the Green and New Fork Rivers and other southwest Wyoming streams, with dramatic views of the Wind River and Wyoming Ranges stretching out on the horizon. Moose, mule deer, elk, sage grouse, and the world’s largest population of pronghorn antelope frequent the sagebrush plains, mountains, and river bottoms.
The Green River originates from snowfields and glaciers on the slopes of the Continental Divide in the Wind River Range. Flowing from Green River Lakes, the river descends through a glacially carved valley past lodgepole pines and sagebrush hills covered with glacial erratic boulders. It then serpentines past hayfields, ranches, and willowed wetlands near Daniel, Wyoming. The river’s riparian corridor is a green ribbon starkly contrasting the drab sagebrush steppe and desert shrublands en route to Flaming Gorge Reservoir.
Rainbows, browns, cutthroats, and cutbows averaging 12” to 20” swim the Green’s currents, with trophy brown trout exceeding two feet. The river’s prolific hatches provide excellent match-the-hatch fishing, while attractors, hoppers, and other terrestrials attract the river’s large trout to the surface throughout the season. The river below Fontenelle Reservoir is home to some massive trout, affording anglers the opportunity of hooking the trout of a lifetime!
Wyoming’s Green River region is steeped in American history. Native American Plains Indian tribes hunted and summered in the Green River basin for thousands of years, and early pioneers traversed this country on the California, Mormon, and Oregon Trails. Native Americans, mountain men, fur trappers, and traders convened at rendezvous along the Green River in the 1830s, and the Pony Express Trail traveled through the region from 1860 to 1861.
Wyoming’s Hams Fork is home to rainbows and browns, averaging 18” to 22”, with occasional behemoths. Sight fish to big trout rising to prolific hatches of Baetis and tricos, or short leash nymph for these impressive trout. Chucking streamers to undercut banks and overhanging willows invokes violent strikes from the occasional alligator brown.
The New Fork River flows from the Wind River Range past Pinedale emptying into the Green River near Big Piney, Wyoming. This stream winds sinuously through willow-lined, marshy riparian areas and ranch land with undercut banks and logjams holding wild browns and rainbows from 14” to 24”. While floating this peaceful stream, you’ll match the river’s abundant hatches or search the banks with large terrestrials and attractors. The New Fork is known for streamer-chasing beastly browns.
Southwest Wyoming is replete with lesser-known wade fishing streams and creeks where you’ll hook rainbows, browns, and cutthroats in the 12” -20” range on these serpentined, willow-lined waters. Explore remote country and search for native Colorado River and Bonneville cutthroats in some streams. You may enjoy a Wyoming Cutthroat Slam Road Trip or Southwest Wyoming Road Trip.
