Sunday saw me heading into Yellowstone Park up through the switchbacks to Bear Tooth Pass. 13,200 feet. The climb is very steep but the top at the granite hill is the highest point in Montana and there is open plateau-like country devoid of trees and only sparse snowgrass – glacial lakes cover the landscape.

Cooke City, Top of the World, and Silver Gate are small towns before you enter the park and they look like a scene out of a western, with log cabins lining the street, taverns with swinging doors - the only giveaway are the neon signs over the bars and lodging houses.

I bought a $25 pass for a week in the park, plus a fishing licence for $20 and headed down into the huge basin that is Yellowstone Park.

I followed the headwaters of the Clark’s Fork for a while, a beautiful small stream in meadowed valleys. Then on to the catchment of Soda Butte Creek (pron. soda bewt). Soda Butte and Clay Butte are massive mountains with heavily eroded steps up layer on layer, serious badland stuff. The Soda Butte creek has good fish, especially cuts.

It joins the Lamar. Now this is a stunning river, a wide rolling valley with this meandering, beautiful, open, gravelly stream.

Bison herds dot the plain and often a lone bull can be seen standing in the snowgrass landscape. Often they choose to use the road to relocate and the buffalo wander in and out across the road. You can almost put your hand out the window to touch them as they wander past.

Slough Creek (pron. Slew) campground said “full” so I drove on to tower falls and booked two nights in the campground. It was safer in the campground than sleeping out on the roadside with the grizzly bears.

Having set up camp, I returned to Slough Creek. The lower section is preferable to the head of the valley and the camp ground where everyone else goes. I could happily die here. The first big wide flat pool about 400 metres off the road had rising fish. I changed to a dun and watched as a 2lb cut ate my fly. The fishing was like working backwaters to cruising fish, only with no cover.

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