Wyoming Return: The Beginning

Ever since my last trip to fly fish in Wyoming's Wind River Range, I've been intending to return. The spectacular scenery of the Winds is enough to draw me back, but the fantastic fishing is icing on the cake. Since we discovered some special additional places to fish on that last trip, the plan for the next visit was to return to several of those places and also to push into some new areas of the backcountry. 

READ: The Wyoming Saga: A Bonus Fly Fishing the North Platte River

Planning the Next Wyoming Wind River Range Fly Fishing Trip

On my first trip into the Wyoming backcountry, we stuck to a fairly easy route. The distance wasn't too bad, and the fishing was incredible. My long term goals for the Wind Rivers involve some serious off trail hiking, so the goal for this particular trip was to get in some more mileage and become more comfortable with navigating in this incredible mountain range. We settled on approximately doubling our distance for the hike in from our previous trip. This would put us into an area with multiple golden trout lakes and possibly even some stream fish.

Planning the trip was a process, but having been in the area before made things easy. We wanted to return to the North Platte, do the backpacking portion in the Wind River Range, and of course enjoy the Green River above Pinedale yet again. The trip took on a new dimension when my buddy Elam, the fly fishing manager at Blackberry Farm, agreed to join. My friend John was in, of course, having been the one who got me out to the Winds in the first place. For Elam, however, this would be the first trip out west to fish. I knew that he was going to get ruined and join the ranks of us who spend lots of our spare time planning the next adventure.

Lightening My Load

During the run up to our trip, I contemplated several adjustments to lighten the load in my backpack. First and foremost was eliminating my heavy camera setup. While I enjoyed the flexibility that a big camera offers when taking pictures, I really didn't want to lug that whole thing up there. My old cellphone was really struggling, so an upgrade there allowed me the flexibility with my pictures that I wanted while lightning in the overall load. 

Planning For Food

Food is always an important part of any trip. As I've gotten older, I've streamlined my diet significantly. The only time I spend serious time cooking in the outdoors nowadays are when I'm taking my family camping. I want my kids to get the total experience of camp cooking and enjoying some of the culinary delights it produces, but otherwise I don't need much. This philosophy led to eating the same meals over and over. Some of them could have been lighter, but I knew I wouldn't be short on calories. 

My breakfasts would be an excellent granola. Love Crunch Peanut Butter and Chocolate is insanely good and one of the few things I eat that has sugar in it. I've mostly eliminated sweet treats entirely, but this granola is just too good to skip. I add extra peanuts for the extra protein. My family and I generally use oat or almond milk, so I found an oat milk powder that I could add to the granola ahead of time and prepackaged each serving in sandwich bags. All I needed to do was add water in the morning and enjoy.

Lunch would be my favorite camping/backpacking lunch which is bagels (I like cinnamon raisin) and peanut butter. I use individual serving packets of Justin's peanut butter. I also tossed in a few raspberry and blueberry fig bars. 

Finally, supper would be a mix of two things: backpacker dinners for a couple of nights because I had some that were expiring soon and Andrew Skurka's beans and rice. This is a variation on a popular backpacker dinner that would soon become one of my all time favorites AND end up as my primary evening meal for backpacking trips moving forward. More on that over the next few installments of the Wyoming Return. 

Planning For Fly Fishing in Wyoming

The fishing was obviously the main driver of our trip. As I already mentioned, I would backpack in the Wind River mountains even without the draw of fishing because of the incredible scenery, but as enthusiastic fly anglers and fly fishing guides, we planned our trip around the good fishing to be had in Wyoming.

Our last trip ended with a surprising 24 hours on the North Platte, and we decided to start this next trip there. Starting in January of this year, Wyoming Game and Fish enacted new regs on the North Platte requiring barbless hooks. This covers water from the Miracle Mile downstream, so I decided to start tying. I ordered lots of barbless hooks from Fulling Mile and Firehole Outdoors. While pinching the barb on regular hooks is certainly fine for compliance purposes, I strongly believe that specialty barbless hooks hold fish much better with their longer and curved hook points. Thus, I set out building a tailwater box from scratch.

I had tricos on my mind after our last trip, so in addition to nymphs, larva, pupa, and various midges, I also tied 3 dozen trico dries including both duns and spinners. I was pumped to be sight fishing tiny dries to large risers, and that excitement gave me energy through multiple late night tying sessions. I'm honestly getting too old to burn the candle on both ends of the day, but thoughts of giant trout dancing in my head kept me going. Up and out of my house between 5 and 5:30 am most days for work guiding, then tying late until 10:00 pm or later in the evenings, I was approaching the point where I needed this fishing trip just to rest up from my busy life.

For backpacking, I mostly just raided some already existing fly supplies and boxes to put together my boxes for the backcountry. These boxes are heavy on parachute Adams, a few chubby Chernobyls, scuds, and various nymphs and midges. A small fly puck of streamers rounded out my assortment. A 9' 5 weight original Orvis Helios was perfect both for the lightweight rod tube it came in and also because it was a powerful rod that would handle wind very well. If you had any doubt whether there is wind in the Winds, I can assure you that there is. I think there is wind in the entire state of Wyoming for that matter. When I can, I really prefer my 10' 3 weight rods, but didn't want to do anything foolish. The 9' 5 weight is ideal for a broad range of techniques and strategies and would handle just about anything I might want to throw. I could fish the 3 weight rods in our car camping portions of the trip.

Driving Out To Wyoming

After months and months of planning, the final days leading up to the trip felt like a blur. Working full time and trying to pack and prepare for a trip is a lot, so I had taken off the last work day before our departure date to do my final packing. This proved to be a wise choice as I spent the whole day preparing. Finally, on the morning of the trip, excitement pushed me up and out of my house by 5:30 am. I picked up my buddies Elam and then John, and we were off.

As with most road trips, the long drive definitely starts to wear on everyone, but the excitement of getting to Wyoming and starting fishing kept us mostly lighthearted on the drive out. Elam was enjoying watching the changing scenery, and I always enjoy watching the changing ecosystems as I cross the Great Plains. Eventually, we started spotting some pronghorn which is always the moment that I feel like I've really arrived out west. It seemed like the windmills had multiplied also, Every time I go out west, I think there are more than the last time I drove out there. 

"A Kansas Windmill." ©2026 David Knapp Photography

Stopping By The Ugly Bug

My buddy John had specifically wanted to make a stop at the Ugly Bug fly shop in Casper, Wyoming. Most good fly fishing trips start with a stop at the local fly shop, so I was glad to check it out even though I had enough equipment and flies to start our own fly shop. It ended up being a great stop! I found some Semperfli thread I had been looking for and not finding locally and even better found out that they would ship! 

Unfortunately, our trip hit a bit of a snag starting at the Ugly Bug. John walked in and mentioned that he wanted flies for the North Platte. When John asked how it was, the guy gave a long pause and then said something about it being pretty warm. That was our warning. He said it was possible that things had cooled a little but to not expect too much. Upon leaving the fly shop, we filled up the gas tank again, and pointed the truck towards the North Platte. The plan was to camp near our fishing spot and hit it hard for a day or two. 

When we got there, instead of going straight to the campground to snag a spot and setup camp, we headed to the water to see what the situation was. Unfortunately, the water was definitely too warm. 70 degrees is not conducive to good trout fishing. It was time to shift our plans and we hadn't even gotten started yet. 

"The first storm of the day in Wyoming." ©2026 David Knapp Photography

Staying Flexible

The truck turned west yet again and we decided it was time to hit the Winds. If we couldn't fish the North Platte, we would just jump straight into the main event. Who needs to acclimate? On the drive west, we encountered some epic storms. The radar was looking gnarly, and sure enough, we had some very strong winds, small hail, and insane lightning. As we got close to the mountains, the storm broke for a little while.

The trailhead for our backpacking portion of the trip had a USFS Campground and we snagged a nice campsite. There was plenty of room for all three of us to put up a tent. After some discussion, it was determined to go ahead and reserve it for two nights. We would do a warmup hike the next day without our heavy backpacking packs. That would help get us used to elevation and get our first fish caught, we hoped. 

We didn't stay up late. More storms moved in and as lightning started to pepper the ridge just above camp, it seemed prudent to hunker down in our tents and hope for the best. I feel asleep that evening with the soft sound of raindrops on my rainfly. Our adventure had started...

What Does It Mean?

Today I faced a really tough dilemma. All along, I had been planning to fish and in the Smokies no less. When the alarm went off at 5:00 a.m., the first thing I noticed was the flashes of light illuminating my bedroom. A crash of thunder followed the optical display. My first movement was to turn off the blasted alarm. The second was to reach for my iPad to check the radar. Rain everywhere with more on the way dampened my enthusiasm for crawling out of the comfortable bed.

The internal struggle was intense, and I almost succumbed to more sleep. Then visions of big brown trout chasing streamers started dancing in my head, and I knew it was time to get going.There was no way I could sleep knowing that this might be the best fishing day of the summer in the Smokies. Score one point for my theory that fishermen are some of the world's greatest optimists.

Rain was falling steadily as I loaded the few things that weren't already in my car. A cooler contained lunch and a couple of Gatorades. I also took along the waders with the assumption that it would be cool enough to wear them and they might help me stay dry.

After a quick stop at Little River Outfitters to pick up the new Tennessee Guide License and a couple of fly tying items, I headed on into the Park. Despite several follows at my first stop, I didn't manage to hook up and was soon headed on up the river. At the second spot, I did have at least one flash and the third produced a good solid tug. Somehow all the fish were missing the hook though. My curiosity had been simmering all this time and finally got the better of me. I headed over the ridge to the NC side to see how conditions were over there.

The rain had long since turned into a steady soaking rain, just the thing we've been waiting for here in the Great Smoky Mountains. My first stop produced a really nice rainbow. I would have kept fishing on further upstream but noticed the herd of elk before I stumbled dangerously close. I backed off from this first brush with danger and headed back to the Moose Magnet. Apparently it works on elk also. It was right about the time I got back to my car that I heard the first rumble.

At the next top, I heard another one, far away to the south or at least that's what it sounded like. Then it was quiet, and I assumed that meant I should go fishing. By this time, I had soaked one rain jacket, switched to another while the first one dried, and then switched back to the first again. In other words, the rain was much more than what qualifies as light but something short of tropical downpour status.

Scrambling along the thick stream-side vegetation, I paused to ponder poison ivy and was hit with the realization that it seemed to be a lot thicker this year. After trampling around through a lot of it today, I'll probably be fortunate if I don't end up with the miserable stuff.

Anyway, so here I am thinking about poison ivy, standing in the middle of a drenching rainstorm with one of my favorite pools just ahead of me. Jumping into the stream, I decided it was probably safer out in the water. At least the poison ivy couldn't get to me out there.

Working along the pool, I was almost to the top when it happened. Out of the hazy water, a dark shadow materialized under the hopper that was doubling as a strike indicator. I barely had time to think no way to myself before it inhaled the Chernobyl. Yeah!

Then came the shocker, if you will pardon the pun. Right as I leaned down to grab the fish, as my hand slipped under the beautiful rainbow trout's body, a bright flash flickered across the sky followed almost immediately by a thunderclap that would have caused me to levitate out of the river if I hadn't seen the flash first. The timing was absolutely crazy. It has to mean something, right? But what?

The fish gods weren't angry or else I wouldn't have caught that fish, or at least that's what I assume. Maybe it was just Mother Nature reminding me to not take anything for granted. Either way, I've never felt so relaxed after a close call with lightning. I actually just shrugged and decided to keep on fishing. After all, it was far enough back to the car that I was probably just as likely to get struck walking back as to keep on fishing.

In hind sight, it occurs to me that the lightning and thunder were the last for the day. It rained quite a bit longer, but no more lightning. In fact, by the time that I decided to leave soggy North Carolina behind, Tennessee had turned sunny. The low hanging clouds burned off and left a beautiful day in their wake.

Back on Little River, I managed another small rainbow, but somehow my heart wasn't in it. The day had already been amazing, and I decided to not push my luck. I know enough to quit while I'm ahead. The drive down Little River road was just about the slowest you will ever see me drive. The tranquility of the Park had worked her magic, and I was revived and rejuvenated again. Back out in the real world, the hurry didn't come back until I was well along on the Interstate. I guess I already need another lightning strike to put things back in perspective.

Do you have any other ideas for what the random lightning strike means? I want to hear them.

Lightning Over South Park

When my buddy Joe McGroom made plans to come out and visit for a fishing trip, I knew we would have great fishing because that is a given every time we get together.  What I didn't know about was the great bonus photography session I would be blessed with.  These pictures are looking out across Eleven Mile Canyon Reservoir from our campsite in Eleven Mile State Park.  At this point, I still did not know how epic the fishing was going to be the next day but the lightning made the whole trip worth it even if the amazing fishing did not happen.

We initially spotted the storm from a distance while putting in our first two hours on the water.  The fishing was mediocre although Joe did manage one really nice 17 inch brown.  

Eventually we noticed the storm looming off to the east was actually building back in our direction.  Our conversation turned to whether or not camp would be spared from the storm.  Both of us were tired, especially Joe since he had woke up at 3:00 that morning to make it to the airport on time and had travelled west 2 time zones.  The last thing we wanted was a big storm to ruin supper.  

Thankfully, the storm moved to within 5 or 6 miles of camp and then just sat still, allowing for perfect photo opportunities.  The trip was off to a great start with a full day of fishing a short night's rest away...