Montana Spring Bear 2025 Start to Finish

[bigbassfish]

Welp, pointing her south with an empty cooler… atleast my girlfriend will get to see Yellowstone for the first time….

 

[bigbassfish]

Maybe we’ll have better luck fishing, I know Yellowstone just opens today for fishing, the times I’ve fished it in the past it was pretty tough, but it was also mid summer at that point. Is the fishing any easier at the start of the season? Should we not bother with fishing in the park and just fish before we get there?

 

[HarvDog]

Maybe we’ll have better luck fishing, I know Yellowstone just opens today for fishing, the times I’ve fished it in the past it was pretty tough, but it was also mid summer at that point. Is the fishing any easier at the start of the season? Should we not bother with fishing in the park and just fish before we get there?

Stop into a shop buy some flies and they’ll point in the right direction. Not all Yellowstone is on fire at the same time……follow the bugs

 

[HarvDog]

West Yellowstone’s Big Sky Anglers

 

[bigbassfish]

Is Yellowstone fishing so famous because it gets so good or for the novelty of fishing in Yellowstone? I seem to recall the summer I spent in Ennis, I always did much better fishing outside the park, but like I said, I’m not sure how much summer fishing pressure changes things.

 

[HarvDog]

Is Yellowstone fishing so famous because it gets so good or for the novelty of fishing in Yellowstone? I seem to recall the summer I spent in Ennis, I always did much better fishing outside the park, but like I said, I’m not sure how much summer fishing

pressure changes things.F

It’s good in and out of the park depending on the time of year, the river, runoff, water temps and the bugs. Follow the bugs. Go to Big Sky and set yourself up for success.

 

[bigbassfish]

Removed info

 

[bigbassfish]

Well, we finally made it home, empty coolers and all. Didn't see any bears until our last night to hunt. We glassed up a HUGE jet black boar at about a mile with slightly less than an hour of shooting light left he was out for maybe 90 seconds and disappeared back into the treeline. Stuck around the next morning and caught him in the same meadow, but he was cruising and and only caught him for about 15 seconds. Instead of going to the upper meadow the night before, we stuck to our glassing spot as an elk hunter we had just talked to had mentioned a big cinnamon bear in the lower meadows the previous two nights. These were only around 600 yards, so we made the decision to stick it out where we could actually get a shot and see significantly more country, vs limiting ourselves to just the one upper meadow.

About 20 minutes after big boy disappeared sunday morning, a little black bear started hauling straight down through the lower meadow to the creek. I scrambled down to close ~300 yards in hopes that he was running from the big cinnamon, but neither bear ended up showing himself. Atleast I got to make a move, and seeing multiple bears in such a short time span was awesome.

Although the hunting didn't turn out like we had hoped, it was an awesome trip. I want to give a huge thanks to all of those who reached out with advice and hospitality, it really was the highlight of our two weeks. The willingness of everyone to help out and share their hard earned knowledge really made up for the lack of bears. We can't say we didn't give it our all, 10 days of hunting, dozens of miles hiked with thousands of feet in vertical elevation, and an insane number of miles on the truck, we left with only pictures and memories, and a burning desire for redemption in 2026.

 

[bigbassfish]

Shockingly, ticks were not much of an issue at all. Maybe a dozen or so between the two of us but we had soaked everything in permethrin. Weather was highs in the 60's, lows in the 40's but it felt colder than that most of the time with the wind and intermittent drizzles.

 

[TheGreek]

Way to keep at it and go hard

 

[Andreyl15]

Awesome

 

[bigbassfish]

We were starting to get pretty down on ourselves the last couple days and started seriously considering cutting our losses to just fish instead. I know we would’ve slayed them, had a great, relaxing time, but I’m glad we stuck to it. Now that we’re home and the despair has worn off a little, atleast I can say we left it all on the mountain, and it paid off with the only black bears we saw the whole time! No regrets at all, couldn’t have given it literally a minute longer, that same morning we hunted, we were able to make it to old faithful the second it erupted. Like literally walking up the platform and it starts. Would’ve been close to 2 hours until the next one, and we already didn’t make it the hotel until well after midnight, with a 14 hour drive lined up the next morning.