Bringing Back the Cutts

By Paul Weamer

For 30 years, scientists have been waging a struggle to control invasive lake trout in Yellowstone Lake, trying to curb their numbers before they completely destroy what was once the largest population of Yellowstone cutthroat trout in the Intermountain West. I wrote about this effort in “Science in the Thorofare: The Story of Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout #4089” in the Feb.-Mar. 2024 issue of Fly Fisherman.

That story recounted a trip with Yellowstone National Park biologists, including Dr. Todd Koel, Yellowstone’s lead fisheries biologist and the primary person responsible for managing the lake trout problem. We fished the headwaters of Yellowstone Lake, a roadless region known as the Thorofare where increasing numbers of Yellowstone cutthroat trout continue to spawn each spring, doing their part to save their species from lake trout annihilation.

But most anglers will never experience this fishing. Unless you’re able to hike more than 30 miles into grizzly bear country carrying all your supplies on your back, or willing to endure the expense and saddle sores from hiring an outfitter to get you there on horseback, the Thorofare will remain beyond reach. It’s the stuff of unfulfilled bucket lists.

But there’s another way to catch these trout. Just as the Yellowstone River flows into Yellowstone Lake from the Thorofare, it also flows out of it. Yellowstone Lake and the Yellowstone River upriver from its upper falls harbor the same fish population as the Thorofare region. These fisheries are also experiencing a population surge of large, native Yellowstone cutthroat trout—largely from the success in controlling and reducing the predatory lake trout population. It’s not often that the fishing in a river and lake that have been world-famous for well over 100 years dramatically improves, but that’s exactly what’s happening. And unlike the Thorofare, here you can access both the lake and the river from your car.

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