New Fork River

The New Fork is the Upper Green's quieter twin. It drops out of the New Fork Lakes at the foot of the Wind River Range and winds about 70 miles of meadow and sagebrush-bench water down through Pinedale before it hands off to the Green near Big Piney. Where the Green above town gets the drift-boat traffic and the guidebook ink, the New Fork stays comparatively anonymous — a slower, more intimate, willow-lined river that holds the same brown trout with far fewer people watching. Browns are the draw: they run 16 to 20 inches with regularity, and there's a real chance at a fish over five pounds when the streamer bite turns on in fall. Rainbow trout and, up high toward the lakes and in the feeder creeks, brook trout round out the mix; mountain whitefish are present through the drainage as well.

Practically, this is a float river more than a wade river, and not for the reason you'd guess. It's not that it's too big — at the Pinedale gauge it often runs a modest 150-350 CFS in season — it's that almost the entire mainstem below Pinedale threads private ranchland. You can wade or bank-fish the public parcels (the reconstructed "Gas Wells" access on the lower river is the biggest chunk, roughly two miles), but to fish the meat of it you float and stay in the boat. A quirk worth knowing before you tow a boat out here: the old railroad-car bridges ranchers use to cross the river sit low, and standard drift boats don't clear them. Guides run aluminum jon boats, low-profile skiffs, and small rafts instead. The water itself is meadow character — undercut banks, willow sweepers, soft inside seams, the occasional riffle — technical enough to test an intermediate angler even though nothing about it looks intimidating.

Timing is everything here. Wind River snowmelt blows the river out through the June runoff (the lower river at Big Piney can push well past 1,000 CFS), and it doesn't settle into shape until roughly the first week of July. From then through September — and into October if flows cooperate — it fishes well, with golden stones and grey drakes early, PMDs and tricos through midsummer, hoppers on the banks, and streamers for the pre-spawn browns as the season winds down. Pinedale is the hub: Two Rivers Fishing Co. has the only real fly shop in town, and the same trip usually pairs the New Fork with the Green, so you're never far from a backup plan when one river's off.