Article by Payton Skidmore
On the new moon night of September, I woke up at 3:00 AM to make one of my most anticipated road trips of the year. An adventure that would conclude a trout journey unlike many others I have experienced, and it started with a relatively uneventful drive that suddenly changed as the sunrise gave birth to a silhouette of windmills standing tall in a flat desert. This is what most drivers on I-80 get to experience in the wild, windy country of Wyoming. The drive, however, would be 409 miles and take us beyond the sage deserts of the Cowboy State and to the Wind River region known for grizzly bears and an iconic Western gem; the Yellowstone Cutthroat.
I arrived at our target location with my uncle, the man who taught me how to fly fish. Knowing it could take minutes for him to set up his western rod, I slipped into my wading boots, grabbed my DRAGONtail Ragnarok and pheasant tail sakasa kebari and made four precise casts on the freestone bank under an overhanging shrub. On the fourth cast, I set the hook on a swiping fish eager to take my kebari. A few seconds later, I coaxed a beautiful native Yellowstone cutthroat into my net, looked back to my uncle who had just approached the bank, and I said, “THE SLAM’S COMPLETE!” He hadn’t even made his first cast yet. It’s not always butterflies and rainbows on our fishing adventures, but my journey and memories of my Wyoming Cutt-Slam sure feels like a Cinderella story.
The Wyoming Cutt-Slam is a free challenge and conservation program that recognizes anglers for catching the four indigenous cutthroat species of Wyoming. The Yellowstone (YSCT), Bonneville (BRCT), Colorado River (CRCT), and Snake River cutthroats (SRCT) are the four species that anglers will target, and the reward is a certificate of achievement, a challenge coin, and the priceless memories of exploring the frontiers of a vital trout country.
As I type this article up reflecting on the experience, I have shared the key details in my Skiddy Fishing YouTube series and a four-part episode detailing the Wyoming Cutt-Slam. For the purposes of this article, I wanted to note highlights and leave something behind to inspire and assist the future tenkara anglers looking to take on the adventure of a lifetime.
The adventure for me was completed in three separate visits to Wyoming and three major drainage differences all noted and cited on the Wyoming Cutt-Slam website. I shared 75% of this journey with one of my best fishing pals Kyle Turner from Evanston and one single trip with my uncle.
The rivers we fished were mostly open canopy where tenkara rods 365cm or longer were ideal, standard Rocky Mountain fishing. However, we did experience the “works” and were delighted to catch fish on larger rivers with flows 300-400 CFS down to the meandering streams of 25-100 CFS where a tenkara rod in the 300cm range would be ideal and fun for stream trout. The rod used the most on this adventure was the Seiyu Therapy 33 which was the perfect “all around length” but truthfully, any tenkara angler could have used their desired rod for the playground waters Wyoming offers.
The hardest fish to catch was the CRCT and it holds a reputation in the challenge for being the “tough” fish. Every challenge must have one, right? The main attribute to this phenomenon is that Wyoming has too much private land and the dominant native range of the CRCT is mostly arid private land and irrigation water use which has plagued this native fish more than others.
In the first week of July, we chose the Blacks Fork drainage for our CRCT and much too early for that matter. The flows were likely in peak runoff 400-500 CFS making the conditions unsafe at times. Fortunately, I had Kyle with me engaged in the slam as well. In lack of a better term, this was the “grindiest” trip and we were rewarded with two cutthroats only: one each, and a mixed bag of other species. It was almost perfect and required no return trip to make up for a skunk.
Any 360cm+ tenkara rod could have been used here and I chose the Rocky MTN Tenkara Chupacabra, a rod with a big backbone; and rightfully selected as it helped me wrestle my only catch out of an immense current that would have been a much bigger challenge with a softer rod. Considering the early visit, this is probably the river I would be most intrigued to revisit and experience at summer’s end.
Perhaps my favorite fish and trip of the year was the hunt for SRCT which we chose the Salt River drainage for. This would arguably be the easiest fish to target as it dominates the western region of the state. Although SRCT are a sub species of Yellowstone cutthroat, they are managed separately in the state as they tend to have very fine spots making them stand out from other cutthroat. This is the only fish in the Wyoming Cutt-Slam that I cannot catch in my home waters of Utah, and we were very spoiled with at least 50 trout landed and released. In fact, the productivity of the cutthroat fishing was so good, we decided to jump to a neighboring stream where I had already caught and landed my BRCT from the night before. However instead of a boastful 5” trout that I landed while making my way to a campground, we wanted something of the 10” caliber and riding the luck train paid off because Kyle and I were landing multiple fish of that magnitude back-to-back on a day where time literally ceased to exist.
By September I experienced the opposite of the peak runoff flows that I experienced in July with a very low flowing East Fork Wind River. The DRAGONtail Ragnarok was the perfect rod for this trip where the fish were arguably the most wild and alert. My uncle who used a 4-weight western rod had a very hard time getting fly presentations underneath overhanging shrubs which 90% of the trout were clinging to. This is where the advantage of tenkara really paid off and provided me with a handful of amazing catches and nothing more.
Thanks to the generosity of Wyoming game biologists and the Cutthroat Fly Shop in Dubois, Wyoming, I was able to get a glimpse of what to expect upon my arrival and they were very welcoming to ask questions too. On a day that rewarded my final fish in four casts and a handful of extras, I left that creek on cloud nine and was ready to turn in four pictures of wild and native cutthroat trout. It took about seven days for the slam biologists to approve my catches.
I would like to thank Kyle Turner who, like me, shares his adventures on YouTube under TNT Epic Adventures. Kyle is an absolute stud and was a real pleasure to fish with. We both knew our missions, shared the waters equally, and made sure each other’s goals were fulfilled before leaving the waters. He assisted me with three of the four species of the challenge, and we stayed in communication after and learned that we both completed our Wyoming Cutt-Slams 24 hours and 190 miles apart separately, each ending with Yellowstone cutthroats. From here, I am taking a chapter from the Tenkara Rod Co. owners Drew and Tuna and working on the Western Native Trout Challenge with an emphasis on tenkara.
Tenkara rods certainly made this journey easier, allowed me to engage in technical areas, catching more fish, gave me maximum portability, and of course… connecting me to my true overall passion; native trout. Thank you to Wyoming Trout Unlimited, Wyoming Game and Wildlife Department, conservation enthusiasts, Cutthroat Fly Shop in Dubois and this amazing tenkara community for the hard work, generosity, and passion that keeps us inspired daily for our world-renowned trout fishing.
Lastly, I will share some notables for those looking to work on their first Wyoming Cutt-Slam:
- Mid July-August is my recommendation for good sustainable flows and productive fishing.
- I found 335 cm rods to be the perfect all-around length with the Seiyu Therapy 33 used the most.
- If you want to complete the Slam in a day or two, focus on the LaBarge, Salt, and Grays drainages as there are places where three of the four cutthroat can be caught just miles apart. Naturally, these rivers also receive the most pressure.
- The Yellowstone Cutthroat were the “wildest” in personality to me.
- Pheasant Tail kebari were the most productive fly in the journey.
- Carry bear spray with you in the backcountry or bring a partner for safety.
- Calling fly shops, wildlife biologists, and using the Wyoming Cutt-Slam website was a staple for success.
- The Wyoming Cutt-Slam is free and requires no registration but a fishing license is required to fish in Wyoming.
Payton Skidmore is an avid Utah tenkara angler. Follow his Skiddy Fishing channel on YouTube.
This article originally appeared in the 2025 print issue of Tenkara Angler magazine.
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